I’ve been known to quote that guru of writing teachers Natalie Greenberg to my students: “Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist.” To write the details. Good writing does not equivocate. A writer bears witness. “This is how it was. This is what I saw and felt.” Many of my students, both young people and adults, are ambivalent writers. For them, as for most of us, it’s difficult emotional and physical work. When, in an introductory lesson, I ask elementary students to write sensory details from the blocks they live on, there are eye rolls, sighs, pencil tips snapped in frustration. Often what overcomes this resistance is permission to tell the truth. “I’m writing about dirty diapers,” a second grader crows; a sixth grader writes about gunshots and sirens. It can be a revelation for students that they can write what’s on their minds, even the stuff that doesn’t seem beautiful or smart or like what they think the adult or the teacher in the room wants to hear.
I try to open up that space for their voices, their stories.
I try to open up that space for their voices, their stories.
I create original performances with participants in schools, health care facilities and jails. I have worked with Urban Gateways, Columbia College, Chicago Public Schools, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, Lyric Opera Chicago, Stillpoint Theatre Collective and the William Inge Center for the Arts.
I design and facilitate professional development workshops for classroom teachers, arts specialists and teaching artists. Curriculum design, Common Core, creating a studio in the classroom, arts integration, devising work with students--and more.
I develop and teach in and out of school residencies for K-12 students in creative writing and theater--both arts integration in collaboration with the classroom teacher and solely arts focused.
