Tag Archives: bard IWT

Imitation and Inspiration

spoon river anthologyLast week in American Literature we did one of my favorite projects–unearthed from the vault, so to speak–based on Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. It’s a collection of poems, each written from the point of view of a former resident (now deceased) of Spoon River. The poems are intertwined, revealing the connections between the lives of the Spoon River-ers, showing town life from various angles.

What could be more fun, for a roomful of high school students, than to imitate that?  Continue reading Imitation and Inspiration

Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Day 1

I arrived at Bard last night for the IWT, aka “teacher camp,” after a lovely two-hour drive north from NYC with my friend Marla. This is my first visit to upstate New York and it’s absolutely gorgeous; Bard’s campus is gorgeous, too.

After I got settled in in my dorm room I wandered down a forested path to the opening reception, where I chatted with some other teachers (mostly from New York, some from New Jersey, one who’s headed to a boarding school in Jordan) and ate some tasty snacks (wine, cheese, grapes). Then dining-hall dinner!

I was a bit nervous coming in that everyone else in the writing retreat would be working on Serious Writing, aka Literary Fiction, and might look down their noses at my YA scifi nonsense, and that feeling wasn’t getting any better despite a)me knowing not to mind if they did, their loss, and b)people being super nice. Super nice they may have been, but they were also all dressed like Serious People (except for one woman in an awesome leopard-print skirt and motorcycle boots, and it turned out she was an instructor!). Continue reading Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Day 1