Monthly Archives: March 2013

Teachers & Writers Magazine Spring Issue 
Writing Through Trauma, excerpt three

The spring issue of the magazine, out now, features a special section on Writing Through Trauma, in which writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. In the wake of the violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, we asked these writers to offer their insights into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  Last week we posted a piece by teaching artist Autumn Hayes, from WITS Houston. In this third excerpt,  Peter Markus, from InsideOut Literary Arts Project of Detroit, describes how he helps his students translate grief into words.

Holding On, Letting Go , Making Use: Writing as Remembering

by Peter Markus

The act of remembering, I often tell my students, is most often an act of love. When someone we love leaves us, is taken from us—by the hand of God, or by a hand holding a gun—we can keep their spirit and story alive through the power of words. We can write them back into a world—the poem that the page can sometimes become—that we can hold forever in the palms of our own hands. Be empowered by that, I say. Reach back, with the pen in your hand, and hold on, as did Miguel Rodriguez, the young Detroit poet behind these words, when he wrote down what he could not otherwise get himself to say:

Crushed

Your hands
make a stone man
turn soft.

I am heavy
with the memory
of your touch.

When I invite students to write about loss, I let them know that no one in the room is exempt from the experience and the absence that remains in its wake. The older we get, the more we live and love, the more these losses accumulate. But as the poet Jack Gilbert wrote, he himself no stranger to love and the losses that come with it: “There will be music despite everything.”

Our purpose, as teaching artists in the schools, is to show students that there is a song to be sung. It may be out of sorrow, yes, but poetry allows us to celebrate what is lost even as we mourn.

As someone who believes that language has the power to restore and even redeem us, I encourage my students to reclaim that which has been taken away, to make use of experiences that can sometimes beat us and hold us down.

No one is fenced off from the violence that is our world. A mother is taken by a drunk driver. A brother meets with a bullet over a leather jacket. A classmate walks out of school on a Friday afternoon and doesn’t come back.  We use poems to tell these stories. We use stories to help us make sense. (more...)

Teachers & Writers Magazine Spring Issue 
Writing Through Trauma, excerpt two

The spring issue of the magazine is now out, and features a special section on Writing Through Trauma.  In this special section we asked writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. In the wake of the violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, we asked these writers to offer their insights into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  Last week we posted a piece by T&W teaching artist David Surface on working with veterans in a writing workshop. In this second excerpt, teaching artist Autumn Hayes, from WITS Houston describes a lesson in which she had elementary school students write new year's wishes to the children of Newtown Connecticut.

Reaching for Others: Writing New Year’s Wishes to Newtown Students
by Autumn Hayes

But—how do I know what they want?” Armarde asked, his face a dervish of anxiety. “I really want them to like it.”

I couldn’t blame him. I was at Lockhart-Turner Elementary School in Houston, Texas, working with Armarde and his fellow fourth-graders on an understandably daunting task: each child was to write and illustrate a New Year’s wish for the students of Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragic shooting there was only six days behind them—fewer for students I’d already visited at Kelso Elementary—and I had made it clear that these wishes would be mailed out to real people in real pain.

The idea started this September, with an exhibit entitled “Dear John and Dominique: Letters and Drawings from the Menil Archives.” I work at the Menil with Writers in the Schools in Houston, Texas, and I was particularly struck by a series of hand-painted New Year's cards from artist Niki de Saint Phalle. The gorgeous, full-page artworks, splashed with whimsical watercolors, wished pleasures like “friendly monsters in your dreams,” and I knew—in a world of snark and online bullying—I wanted students to see and emulate such kindness, tenderness, and creativity.

Then Sandy Hook happened, and I faced the choice to: (a) pretend that this didn’t affect us and teach revision as planned, or (b) walk the walk and engage 160 children in the messiness of reaching for others. (more...)

Celebrate the long history of women and T&W with a look at this 2002 interview with T&W Board Co-Chair Nancy Larson Shapiro and the enormous impact she’s had on T&W.

In 1976, fresh from the Midwest, Nancy Larson joined the staff of the ten-year-old Teachers & Writers Collaborative and became its Director three years later. In the following interview, she offers insights gleaned from her long tenure and reflects on the educational trends, writing movements, and visionary teachers that have had an impact on the Collaborative.

This Interview, "A Different Measure", is available in the archive in our Digital Resource Center.

One of the staff's favorite office activities, changing the toner cartridge for the copy machine! This photo may need a new caption, any suggestions?

And if you see Amy (left) at AWP in Boston this week, be sure you say hello!

Teachers & Writers Magazine Spring Issue 
Writing Through Trauma, excerpt one

The spring issue of the magazine is now out, and features a special section on Writing Through Trauma.   Each day of the week, here in New York City and across the country, teaching artists walk into classrooms to share their passion for writing. Too often, the stories their students have to tell are of lives disrupted by circumstances beyond their control. What can these teaching artists offer in response to a child who is sick, a teen who has lost a friend to gun violence, a veteran plagued by the war he left behind? What can the act of writing give to those who are suffering? The violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, put these questions in stark relief, but they are questions teaching artists struggle with often. In this special section we asked writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. Each of their experiences is unique, but together their stories offer insight into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  

In the following excerpt, T&W teaching artist David Surface describe his work in a writing workshop for veterans.

The Story We Tell Ourselves Afterward: At the Veterans Writing Workshop
by David Surface

When I tell people that I work with military veterans, one of the first things they say is, It must help them to talk about their experiences, or, It must be good for them to get those terrible things off their chest.

The truth is that there are many other places where veterans can share difficult experiences. Group and individual counseling, as well as veterans’ support or “rap” groups, all provide camaraderie and an emo- tional outlet. The question is, does writing and the writing workshop experience offer anything more?

Most everyone agrees that creative or “expressive” writing can have positive effects for people who have experienced trauma. How this works is much less clear. In my experience, the explanation is to be found not in the language of psychology or neuroscience, but in the language of the writing process itself. I believe the key word in understanding how the writing process can help people living with trauma is revision.

As every writer or teacher of writing knows, revision can be painful. To revise, and revise well, we need to stop seeing our first drafts as something fixed and inflexible, and start seeing them a something malleable that we have power over and can change for the better. (more...)