A place for those who find and create meaning through words
I arrived at the 2015 Philadelphia Writers' Conference having brought pants. Preparation is very important. My wife and I had traveled to Mexico for our 10th anniversary in 2011. A sign posted in front of one of our resort's restaurants stated "Business Casual Attire." Having only packed shorts, I asked the host if dress-shorts would be adequate. He... Continue Reading →
Creativity inspires creativity, and Alexandria, Virginia’s Torpedo Factory churns out inspiration as much as it does creative expressions of the human spirit. This artists’ cooperative-- three floors of studios, galleries, and installations housed in a repurposed torpedo production facility-- inspires unique ideas, new perspectives, and encourages artists of all mediums who pass through its doors. ... Continue Reading →
Memory cards and stacks of scribbles from our trip to Niagra Falls continue to remind me collecting raw material is only the beginning of a time-intensive process. This is not, necessarily, a bad thing. Travel's initial thrills always inspire and increase my productivity, yet time's passage tempers the eye and helps me disregard cliched thoughts recorded feverishly through star-struck eyes.... Continue Reading →
Nineteen, a freshman in a sophomore-level education class, my first week of college, and my prof assigned an article summary on an education-based topic of our choosing-- one line of directions in a syllabus and a point value. Being nineteen and a freshman loving to write, I read this as an invitation to compose an... Continue Reading →
Newspapers are changing into varied text-based formats thriving on the net, and students need ways to engage these new incarnations of current events articles, ways to consider how events can impact their lives. The tools and challenges we give them must go beyond the “here are the facts, now summarize” methods many of us faced... Continue Reading →
Dissecting a piece of microfiction during a short story session of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference provided a revealing blueprint for tight, character-driven stories. Our facilitator, Carla Spataro, used author Bob Thurber’s writing exercise “Anatomy of a MicroFiction” to illustrate how focused character development and deliberate action can evoke emotional reactions. Spataro prompted us to use... Continue Reading →
Teachers are writers. From unit plans to activity directions to parent emails, the words teachers choose and the order in which they assemble words are powerful decisions creating published works. If you are a teacher, you are published. Each activity you design goes to the readers on your class roster and to parents monitoring their... Continue Reading →
My student teacher asked how often he should use a particular formative assessment. “Using any formative assessment activity frequently will make it boring, and students will hate it,” I responded. “They won’t be invested in the assessment. The results will not be meaningful.” Variety and activity are keys to keeping students’ attentions and to make... Continue Reading →
The Scourged Back, an 1863 photo of an escaped African American slave, his back covered by a thatch of thick scars, touches students more deeply and reveals more about this period of our nation's history than could any third-person text. My student teacher and I posted The Scourged Back, period illustrations of slave-catchers, sepia photos... Continue Reading →
My introduction to McCarthy’s work did not go well. Misunderstanding his style and my ignorance of literary fiction caused me to consider The Road a book to finish simply because I had begun it. Run-on sentence structures and the lack of dialogue punctuation switched-on the teacher portions of my brain, and each unconventional writing feature... Continue Reading →
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