May 9, 2020
So, Sara and I have been working on an iteration of this project for almost a decade. We are going to be rolling out this resource this Fall. Nearly 200 lessons ready with slides to project and teacher notes to guide instruction utilizing poetry, prose, mentor texts, language lessons, standards based, while still being fun […]
April 30, 2020
Well – our spring was cancelled. We will sorely miss all the places and faces we were looking forward to seeing. But, as we stay home as we try to flatten the curve Sara and I are not resting. We’re busy at work making face masks . Sara performed an autopsy on a mask we […]
February 24, 2020
OH – IO! Sara and I try to make the Ohio Council of Teachers of English language Arts (OCTELA) whenever we can. We’ve probably attended a just under a dozen or so times the last 20 years – international travel often takes us far away but this year we were able to make it. I […]
February 7, 2020
Sara and I have been visiting Eastern Middle School in Old Greenwich, Connecticut for over a dozen years in a row now. They are easily our most visited school. Why? Because we love them, and they love us. We’ve seen these sixth-grade teachers through baby booms, blizzards, missed flights… you name it we’ve seen […]
September 5, 2019
Why You Matter. That was the theme of the day when Sara and I visited Heritage Middle School as our first school visit of the season. This 7th and 8th grade building had a multi-faceted approach to invite the students to explore what made each of them unique and important. They invited Sara and me […]
August 18, 2019
Here comes another school year. How was your summer? Sara and I kept busy paying visits to educators across the country. We worked with principals In Ohio and Utah – giving keynotes and breakout sessions at their annual conferences – we unfortunately did not visit Iowa – and were therefor unable to claim the 4-letter […]
March 6, 2019
Nobody told us the wheels were going to fall off of the plane in Amsterdam. Hopping a plane from Istanbul to Brazil is not the most direct way to get Campinas – but, it’s the route we accepted. Here’s where being a frequent flier comes in handy – we were able to rebook our flights […]
March 6, 2019
Our contact in Istanbul – George the librarian was one of the most thorough poet wranglers we have worked with in a long time. He had everything spinning in time with the whirling serenity of the Dervishes we saw turn-tabling just before we began our week at ENKA International School. Celebrating our love of reading […]
February 6, 2019
Sara and I love our visits to Ohio schools. We also love our travels around the country and the world – but our home state is still special to us, and the folks at Champion Middle sure made it easy to love this visit. This was one well prepared school thanks to our main poet […]
January 21, 2019
Poets have always been trouble makers – in many places they have been arrested for stirring the pot a little too vigorously – or in the “wrong” direction. But – even poets can be guilty of staying inside their safe boxes. Whether that box be the safety of tenured academia or a local “scene” […]
