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...
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Poetry Friday Goes to School
Inspired by the lively Poetry Friday community in the blog world, this year I decided to bring that magic into my work as a Literacy Coach in a K-3 school. Each Friday, I share a poem via email to our school community. Teachers can choose to share the poem on a...
Feeling the beat, feeling the love
Poetry came to life when the very talented music teacher in our Cape Cod elementary school used my poem “Drum” in her exploration of percussion recently. What a delight to read my poem to our K-3 students, to hear children drumming, to listen to them beat out the...
Hope is a Drum
Feel that drumbeat? School is starting. A new school year fills me with hope-- hope for fresh starts, open hearts, new learning. I’m back to work in my job as an elementary school Literacy Coach. How perfect to kick off this school year by celebrating the publication...
Glimpses of Green- a poem about nature in the city
I’m delighted that my poem “Glimpses of Green” is published today in the online children’s poetry journal Tyger Tyger, based in the UK. What I love about Tyger Tyger is that it is aimed at children and teachers-- giving educators (and anyone who cares for children and...
Poetry in the Bronx!
It was a joy to be the Visiting Poet at PS 86 in the Bronx last week! I attended kindergarten there, and PS 86 was also the polling place in our neighborhood. I have many memories of accompanying my parents to vote, and of my mother working as an election worker...
Watching an Author Make Magic
At the school where I work, the vast majority of children qualify for free and reduced lunch. A quarter of our K-3 students are English Language Learners, many from Brazil. Most of the children had never met an author, or had a book signed… until author Ana Crespo...
I’m on the Bronx Heroes podcast!
What a delight and honor to be invited as a guest on the “Bronx Heroes” podcast! My conversation with hosts Dan Zauderer and Rina Madhani was far-ranging. I got to talk about my deep affection for my home borough, growing up in a firefighting family, and how I try to...
Vitamin P: A Poetry Workshop for Teachers
This week I led a professional development session for teachers, “Vitamin P: Boosting the Use of Poetry in the Literacy Block.” For three hours, we played with poetry! We talked about how to infuse poetry across the curriculum, find rich and meaningful poems, and...
A portrait of Octavia Butler in poems: Ibi Zoboi’s STAR CHILD
There's one book I can’t stop thinking about-- STAR CHILD: A BIOGRAPHICAL CONSTELLATION OF OCTAVIA ESTELLE BUTLER by Ibi Zoboi. The brilliant combination of poetry and nonfiction is what drew me to Zoboi’s amazing middle-grade biography of author Octavia Butler....