Category Archives: International School

March 30, 2017

Shanghai American – Puxi

That one day the poets showed up. Shanghai American School is split between two campuses on either side of the river. One side Pudong the other Puxi. The cool thing is the teacher bus for both campuses stopped at exactly the same place outside of our apartment ten minutes apart – so we had that […]


February 25, 2017

YK Pao International School – Shanghai

We begin this stint in China by speaking to a compilation of local librarians from English speaking schools in the city. A seditious bunch for sure headed up by our host Kendra Perkins who arranged and organized our first three days in Shanghai with the precision of a – well, a librarian.


December 5, 2016

Singapore American School

We’ve worked with the Language Arts crew in the middle school the last couple times but the official poet wrangler of SAS for this installment, Scott Riley, decided to mix it up a bit this time and we collaborated with the Social Studies and a Science class.


February 25, 2016

Making Learning Visible

Sara Holbrook and I do what teachers would do if they had more time. We come up with lessons. We create engagement strategies centered on writing frameworks.


February 20, 2016

Baobab College, Lusaka, Zambia

This is how to make a visiting instructor’s session work – participate with your students – let your expertise and knowledge of your classroom’s dynamics keep things rolling along on track.


February 18, 2016

Lusaka International Community School, Zambia

Our first day, after the assemblies, we dove into some writing clinics in the classrooms. We wrote list poems with the first graders – did some questioning poems with second graders – worked on understanding the difference between subjective and objective with the third grade and then composed personification pieces with the year nines.


February 16, 2016

International School of Lusaka

The found poems were a success because of the meeting Heather and I had before our visit. We discussed the lesson, which consists of close reading a passage, picking out important phrases, and then building a poem from these power phrases implementing the use of poetic elements.


Testimonials

“Sara and Michael bring infectious energy and joy leavened with deep knowledge of best practices in literacy to their work with children and teachers.” Ellin Keene – Author of Mosaic of Thought and The Teacher You Want to Be
“Sara and Michael bring magic, and a contagious love of words to both students and teachers alike!” Georgia Heard - Author of Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School More testimonials...