Monthly Archives: October 2012

Maya: In Hebrew my name means water. In Hinduism, illusion. It is the NYC taxi driver’s favorite question. A familiar yawn in Israel and one letter away from Palestine. It means I know you from somewhere. Soft and sharp: the meeting of hair and metal comb.

Find me one person in the world who has nothing to say about her name. (Then find me a writer who doesn’t wish, longingly, to write like Sandra Cisneros.) Whether adored or despised, our names live with us. We cherish them, announce them proudly, turn away from them shamefully, shrug them away, change them, and twist them into nicknames. They are our identifiers and our travel companions. Points of mockery and praise, they make us cringe, stand tall, and perk our ears at their sound. 

The chapter “Names” in Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street introduces us to Esperanza:

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.

The lesson is simple. Students read this short chapter and then explore their own names in a free-write. The narrator’s own playful and personal associations make it easy for students to dive into the deep waters of their own names. Without knowing Esperanza, we feel like we know her as we might an old friend, simply based on these vivid descriptions. And so we can get to know any young writer who takes the same plunge. Each voice, inevitably, sparkles.

-Maya Pindyck

Maya Pindyck is a poet and T&W teaching artist.  You can read more about Maya here.

Different
By Magda Chinea

My name is different and easy. It represents a shade of dark. Some people say it like it’s a long name. A lot of times, people say it wrong. Only Spanish people say it right. My name represents everything about me—from my head to my toes—from my outside to my insides. My name comes from a beautiful place that I wish to visit. My name is also a sort of mistake, but as much as people make fun of my name and mess it up, the more I like it. I love my name: Magda Luz Chinea, and I will never change it. It is the reflection in my mirror.

My Name
By Ashanti Garner

My name. It’s like a windy day or a huge black cloud. My name is like a question with no answer. I feel it’s pointless. I don’t know what it means, or hardly where it comes from, and I don’t really care. My mother named me. I don’t know what she was thinking. I wish I were Tiana or Emmanuella… 

Teachers & Writers Collaborative cordially invites you to

TELLING IT SLANT AND STRAIGHT: 

Susan Buttenwieser, Vanessa Mártir, and Ibi Zoboi

Join T&W writers Susan Buttenwieser, Vanessa Mártir, andIbi Zoboi for an evening of Telling it Slant and Straight. They'll share differing perspectives and genres on love and loss, the beautiful and the heinous. Susan Buttenwieser will kick off the evening with a short story; then Vanessa Mártir will jostle you with excerpts from her memoir, A Dim Capacity for Wings; and Ibi Zoboi will make your imagination soar with a piece from her YA fantasy novel.

Come out for an evening of beams and bends as these talented T&W artists tell it to us Slant and Straight!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Doors open at 6:30

Reading at 7:00

at Teachers & Writers Collaborative

520 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2020

(between West 36th and West 37th Streets)

Queries: 212-691-6590 or events@twc.org 

Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble -- I will write independently. I have written independently without Judgment. I may write independently, and with Judgment, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself -- In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure...

- John Keats

To find more writers' insights about writing, read T&W's book Illuminations: Great Writers on Writing.

Teachers & Writers Collaborative has received a $100,000 grant from the New York Community Trust (NYCT) to support creative writing programs in middle school social studies and science classes during 2012-2013. This renewed and increased NYCT funding will enable T&W to serve 13 middle schools at locations in all five boroughs.

For more information about T&W's creative writing programs for K-12 students, please write to workshops@twc.org or call 212-691-6590.

    “I sense that humans have an urge to map—and that this mapping instinct, like our opposable thumbs, is part of what makes us human,” Katharine Harmon writes in her introduction to You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, a collection of artists’ maps including both real and imagined places.  “Part of what fascinates us when looking at a map is inhabiting the mind of its maker, considering that particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those unique contour lines of experience.”
    The maps in the book include the Italian artist Sara Fanelli’s "Map of My Day," which breaks down the typical child’s routine into nine sections including breakfast, school and playground, depicted in a bright, playful painting.  In John Fulford’s The Walk to South School 1964-71, 2003, the artist recreates his walk to school for his nieces who attended the same school thirty years later.  He includes places that are no longer in existence such as a tree house and a baseball diamond, as well as additions by the girls like a Stinky Spot and a tiny orange Fiat.
    I’ve used both these maps in a lesson on personal geography that combines writing and visual art and is especially effective towards the end of the residency.  It also provides an opportunity for students to convey or express something that they may not have been able to, such as a death or another painful event.

For a complete lesson plan on how to incorporate personal geography into your teaching practice, go here.

-Susan Buttenwieser

Susan Buttenwieser is a prose writer and T&W teaching artist.  To read more about Susan, go here.

All of us at Teachers & Writers Collaborative were saddened by the death of T&W Board member Wendy Weil on September 22.

Wendy founded the Wendy Weil Literary Agency in 1986, following a 25-year career in book publishing. Her agency’s clients include Rita Mae Brown, Andrea Barrett, Mark Helprin, Alice Walker, Anthony Doerr, Phillip Lopate, and Amity Gaige.

In 2008, Wendy joined the T&W Board of Directors. She provided the Board and staff with important insights into the publishing world, and we will miss the humor and wisdom she brought to the Board’s deliberations.

Our condolences go to Wendy’s husband Michael Trossman; to her stepsons Josh and Andy; and to her colleagues Emily Forland, Emma Patterson, and Ann Torrago, who plan to remain at the agency to continue Wendy’s legacy.

Join Teachers & Writers Collaborative and fifth-grade students from PS 111, the Adolph S. Ochs School, for a performance of A Poem as Big as New York City, Saturday, October 20, at 3:00 PM. The event will be held in the Berger Forum, Room 227, at the New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwartzman Building, Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street.

In addition to the performance, T&W teaching artists Matthew Burgess, Melanie Maria Goodreaux, and Jane LeCroy will lead a collaborative poem-writing activity for children and families at the event.

To attend this special event, enter the library through the Fifth Avenue doors and take the marble staircase to the right up one flight to the second floor. The Berger Forum is the second door on the right, almost at the end of the hall.

For more information, contact T&W at 212-691-6590 or events@twc.org.

T&W teaching artists Melanie Maria Goodreaux, Matthew Burgess, and Jane LeCroy will join the students in presenting A Poem as Big as New York City, and will then lead a collaborative poem-writing activity for children and families at the event. 

Melanie Maria adapted thousands of poems written in T&W programs into a single narrative poem describing the journey of A Poem as Big as New York City. Universe (an imprint of Rizzoli New York) published A Poem as Big as New York City in September 2012. The book features a foreword by Walter Dean Myers, the national ambassador for young people's literature, and illustrations byMasha D'yans. 

See highlights from the Poem's appearance at the Brooklyn Book Festival http://www.twc.org/category/blog/. 

Learn more about A Poem as Big as New York City, including new lesson plans to help you incorporate ideas from the book in your classroom, http://www.twc.org/about-us/a-poem-as-big-as-nyc/. To make a tax-deductible contribution to support Teachers & Writers Collaborative's programs and publications, go to http://www.twc.org/support-tw/donate/.

Last week Melanie Maria Goodreaux read from A Poem as Big as New York City at the Brooklyn Book Festival.  Everyone had a great time! Check out these highlights: