In This Issue

Workshops
Books
Magazine
Deadlines

Letter from the Director

Dear Friends,

Spring is indeed a feverish time here at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. As highlighted in the “Workshops” article in this issue of the e-News, T&W writers have been working with thousands of students throughout New York City to finish the final weeks of our spring programs. Here in the office, we have been busy proofreading anthologies of student poems and stories. We’ve also begun an initial review of essays submitted for this year’s Bechtel Prize and applications for T&W’s 2009-2010 Fellowship program (see “Deadlines” below for more information).

Given the challenges created by the ongoing economic crisis, we have much to be thankful for at T&W. Most recently, in early May, T&W held a book fair at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca that raised more than $500 for the organization. Thank you to all our supporters who bought books as part of the fair. The highlight of the fair was a poetry activity for students from PS 110M on the Lower East Side in Manhattan who stepped to the podium at Barnes & Noble and read poems they’d written about New York City, including instructions for newly arrived space aliens! T&W also received generous donations this winter from individuals to support our books and Teachers & Writers magazine.

As we near the end of another academic year, T&W looks forward to the future with excitement but also with the expectation of significant challenges due to the lingering consequences of the economic downturn. We depend on your continued generosity and support to enable us to provide creative writing programs for young people in New York City and resources on the teaching of writing for educators and writers nationwide. Please consider making a donation as we approach the end of our fiscal year on June 30. To make an online contribution, go to our website at www.twc.org/support.

I look forward to updating you on T&W as we head back to school in the fall-we hope to have some particularly exciting news to report on our citywide poetry project, A Poem as Big as the City. In the meantime, the New York Daily News has started to feature poems written as part of the project on NY Daily News’ website

Have a great summer.

Best wishes,
Amy Swauger, Director

WORKSHOPS

Time to Publish, Time to Celebrate

“I am watching them churn the last milk / they will ever get from me. / They are waiting for me to die; / They want to make buttons out of my bones.”
from Gregory Corso’s “The Mad Yak”

“A red / fire truck / moving / tense / unheeded / to gong clangs / siren howls / and wheels rumbling / through the dark city.”
from William Carlos Williams’ “The Great Figure”

“Sleep is falling. The crumbs run in drifts down the street, collect in the gutters.”
from Shelley Jackson’s “Sleep”

A key element of the mission of Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) is to promote the love of reading and writing. We seek to accomplish this mission by bringing professional writers and great works of literary arts into school classrooms where students can deeply engage in reading and in the art of creative writing.

The above excerpts are taken from poems and a story used by T&W writers in our school programs this spring. At a school serving young people with special education needs in Ridgewood, Queens, students working with Karen Ulrich read Corso’s poem about a yak’s angry discovery that his caretaker monks are preparing to send him to the slaughterhouse. Students then discussed the poem as a model for writing about emotions and using personification. T&W writer Joanna Fuhrman and third-graders at an elementary school in Staten Island read Williams’ description of a fire truck screaming through the rain and wrote their own poems about the sights and sounds of their favorite places in the city. And at a high school in the Bronx, sophomores working with Sarah Porter read Jackson’s abstract story about sleep as a force of nature, as an example of how, through the use of imagination, in writing the seemingly impossible can suddenly become reality.

This academic year, T&W has provided more than 100 programs in 50 schools throughout the five boroughs and in Nassau County. T&W writers have taught poetry to bilingual, gifted and talented, and special education students. Our writers have led workshops as part of after-school violence prevention programs, Saturday morning enrichment activities, and GED/Learning to Work programs. We have taught creative writing workshops for students at a Yeshiva school, a nonprofit organization serving teens with visual impairments, and at various community-based organizations and settlement houses. T&W writers have also led professional development programs for teachers.

As we near the end of our busiest season, T&W writers have prepared anthologies of student writing and helped administrators, teachers, and students plan celebratory events. Of the latter, perhaps the most spectacular was a dramatic performance by special-needs students at a high school in Manhattan, where with the guidance of Melanie Maria Goodreaux, teens wrote the script for Totally 80s: Be What You Wanna Be. Students, along with school staff and professional actors, presented the performance-complete with song and dance-to an audience of hundreds of students from multiple schools.

Like the celebrations, which give students the opportunity to present (and sometimes perform) their writing, T&W’s publication of student writing is intended to make the young people in our programs recognize that they too are poets and writers. Publication has always been a focus at T&W as a means to help young people develop confidence and to give them a final product which they can share with friends and family.

Below, you will find a few of the poems written by students in T&W programs this spring. We are currently working with schools to schedule programs for the 2009-2010 academic year. If you are a parent, teacher, or administrator, please contact us at workshops@twc.org or 212-691-6590 if you’d like to discuss bringing a T&W program to your school.

New York City
by Syed S., Third-grader at PS 110M

This poem is bigger than the whole universe.
This poem can break down Central Park.
This poem has a more enormous amount of money than the bank.
This poem can drink all of the water in the universe.
This poem can run faster than the fastest champions in One Step at a Time.
This poem ate more sandwiches than anybody.
This poem can break the Earth into billions of pieces.

How to Walk Down the Street in Corona
By the Second-grade Class at PS 92Q

Want to know how to take a walk in Corona?
Take a grown-up with you,
wait for the white walk signal!
Look both ways! Watch out for cars!

Check your laces, so you won’t trip.
Notice your curly-haired friend at the corner.
Lift your head to smell the pizza.

Look at the supplies in the 99 cent store.
Pass the beauty parlor and the nail salon.
Stare at the new shoes in the shoe store-and point!
Rush into Queens Center Mall.
Cross yourself by the Sacrament Church (and think of the Spanish song about the fishes).

Then, take yourself to the ice cream store.

The Truth
By Jose at VOYAGES Preparatory High School

Because I was thirteen.
Because I was very tired.
Because I was really late.
Because I was sick.
Because I had an emergency.
Because I had to run.
I didn’t know
that it would be
the last time
I would see my friend.
She was thirteen years old.
I didn’t think
About when I would see her again.
Tell me
this didn’t happen
I dare you.

Jackson Heights
By Rabaya R., Tenth-grader at World Journalism Preparatory School

My native blood runs
along with the rush of wind
carrying the aroma of biryani and curry.
The colors of the saris
bring out the vibrant rainbows
as the women walk
while their children whine
for a lick of kulfi
and the husbands bargain and argue
over the price of gold.

As dusk arrives, the traffic swiftly grows.
I hear the ripples of my tongue, all around
the sweet sound of a hummingbird’s music.
When twilight approaches
my parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles
all go back to their own nests,
as do I.

Deep into the night
I hear the rustling of the leaves,
the swaying of the trees
their whispers calling me back, once again
and that night I dream.
I dream of my beautiful country, Bangladesh
which also lies in a little place I found,
my home, New York City.

BOOKS

Graduation is Here!

Friends or relatives graduating this spring? T&W books are the perfect gifts for future teachers and writers! Here are some books your graduates will love:

Personal Fiction Writing: A Guide to Writing from Real Life for Teachers, Students, and Writers
By Meredith Sue Willis
Personal Fiction Writing treats the writing of fiction as a natural process that anyone can do with pleasure. The book includes more than 400 writing assignments based on such essential topics as describing place, people, and action; writing dialogues and monologues; and developing structure.

Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns
Edited by Michael Theune
Structure & Surprise offers a road map for analyzing poetry through examination of poems’ structures, rather than their forms or genres. Michael Theune’s breakthrough concept encourages students, teachers, and writers to use structure as a tool to see the fundamental affinities between strikingly different kinds of poetry and radically different literary eras.

Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art
Edited by Tonya Foster and Kristin Prevallet
Containing 20 essays about writing and art, this anthology provides clear and intelligent reflections from working teachers on exercises used in the classroom and how the various philosophies of such greats as Barthes and Wittgenstein can aid teachers in understanding the beauty of offering their students a holistic approach to the humanities.

To order these books or other titles from T&W’s catalog of publications for writers and classroom teachers, go to our website at www.twc.org/publications. You can also call 212-691-6590 or 1-888-TW-BOOKS. Also, don’t forget other T&W gift items, like a tote bag, a subscription to Teachers & Writers magazine, or a membership in Teachers & Writers Collaborative.

TEACHERS & WRITERS MAGAZINE

Collaboration Featured in Summer Issue

The summer installment of Teachers & Writers magazine will be a special issue on collaboration. In it, we take a look at what writing in collaboration with another writer or artist brings to the work, to the individual artists involved, and to our understanding of what art can be and do. The issue will feature an essay by poet Yusef Komunyakaa on the spirit of collaboration; brief interviews with a variety of artists on their own collaborative efforts, with responses from poets John Yau, David Trinidad, and Denise Duhamel, musician David Grubbs, and the artist team of Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion; and musings on collaboration by poet and author Nick Flynn. We also look at what collaboration can bring to the writing classroom, and offer up some fun and interesting teaching ideas from Matthew Burgess and Brian Turner. We think you’ll find the issue enjoyable and inspiring!

DEADLINES

Deadlines Approaching for Bechtel Prize and T&W Fellowship Applications

Deadlines for two important opportunities for writers are fast approaching. Applications for the 2009-2010 T&W Fellowship must be received by 5:00 PM, Friday, June 19, 2009. And Tuesday, June 30, is the deadline for 2009 Bechtel Prize submissions.

The 2008-2009 T&W Fellowship guidelines and application are on T&W’s website at www.twc.org/about/tw-fellowship. The Fellowship program is open to writers who will be 35 or younger on September 14. Fellows receive a $20,000 stipend, office space at T&W, and other resources during the nine-month fellowship period, which runs from September 14, 2009, to June 18, 2010.

Please send questions regarding the T&W Fellowship to fellowship@twc.org.

Submission guidelines for the 2009 Bechtel Prize are available on the T&W website at www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize. The prize is awarded to the author of an exemplary article or essay about creative writing education, literary studies, and/or the profession of writing.

The recipient of the 2008 Bechtel Prize will receive a $1,500 honorarium, and the winning submission will be published in Teachers & Writers magazine. Authors of submissions selected as finalists for the award will share honoraria totaling $500. Questions about the Bechtel Prize may be sent to bechtel@twc.org