THANK YOU

Dear Friends,

Spring is the busiest time of year here at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Every week brings two or three anthologies of student work to be edited, proofread, and sent to the printer, and the calendar is full of plans for student readings and other culminating events in our school-based programs. This month we welcome seventh- and eighth-graders from the Dual Language Middle School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, who will celebrate publication of their Spanish-language poetry anthologies in the Center for Imaginative Writing in our office.

The 2009-2010 school year has been a good one for T&W. We initiated new partnerships with schools in the Bronx, including a 20-week program for all 21 classes at the New Venture School / MS219, and two 60-day programs with students at Corona Park East / 004X. (Read about the MS219 celebration in “Workshops” below.) We returned to schools with which we’ve had long relationships, including Waverly School / 156K in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Richard H. Hungerford / 721R on Staten Island, where T&W writer Nicole Callihan is teaching poetry to students with special educational needs, including children who are autistic.

In addition to teaching creative writing during the regular school day, teaching artists Frank Ingrasciotta, Ilka Scobie, and Adam Wiedewitsch worked with students in after-school programs, including programs for special education middle- and high-school students at schools in Queens and Brooklyn. Our writers have led more than 40 professional development workshops for teachers and administrators at schools in all five boroughs this year. And we also worked outside the school context, including Jane LeCroy’s after-school performance poetry workshops for teens in conjunction with VISIONS: Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

As we approach the slower pace of the summer months, we will work to build on the successes of the past year-but we recognize the challenges that lie ahead. Significant cuts are on the horizon for the education and arts budgets at the state and local levels, and many foundation and corporate supporters of arts in education programs have had to decrease their giving as a result of declines in endowments and other fallout from the recession.

In this challenging economic climate, we need your support to keep all of T&W’s programs thriving, including Teachers & Writers magazine as well as our creative writing programs for young people. Your tax-deductible contribution at the level that is right for you will help ensure that we can continue to engage students in the craft and the joy of the literary arts, and that we are able to provide resources to help dedicated teachers and writers working in schools to continue their important work.

To make a contribution, please go to www.twc.org/support/donate or send a check to Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 520 Eighth Ave., Ste. 2020, New York, NY 10018. If you would like more information before making a contribution, please call me at 212-691-6590 or send an e-mail to aswauger@twc.org.
Thank you, and have a great summer!

Best wishes,

Amy Swauger, Director

WORKSHOPS

“My Words, My World”: T&W Celebrates Poetry with MS219

I am a child of rivers and no less than a roller coaster
Don’t get mad, relax and dream about the solar system
-Excerpted from collaborative student poem, MS 219

On April 23, 450 middle-school students crammed the auditorium at the New Venture School (MS 219) in the Bronx. The students were about to do the impossible: sit through a two-hour celebration of poetry on a sunny Friday! But they did more than sit-the students cheered peers as they read their poems, listened to officials from the Bronx Borough President’s Office and the New York City Department of Education who shared poems written when they were students, chanted a Langston Hughes Poem during call-and-response activities, and created improvisational poems with writer and hip-hop artist Toni Blackman.

The celebration-”My Words, My World”-was the culminating event in a 20-week program at MS 219, in which six T&W writers worked with every student at the school, serving a total of 21 classrooms. T&W published student writing from the program in six anthologies, with copies distributed to all the students prior to the assembly. At the end of the celebration, Principal Dominic Cipollone asked all the school’s English language arts teachers to come on stage to be applauded by the students. He then asked his students to stand and applaud themselves. As claps and cheers resounded through the auditorium, a palpable excitement and sense of achievement spread through the room-the students were published writers learning to use language to take ownership of and give shape to their worlds.

“My Words, My World” is one of several dozen T&W celebrations taking place throughout the boroughs of New York City and in communities on Long Island this spring. This year, T&W has published thousands of copies of student anthologies, with titles including High Rise Sunshine, My Dreams Fight My Battles, Moon Swallowed by the Black Hole, Voices of the Unheard Hearts, and A Poem Grows in Brooklyn. T&W is grateful to the more than 50 schools with which we have partnered in creative writing programs this school year, and we look forward to celebrating the student poets, story tellers, journalists, dramaturges, and memoirists working closely with T&W writers to give voice in writing to their experiences and ideas.

Two collaborative class poems written by students at MS 219 appear below, along with a poem written by T&W writer Sheila Maldonado when she was a student at a New York middle school. Maldonado, who was part of the T&W team of writers at MS 219, shared this poem at the celebration assembly to the delight of her students.

If you’d like to learn how to bring a T&W writing program to your school or your child’s school in Summer or Fall 2010, please contact T&W at workshops@twc.org or 212-691-6590.

Untitled-Collaborative Poem, Class 705

I am a child of rivers and no less than a roller coaster
Don’t get mad, relax and dream about the solar system
Enjoy yourself, be proud of yourself
Life is a lot of things people try to anticipate-
be more open-minded about life
Life is a complicated thing like a Rubik’s Cube
Friends, love, life can break you
You can break your leg skateboarding
You could just lay there
But someone asks you if you’re ok
Don’t you like the sound of rain hitting the umbrella?
Be grateful for your life

Text: Advice-Collaborative Poem, Class 807

Don’t get yourself mad with all the things you’re going through
Keep peaceful in yourself
Go outside, look at the beautiful world
Calm down
People in the world who wake up tired and lonely
Don’t be jealous
Be happy for other people
When you’re nervous or hurt, go outside and play basketball
Walk around
If you wake up with hate, take a breather
Think of good thoughts
The hurt will go away
You’re the champion of writing
Writing helps you understand how to do things,
helps you express your anger

A Writer’s Choice

For the private or shy
it is a stage
on which they aren’t afraid
afraid to perform
because there is no one
there to watch
unless they decide to share it

They continue to perform alone
until the fright is gone
and the curtain opens
for all the world to see
the silent performance
on paper

-Sheila Maldonado
Mark Twain JHS 239K
Literary/Art Magazine
June 1988

BECHTEL PRIZE

June 30 Deadline Approaches for 2010 Bechtel Prize

Submissions for the 2010 Bechtel Prize must be received by Teachers & Writers Collaborative no later than 5:00 PM (Eastern), Wednesday, June 30. The Bechtel Prize is awarded annually in recognition of an outstanding article or essay about the teaching and/or practice of creative writing. Essayist, novelist, poet, and critic Phillip Lopate will select the 2010 Bechtel Prize winner.

Submission guidelines for the 2010 Bechtel Prize are available on the T&W website at www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize. The recipient of the 2010 award will receive a $1,000 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.

MAGAZINE

Highlights from Summer Issue of Teachers & Writers

Summer is upon us, bringing with it a welcome change of pace from the school year. It’s a time to regroup, to take a break, to explore new ideas and new places. The summer issue of Teachers & Writers magazine, in the mail now, offers a wide range of articles to help inspire you in the months ahead: a mix of teaching ideas, explorations of form, and meditations on literacy, learning, and the art of teaching.

In this issue:
• Michael Morse’s in-depth exploration of the elegy, which combines a history of the form with a variety of innovative exercises for teaching it in the classroom, honed in workshops he taught for both senior citizens and high-school seniors.
• A portrait of the teaching artist training program run by Community-Word Project, written by T&W Fellow Charles Conley, who participated in the training and describes how his initial skepticism about such an endeavor soon turned to admiration.
• Matthew Burgess’ “Ricordiamo,” a snapshot of his experience teaching poetry to dancers and then translating these poems into choreographed movement during a summer in Italy. Despite the fact that he spoke no Italian and had never taught such a class, Burgess threw himself into the project without a second thought, and the results, which he shares with us in this article, provided new insight into these art forms.
• T&W teaching artist Alisa Malinovich walks us through a classroom exercise for young students using a poem by Nikki Giovanni, and gives us a glimpse of the enthusiastic responses the poem elicited from her students.
• Poet and high school teacher Andrew Barron explores what literacy means to those at the margins of society.
• Former T&W director and current board member Steven Schrader, in an excerpt from his recent book, looks back on the vicissitudes of growing up in the New York City of his childhood.
Wherever your own summer plans take you, we hope the pieces in this issue provide fuel for your explorations.