Writers in the Schools Program is on the Cutting Edge of Poetry Instruction
November 8, 2019
Communications Staff
Otto Vock 鈥19 leads a poetry lesson at Langston Middle School as part of the Teaching Imaginative Writing workshop.
Photo credit: Mathias Reed
91直播鈥檚 Writers in the Schools program is an opportunity for serious writers to take what they鈥檙e passionate about and share it in the community.
Director Lynn Powell teaches a workshop each fall called Teaching Imaginative Writing. In the course, 91直播 students create and workshop their own poetry lesson plans and participate in seven-day residencies with Powell in the classrooms of Langston Middle School.
鈥淚t鈥檚 an American cultural phenomenon that people generally don鈥檛 have much experience with contemporary poetry, and they carry around impressions that poetry is either really sappy or really difficult and obscure,鈥 explains Powell.
鈥淚n our work in the schools, we try to break through those misconceptions and clich茅ed notions of poetry. We do that by immersing students in the experience of writing poems, with lessons that stimulate their imagination and give them both freedom and guidance.鈥
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