InsideOut Founder Terry Blackhawk, City Wide Poet Lena Cintron, and First Lady Michelle Obama at the Coming Up Taller Award Ceremony 2009

InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a member of the WITS Alliance headquartered in Detroit, has been nationally recognized as one of 15 youth arts and humanities programs to receive the prestigious 2009 Coming Up Taller Award. They received the award for City Wide Poets, an after school writing and performance program. For more information, click here.

For anyone interested in starting or growing a WITS project in your area, you should know about the Writers in the Schools Alliance.  We just received word about new funding so we hope that we can find ways to help you. Whether you work with K-12 students through an organization or as an individual, we hope that you will participate in WITS Alliance activities, if they seem useful to you.

Our big group meeting this year will be at the AWP Conference in Denver in April 2010. At the conference there will be six official WITS panels, as well as a membership meeting on Wednesday afternoon, April 7 and a party on Thursday evening, April 8. If you decide to attend, feel free to use your WITSA “membership” –we don’t have a formal process in place for this yet so you’re obligating yourself—but take advantage of the discount if it will help you.

The WITS Alliance is a work in progress. We are writing a new grant next month, and it would be great to hear back your specific interests in this field.  Let me know if there are items on your agenda that you think might be shared.  Happy back-to-school!

The Bechtel Prize is awarded annually in recognition of an exemplary article or essay related to:

• Creative writing education,
• Literary studies, and/or
• The profession of writing.

Teachers & Writers Collaborative recently announced the winners of the 2009 Bechtel Prize:

2009 Bechtel Prize Winner
Emily Raboteau, New York, NY: “Jazz Poetry”

2009 Bechtel Prize Finalists
Marcia Chamberlain, Houston, TX: “When You Listen Deeply”
Garth Greenwell, New York, NY: “Reading with the Voice”

For more information, click here.

Fort Kent WITS Writers and their students gather for an Earth Celebration. (April 2009)

The most recent issue of the Aroostook Review, an online literary journal published the University of Maine at Fort Kent, features a number poems by WITS students from Maine. The University of Maine at Fort Kent’s English Program offers a WITS training course which offers both theoretical and experiential components for undergraduate and graduate students. The WITS program in Fort Kent was founded by Geraldine Cannon Becker. For more information about WITS at UMFK, click here.

“Alley Cat” is a poem by a six year old Maine student:

Alley Cat

It’s just an old alley cat,

a bag of old bones.

It has no proud tiger stripes.

It can’t even reach its bowl.

It hasn’t a star on its head.

Though, we shall call you pretty…

“Pretty, come in.”

by Joanna, age 6

As the new school year looms ahead in the not-so-distant future, it might be a good moment to restock your library of teaching materials. Teachers & Writers Collaborative has published more than 80 books to support WITS teaching. Favorite resources for writers who teach include:

Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community, by Jack Collom and Sheryl Noethe, contains 60 writing exercises and more than 450 example poems by children, teachers, and poets. It also discusses how to integrate poetry writing into the English class, sound and rhythm, using great poems as models, traditional poetic forms, poetry units, investing and adapting exercises, revision, publishing, and other essential topics.

The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet: 104 Unusual Ways to Write Poetry in the Classroom and in the Community, by Dave Morice, features innovative ideas for engaging students, including poetry mobiles, poetry robots, postage stamp poems, rolodex poems, chopstick quatrains, and other inventive exercises.

Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments, edited by Christopher Edgar and Ron Padgett. In this book, 18 writers describe their single best writing assignment: the one that never fails to inspire students to write autobiographical pieces, fiction, poetry, and plays.

In addition to books, T&W publishes the quarterly Teachers & Writers magazine, winner of 10 Educational PressAwards for Excellence. The magazine covers contemporary issues and innovations in creative writing education, and engages writers, educators, and students in a conversation on the nature of creativity and the imagination.

To see the full catalog of books offered by T&W, to read a sample article from Teachers & Writers, or to order books or a subscription, go to the T&W website. You can also place orders via phone (toll-free) at 1-888-BOOKS-TW.