Shanghai American – Puxi

That one day the poets showed up.

Little discussion time with some thoughtful writers.

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 going for us.

Eight graders perched like poetry producing birds on a wire

We also had a secret weapon at our disposal – the Puxi Librarians!

The serious business of the Hero’s Journey

Kathy Lynch, Marie Slaby and Beth Rohrbeck – Middle – High – and Elementary, respectively.

Several years ago Sara and I were Kathy’s first author/consultant visit in her new job at SAS – now she is a seasoned veteran and she and Marie put together a jam packed schedule for us that gave us the opportunity to see individual classes multiple times. This is one of our favorite things to do – getting to see the same kids more than once gives us the opportunity to build on lessons, to tweak them for a particular class and to brainstorm new ideas with teachers.

Pre-write organizing for infomercials.

We were able to adapt our personal narrative exercise to write scenes for a Hero’s Journey project that the seventh graders were working on, we wrote some infomercials selling Mao’s 16 points of the Cultural Revolution, worked on the Grader’s PIPES, had a student performance of work produced before and during our visit – basically we just got Lit!

Sara checks the mic before our 8th grade performances.

Everything ran as smooth and on time as the Shanghai Underground – Sara and I are masters of the bus and we discovered how to break into the library when we got there earlier than the librarians – much to the shocking disconcertion of Kathy one morning whose cardio for the week was accomplished through the surprise of seeing me on the other side of her door as she unlocked it from the outside.

Getting the stink eye form a couple of 8th graders!

After our two week stint – which went by way to fast, a month in Shanghai seemed like such a long time when we started – we sniffed a goodbye boarded a school van and headed to the airport (already plotting ways to return.)

Thanks SAS – see you next time!

Sara – Kathy and Marie.