March 30, 2017
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
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
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.
November 14, 2016
There were so many welcoming folks we were overwhelmed with hospitality and smothered in traditional Brazilian hugs at every turn.
April 11, 2016
“I’m too busy to have the poet visit my classroom.”
March 15, 2016
Somewhere along the way we teach young adults to hate poetry.
February 25, 2016
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
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
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
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.
