Getting Your WITS about You

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!

Bechtel Prize Winners Announced

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.

Aroostook Review Features WITS Students from Maine

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

Back to School: Great Books for Teaching Writers

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.

Check Out the WITS Blogs

A number of the Writers in the Schools (WITS) Alliance groups have blogs promoting student writing.

Austin

Houston

Indianapolis

Portland, OR

It’s Summer: Time to Write

Many of the Writers in the Schools (WITS)  programs offer summer writing workshops for kids. These programs offer kids a chance to fall in love with reading and writing. To learn more, click on the city that’s nearest you:

Austin

Asheville, NC

Boise and other Idaho locations

Dallas

Houston

Indianapolis

Missoula

San Antonio

Houston Hosts its 25th Anniversary Reading on May 3

The 2009 Young Writers Reading on Sunday, May 3, 2009 will take place at Discovery Green, on the main stage, in downtown Houston. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of WITS Houston, this reading promises to be the biggest and best one yet. Come see why WITS has been named the premier literary arts organizations in Texas.

Over year long workshops, WITS students embark on a voyage of personal expression and a search for their voice. The audience will be treated to an uplifting afternoon filled with the discovery and intrigue of language and will experience the evidence of each child’s personal achievements in their artistic journey. Students from elementary to high school will come together to read their strongest work from the school year. Come and see the pride and confidence on the faces of the children that read their work to an enthusiastic audience of parents, teachers, and peers.

Badgerdog at Round Top

On Friday, April 17, as part of National Poetry Month, Badgerdog will once again partner with the Poetry at Round Top Festival. Students from Ojeda Junior High, Del Valle Junior High, Del Valle Opportunity Center and Del Valle High School will spend the day at the International Festival Institute at Round Top, where they will take part in poetry writing and performance workshops with award-winning authors Jeff Stumpo and Jenny Browne. Badgerdog instructors, along with English teachers from all four schools, will participate in a morning workshop with renowned poet and University of Texas professor Dean Young.

Founded in 1971, the International Festival Institute hosts exceptional year-round education and performance programs. This is the second year Badgerdog has partnered with the Poetry at Round Top Festival.  To read more about the International Festival Institute, please click here.  To sign up for the Poetry Festival click here.

Happy Poetry Month from The WITS Alliance

Most members of the WITS Alliance are celebrating National Poetry Month in exciting ways. Please explore their websites using the blogroll to the right.

The Art of Translation: Austin Students Delve into Language

On Friday, April 3, Badgerdog students in Austin participated in UWC After Hours’ Community Convergence: Bridging. Connecting. Translating.

Sponsored by the University of Texas’ Undergraduate Writing Center and Department of Rhetoric and Writing, this open house event showcased the pagecast projects of Badgerdog student writers who had previously participated in media translation workshops at the UWC.

Since the summer of 2008 Bagerdog has partnered with the UT Undergraduate Writing Center for a series of three-hour workshops to help students to foster creative and critical engagement with digital media and to become accustomed to seeing themselves as learners in a university setting.   To goal of this project is to introduce high school creative writing students to effective and analytic use of technology by exploring different avenues for publishing their work. These workshops capitalize on the motivation of Badgerdog students to translate their original creative writing into multimedia productions of images, music, and their own voice recordings.

This translation project not only offers students an opportunity to create digital media and thus personally engage with technological production, but it offers a more visceral connection to the rhetorical and writing strategies necessary for a successful translation, such as concepts of audience, tone, and voice.  Through this approach, we hope to encourage students to become critically engaged in the process of producing media as well as giving them an opportunity to join their own voice to the digital world.

To view previous Podcasts created by high school students in the Badgerdog program, click here.

Teachers & Writers Collaborative Celebrates National Poetry Month with the New York Transit Museum

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) and the New York Transit Museum will celebrate National Poetry Month with a public reading and writing event to be held at Museum on Sunday, April 26, at 2 PM. The event will feature a reading by award-winning poet Vijay Seshadri and students from the Magnet School for Science and Technology (K154) in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The event will also include a writing activity led by T&W writer Matthew Burgess, an experienced T&W teaching artist.

The celebration at the Transit Museum will mark National Poetry Month and is also part of T&W’s citywide poetry project, A Poem as Big as the City. Launched in 2008, A Poem as Big as the City is a special project for which thousands of young people across the city are working with T&W writers to write poems about their experiences growing up in New York City. As part of A Poem as Big as the City, T&W will publish selected youth poetry in a book to be nationally distributed and will feature selected youth poets in public readings with well-known New York writers.

The event at the New York Transit Museum during National Poetry Month will be the first of these readings. The event will showcase the literary talents of young Brooklynites attending PS 154K and will feature poet Vijay Seshadri, who has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His poetry collections include Wild Kingdom and James Laughlin Award winner The Long Meadow, and his writing has appeared in The American Scholar, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Poetry. Seshadri currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives with his family in Brooklyn.

ArtsEdge Residencies for Artists and Writers

Applications are now being accepted for ArtsEdge Residencies at The University of Pennsylvania.  These residencies are provided through a collaboration of the Kelly Writers House, the Fine Arts Department of the School of Design, and Penn’s Facilities & Real Estate Services (FRES).

The ArtsEdge Residency project is designed to encourage and support the careers of emerging artists and writers. Through ArtsEdge Residencies, we offer two one-year residencies in a live/work space near Penn’s campus. ArtsEdge aims to support the creative work of young artists and writers, and create a live/work environment that will inspire interdisciplinary exploration. Residencies last for one year and include a dedicated studio for each writer/artist, living space, and close affiliation with the writing and artistic communities at Penn.

During the course of their residencies, writers and artists will develop at least one collaborative project with the Writers House or Fine Arts Department. Qualified applicants may also be considered to teach one course at Penn in the spring semester. Two residencies are available, one for a visual artist and one for a writer. The residences are not intended for current undergraduates. No affiliation with Penn is necessary.

TERMS: Each residency includes a one-bedroom apartment with an additional studio space. Subsidized monthly rent on each one-bedroom apartment (for which residents are responsible) is $400. Rent includes all utilities (except phone) and wireless Internet. The Writers House, the Fine Arts Department, and FRES will subsidize remaining rent.

MOVE-IN DATE: September 1, 2009

TO APPLY: Send letter of interest, CV, bio or artist statement, and portfolio (minimum: 10 pages of written work or 20 images). Word documents, PDFs, PPTs, CDs, and DVDs are all acceptable. Please include personal contact information and the names and contact information of at least two professional references. If you would like to be considered for a course, please also submit a brief description of your teaching experience or qualifications. Submit application electronically to or by mail (or hand-delivery) to: ArtsEdge Residency c/o Kelly Writers House 3805 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104

APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 15, 2009