Joy and Inspiration at the NCTE Convention

Because I am a Literacy Coach, the writer part of my brain and the educator part of my brain are often working in concert… but going to the NCTE Convention in Boston last week brought that to a whole new level!

For four days, I learned from, collaborated with, and presented with authors, poets, and educators, thinking about how to best meet the needs of our students through literature and writing.

Some highlights:

The panel I proposed, “I Got This: Picture Books That Celebrate Agency and Taking Action” was a total delight! I presented along with authors Brittany Thurman, Vicki Johnson, Pat Tanumihardja, and Lynnor Bontigao, and the wonderful conversations that took place at the end of our session showed how much educators appreciated this topic.

I started off the conference with the panel that I moderated, about meeting the needs of readers with novels that have graphic elements and nontraditional structures. Presenting with Kate Messner, Jo Knowles, Lisa Fipps, and Phoebe Sinclair was so fun! These authors have fans and followers, and the room was bubbling with excitement!  

Finally, meeting other passionate educators, spending time with author and poet friends, and just soaking up the joy and excitement… it is an experience that I won’t soon forget.

It brought my worlds of teaching and writing together, for four days of learning and inspiration. 

Questioning our Family Stories

Hmmm. What’s the best way to set up my poem about immigration and the Statue of Liberty– a poem that was just published? Should I …

  1. …share it in light of today’s anniversary — the Statue of Liberty was dedicated on this date in 1886!
  2.  …share it in honor of my immigrant family members, since it seems to be the season of immigrant-bashing in some quarters?
  3. …share it because it’s a new poetry form I’m trying out (“the golden shovel”), a form that’s fun to play with and fun to teach.

I’ll try to roll all those elements into one intro. I wrote “Family Stories” in the voice of a teen who’s not afraid to question or challenge the family narratives about immigration. (It was fun to write, as I was a very rule-following teen!) The speaker in this poem is grappling with two clashing perspectives: one is “hey, our ancestors were immigrants who came here seeking a better life.” At the same time, the elders in the family are bashing immigration, something that’s creating dissonance for this teen.

The golden shovel is a fun poetic form to play with! The poet weaves a line from a famous/loved/other poem into a new poem… the ending of each line, when read vertically, is the line from another poem. For “Family Stories,” I incorporated a line from the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus. 

FAMILY STORIES

           ~after Emma Lazarus

You keep telling these old family stories– give

me a break. They can’t all be saints. Don’t tell me

they all had perfect immigration papers, your

family tree. This noble narrative– it’s tired.

Are you really sure that your

relatives were so perfect? They were poor,

yes, and scrappy. Maybe they had no papers, your

ancestors! Now you all watch the news, huddled

together, saying that outsiders are coming in masses.

You talk about the old days with a yearning.

But who knows if your people– our family– came to

this country “the right way?” The just want to breathe,

the newcomers. Like us, they just want to be free.

~~

“Family Stories” is now published in JUST YA, a wonderful new anthology packed full of essays, stories, and poems,  perfect for middle and high school. Each selection explores what justice means in different contexts. I chose the family context, and I honor the courage of my grandparents who made the leap and came to this country seeking a better life. 

You can read more about JUST YA here. It is available for sale at online retatilers, and also as a free download! Read more about that here, and thanks for reading!

 

Sweet Summer– Playing with Poetry

Summer is winding down! One of the sweetest treats this month was my visit to Barnstable West Barnstable Elementary School here on Cape Cod. As a Visiting Poet, I presented to a class or rising second graders in the Literacy and Arts summer program. 

We drummed along to my poem “Drum,” from the book WHAT IS HOPE? from Pomelo Books.

We acted out the poem “Maya on the Beach,” about a young beachgoer who collects a stone and shell, but leaves a snail to slide along the beach.

And the children thought like illustrators, putting their own spin on the poem “Cousins,” from the book WHAT IS FAMILY? (Pomelo Books)

Having an hour with an engaging and enthusiastic class of young readers and writers was the cherry on top of a sweet month. And the best part? The school has invited me back for another visit during the school year!

For now, I’m savoring each remaining day of summer… back to school is coming soon.

Nurturing Young Readers and Writers

It was three years ago this week that I signed my contract to become a Literacy Coach in a school district here on Cape Cod. I love working in a K-3 school, where the magic of emerging readers and writers is crackling! 

I wrote a poem about working with a struggling reader, “Still,” and it was published in the April 2024 issue of Radical Teacher.

I’m grateful to work in a school that serves young children. It fills me with hope. At the same time, this summer break is badly needed– and I have more writing time!

Here’s the poem. You can learn more about Radical Teacher here.

STILL

Let me step aside 

from the reading wars

and data sheets

and progress reports.

Let me be still,

let me be 

still,

still here

still open 

to the wonder of you,

a seven-year-old

learning to read,

making sense

of Frog

and Toad,

and their bickering way of loving.

Let me listen 

to you stumble over words,

trip on the cobblestones

of afraid and friend,

yet keep careening

down the path of 

story.

Let me be part of 

your story.

How you arrived here,

wide-eyed,

wary,

angry.

And now you read,

you laugh,

you sit, 

still,

while I bend

to tie the frayed laces

of your shoe.

Poetry (and raccoons!) in the Bronx

As the school year was winding to a close, I had the delight of returning to P.S. 86 in the Bronx to lead a series of poetry workshops. I attended P.S. 86 as a young child.

The students were all-in– welcoming, and ready to have fun!

We talked about how every writer has obsessions, favorite things in their life that spark stories and poems and other forms of art. I shared some of mine. I encouraged them to tap into their favorite things, and use their “poetry microscopes”  to notice the small details that make poems come alive.

After talking about hope in hard times, we got loud and drummed on tables to my poem “Drum,” from WHAT IS HOPE? (Pomelo Books, 2023).

We talked about noticing signs of nature in everyday moments in the city: a vine climbing up a building, a frisky squirrel, a swoop of sparrows. These are all images that appear in my poem “Glimpses of Green,” published in the amazing online children’s  poetry journal Tyger, Tyger.* The students added their own examples of glimpses of the natural world (raccoons in the Bronx!) and they each illustrated the poem in their own way.

I treasure my visits to P.S. 86. The chance to go back and get to know the students in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx brings me joy and was a great way to end the school year! Thank you, school librarian Matt Egan, for welcoming me back to P.S. 86!


*Tyger, Tyger editor Rachel Piercey recently sent out a blog post linking to a bunch of wonderful summer poems for kids– and “Glimpses of Green” is included!

My poem in Radical Teacher– “Still,” about the magic of learning to read!

I wrote a poem about the magic of teaching a child to read, “Still.” It captures why I love what I do as a Literacy Coach in a K-3 school. It’s just been published in the latest issue of Radical Teacher!

Although there are days that I wish I could stay home and write all day, my work feeds me as a writer and a human. I’m grateful for it.

On Fridays, I love taking part in Poetry Friday when I can, where writers share resources about children’s poetry. It’s been a while! This week, Irene Latham hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today at her blog. Check out the celebration of poetry there today!

Wintry delights: Illustrating Poetry with Young Children

Last week I had the delight of leading a Poetry Friday lesson in a second-grade classroom. I used my poem “Skating with Dad,” featured on the wonderful poetry website Dirigible Balloon. 

After reading the chart together, we had fun using highlighter tape, finding each consonant cluster in the poem… sk in skate, gl in glove, sl in slide… they even found the cr in Cronin!

Then each child illustrated the poem in their poetry notebook. We always talk about how “thinking like an illustrator” means that every illustration in the class will look different. I love all the ways the students brought this poem to life in the illustrations…

from the close-up of the gloves,

to the child and parent skating together,

to the valentine to hockey from the young hockey player,

to the ads on the side of the rink!

Poetry Friday has come alive in my school, and it’s a delight to be a part of it.

I’m wishing all the poets and poetry lovers out there a wonderful and restful holiday break. See you in 2024!

On Fridays, I love taking part in Poetry Friday when I can, where writers share resources about children’s poetry. This week, Jone hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today at her blog. Check out the celebration of poetry there today!

Sharing the news of my debut picture book!

The news of my debut picture book was shared on Publishers Weekly this week, and I could not be more excited! LIKE A MOTHER BEAR is a picture book biography of Jeanne Manford, an amazing advocate and mother who founded PFLAG, an advocacy group for parents and loved ones of LGBTQ folks. Back in the early 70s, she stood up for her gay son in a very public way, and became an advocate and mother figure for so many.  To be illustrated by the amazing J Yang, this story about family, queer advocacy, standing up for loved ones, and the power of letter writing will be published by Atheneum/Simon & Schuster.

Jeanne Manford in 1972

 

There are a lot of people to thank for reaching this milestone. Thank you to my editor Feather Flores and the team at Atheneum for your beautiful vision, and to my dedicated agent Lori Steel at Red Fox Literary for championing this story from the very beginning. 

So many hands and hearts helped along the way: Jeanne Manford’s family, the New York Public Library Manuscript and Archives division, my VCFA and Courage to Create community, Boston Authors Club,  The Writing Barn, the 2022 Queer Kidlit Mentorship, Eric Marcus at Making Gay History – The Podcast. Eric interviewed Jeanne Manford and her son Morty while researching his book MAKING GAY HISTORY, and you can listen to the interview on his wonderful podcast.

Finally, thanks go to my core of writing partners and friends, and my family, who never stopped believing.

NCTE Convention 2023: A Sweet Spot!

Have you ever felt like you were in the sweet spot, a place where the two overlapping circles in a Venn diagram meet? That was me, attending the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) 2023 Convention in Columbus Ohio. 

 

Meeting the authors/illustrator of one of my favorite books, NO VOICE TOO SMALL!

Being at the conference brought together my two worlds– teaching and writing/children’s literature. I had the chance to learn from amazing authors and educators, and to make a brief presentation myself!

My presentation title was Alegria: Celebrating and Elevating Portuguese-speaking Brazilian Students with an Author Visit.

One of the best parts was meeting so many poetry friends…

Georgia Heard receiving her NCTE Poetry Award!
Finally meeting Amy Ludwig VanDerwater was a thrill.

 

Poetry friend Willeena Booker
Rebecca Kai Dotlich!
Seeing Pomelo Books that contain my poems on display was a delight!

Then there was meeting authors whose books I love…

Carole Lindstrom!

 

Lilliam Rivera!

 

Cynthia Levinson!

…plus learning from keynotes by Hanif Abdurraqib, Jacqueline Woodson, and Angie Thomas.

I attended a lot of sessions with my new teacher friend from Missouri, Clayton!

I cannot wait to attend the NCTE 2024 conference. It will be in Boston (closer to home!), and I’m already brainstorming with friends about putting together a panel presentation proposal. All of the energy I gained at NCTE feeds my work as a Literacy Coach in a K-3 Cape Cod elementary school.

In the meantime, I am serving on the This Story Matters Teacher Corps. We will be developing book rationales to help educators and librarians battle book bans and attempts at censorship.

Here’s to finding our sweet spots.

 

 

 

Alegria: Celebrating and Elevating Portuguese-speaking Brazilian students with an Author Visit

As a Literacy Coach in a K-3 school with a large Brazilian population, I was thrilled to win a grant from SCBWI that allowed me to invite Brazilian and American picture book author Ana Crespo to be a visiting author to Cape Cod elementary school M.E. Small in the fall of 2022. Crespo’s picture books include The Sock Thief (Albert Whitman, 2015), set in Brazil, and two books about Brazilian-American siblings set in the U.S: Lia and Luis: Who Has More? and Lia and Luis: Puzzled (Charlesbridge, 2020 and 2023). Crespo’s books provided culturally relevant texts that boosted oral language and increased vocabulary in two languages, while elevating newcomer children and foregrounding multilingual students as experts who could share their cultural knowledge and language expertise. 

M.E. Small is a K-3 elementary school that serves a significant number of English Language Learners, many from Brazil. Ana Crespo represented a mirror experience for many children, giving them the opportunity to meet an accomplished author and engaging role model from their home country. I am honored to present this experience in the Classroom Idea Exchange at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention in November 2023.

Because of the strong connection forged between author, Literacy Coach, and school community, Crespo returned to the school for a second visit in the spring of 2023, and visited two other elementary schools in the district as well. Through extensive pre-planning and collaboration, we crafted an experience that illuminated the talents and experiences of the Brazilian students, deepened empathy for newcomers of all languages and backgrounds, and highlighted the joy and beauty of Brazilian culture.

Here are some specific actions and strategies we utilized to make these author visits a rich and rewarding experience:  

Before the visit:

  • We made sure that all students were familiar with Crespo’s books; providing multiple copies of titles so that teachers could share the books in their classrooms. The SCBWI Amber Brown Grant helped enormously with this in the fall of 2022, as did Rotary Club support for buying books for our students the following spring.

  • I prepared “About the Author” information via a Google slides for classroom use.
  • Before the Zoom visit:  I asked teachers for connecting information about students, ie newcomers from Brazil, students who are passionate about soccer (highlighted in The Sock Thief), a student who particularly loved the story, a first grader known as the “mango artist” in her classroom.
  • In a multi-sensory experience, we sliced and ate mango in the classroom– using a chart to highlight the number of students who were familiar with it and those who were trying it for the first time (we applauded students who were trying out a new food!). 
  • We utilized activities and materials from the author’s website to amplify the voices of Portuguese-speaking Brazilian students, creating experiences in which they functioned as the experts in their classrooms. These activities included learning about the Brazilian flag; tasting the mango and creating a bar graph; learning Portuguese vocabulary from Crespo’s books.
Jaxson tries mango for the first time!
  • In a collaboration with school’s art teacher, students created a large welcome poster for Crespo,  inspired by an art project related to Lia and Luis: Puzzled. 
  • Because Crespo’s books weave Portuguese and English texts seamlessly, they presented rich opportunities for translanguaging, or “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire.” Brazilian students were able to translate for peers and share their own experiences about Brazil to put Crespo’s stories in context.

During the visit:

  • In the initial author visit via Zoom, Crespo met with each grade level separately.  With the help of information provided to teachers by Literacy Coach Mary Cronin, she did shout-outs to students who were newcomers, to a student who was expert in drawing mangoes, and to a Brazilian student who had made his own book inspired by hers, The Mango Thief. These created authentic and joyful connections despite the distance that Zoom can sometimes create.

  • Crespo showed pictures of her childhood home, and locations that were featured in her books, providing an authentic “mirror” connection with students from Brazil while giving other students a glimpse into daily life in Brazil.
  • In her in-person author visit the following spring, school leaders and Crespo involved Portuguese-speaking students in several ways. We had student greeters who welcomed Crespo to our school.
  •  Crespo used a movement activity, Simon Says, utilizing Portuguese, and asked Portuguese speakers to come up to the front of the room to help her lead the activity. These activities served to foreground multilingual students as experts who could share their cultural knowledge and language expertise with their peers in the classroom.
Ana Crespo presenting to a Cape Cod elementary group.
  • For one period mid-day, a group of third-grade multilingual learners was able to meet in a smaller setting with Crespo over lemonade and Brazilian snacks, and they shared details of their lives with Crespo, including family history and immigration status
  • Our school hosted a “Meet the Author” event for families in the evening. Brazilian food was served, Crespo signed books, and families had the chance to buy additional books and chat with the author. 

After the visit:

  • Students wrote notes to Ana Crespo, thanking her and reflecting on their experience with her. “I loved your book,” one student named Laura wrote to Crespo after the presentation. “I’m Brasilian too. I read Lia and Luis. Me and my brother are just like them. Obrigada.”

  • Another student named Cyrus wrote, “Thank you for teaching us a little bit about you and Brazil! I love your books!”
“Dear Ana Crespo, Thank you for being a good person.”
  • We used poetry to shine a light on the gifts and talents of multilingual learners with a school-wide embrace of the poem “Me x 2” by Jane Medina, featured in the Lee Bennett Hopkins anthology Amazing Faces (Lee & Low, 2010).
“Me x 2” by Jane Medina, from the anthology AMAZING FACES.

Why did this author visit work so well? 

Alegria means joy in Brazilian Portuguese, and that captures the overall impact of Ana Crespo’s visits in which student identities were celebrated and seen as strengths. Underlying this author visit was a belief in the genius of our multilingual learners, inspired by Gholdy Muhammad’s Cultivating Genius (2020) and Muhammad’s “humanizing practice” of celebrating our language learners through culturally relevant stories and a dynamic author role model. Brazilian students who were known to be quiet were participating fully in Crespo’s activities with enthusiasm, and speaking at length in Q & A sessions. Vulnerable students shared worries and concerns with Ana.  Family members engaged with the author, speaking in their home language in a joyful evening event. Children who were new to Portuguese and to Brazilian culture learned from peers. All students benefited from two dynamic and joy-filled author visits. 

Interested in contacting author Ana Crespo? Go here.