Over the 2017-2018 school year, teaching artists from the University of Arizona Poetry Center's Writing the Community Program led over twenty-seven six to eight-week residencies with local students. They worked in elementary and middle school classrooms and gardens, as well as with LGBTQ-identified high school students, English Language Learners, and writers and thinkers in the juvenile detention system. These writer-instructors led exercises about transformation and peach trees, the power of colors and favorite animals. And, at the end of it all, two anthologies filled with student writing were produced.
If you're an educator in Tucson, you can request a Fall 2018 residency for your classroom (spots are going fast, so sign up as soon as you can!). Here's a video that can tell you a bit more about the program:
If you live farther afield, bring Writing the Community into your classroom via our lesson plan archive, which consists of poetry and creative writing activities generated by our teaching artists. Here are some of the lessons that went up over the 2017-2018 school year:
- Up Above My Head I Hear Music: Using the Form of Blues Songs to Make Poems by Lisa O'Neill
- Bee Lunes by Saraiya Kanning
- The Fish as Dream Bedroom by Benny Sisson
- My shoulder is shimmery, broken pieces of dust by TC Tolbert and Rachel Mindell
- If You Find Yourself by Rachel Mindell
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with Education Coordinator Wren Awry! You can email them at dgoblirsch@email.arizona.edu.