This NEH summer institute was designed by a collaborative team of scholars, veterans, and educators from Duke, the SNCC Legacy Project, and Teaching for Change.

Participants (classroom teachers in grades 5-12) will learn the bottom-up history of the Civil Rights Movement and receive resources and strategies to bring it home to their students. They will have the unique opportunity to learn from the people who made the civil rights movement happen, and from the leading scholars of the era.

The following narratives will serve as the focus of the institute.

1) The Civil Rights Movement was a primary force for the expansion of democracy for all.

2) The Movement was based on the work of thousands of local “ordinary” people who both organized and sustained it.

3) Women and youth were a fundamental part of the leadership and the troops of the Movement.

4) The tradition of protest grew out of a long history of activism and resistance in the Black community.

5) And more.

Dates: July 6-23, 2021 (3 weeks)
Times: 11:00am  ET to 1:30pm ET and 2:30pm ET to 6:30pm ET (Monday to Friday)
Location: Virtual
Application deadline: March 1, 2021
Stipend: $2,850

For more information and to access the website, please visit https://sites.duke.edu/dukecrmsummerinstitute/.

Any questions can be sent to allison.raven@duke.edu. 

In the tradition of the Writing Project, we will offer a variety of interactive prompts to support writing as well as the ever-present opportunity to let your pen take you in any direction. We will conclude our session together by asking for your input about the best ways for us to continue to write together and how we can support you as we all move forward during these times.

Continued from the Fall, join us for another evening of writing together. We will be inspired by photography of the beautiful natural landscapes, historical sites, and recreational areas of the Gateway Recreation Areas across New Jersey’s shores and New York City’s boroughs.

As part of the NYCWP, you are a member of a unique community of caring educators. Let’s continue to strengthen our community by sharing this experience as writers together.

Please join us on Wednesday, January 13th at 7:00 – 8:30pm. We will conclude at 8:30 pm, but feel free to join for as long as you’re able.

Spring Writers Residency

This MFA-style workshop, designed for writers with works already in progress, draws participants through a series of intensive exercises, readings, and submissions of their own writing, toward a goal of improving and completing projects in various genres. Residents will be responsible for providing feedback to one another and participating in conversations about craft, style, form, function, and creative choices that deepen or texturize writing. Each resident will have the opportunity to submit two writing samples, which will be analyzed alongside mentor and master texts, to help each writer better understand their own strengths and points for future development.

When: Thursdays, March 4 – May 13, 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Where: On Zoom

Cost: $300

Discovering Your Creative Project

This weekly course will take an intensive look at how writers produce work, through a variety of states: conception, drafting, revision, and preparing for publication. We will focus on ways to push past writers’ block through creative risk-taking and use of emulative craft models. This is the ideal setting for writers who have an idea for a project but haven’t gotten started yet, as well as for writers who feel they have “too many ideas” who would like to explore how to choose and develop them into longer pieces.

When: Wednesdays, March 3 – May 12, 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Where: On Zoom

Cost: $300

Both programs award CTLE credit for participants.

Questions and contact: jane@nycwritingproject.org

Pandemics on the Page

While living through the Covid-19 pandemic, we can look to fiction as a way of understanding our own experiences and those of our students. In this reading and discussion group, we will examine one novel per month and discuss how writers use fictionalized pandemics to address questions about society. Writing will bridge the space between imagined and real, allowing participants to unpack and address their own feelings about living during a pandemic through a variety of creative forms.

Meetings on Zoom: Once monthly, Saturdays, 10am-12pm

Five session dates: 2/13; 3/13; 4/10; 5/8; 6/12

Cost: $125

Participants must access their own copies of the following texts: 

• The Transmigration of Bodies, Yuri Herrera
• Severance, Ling Ma
• Blindness, Jose Saramago
• Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
• Zone One, Colson Whitehead

Reading Fiction Like a Writer

Writers read fiction not just for enjoyment, but also to examine closely the “tools of the trade” as they look in the hands of masters. This monthly reading and discussion group will focus on how various writers use different forms, styles, and techniques to draw their readers into fictional worlds. We will read one novel per month, with a focus on works in translation and marginalized voices, to explore the relationship between story, form, and craft with an eye to apply these techniques to our own creative projects, regardless of genre.

Meetings on Zoom: Once monthly, Saturdays, 10am-12pm

Five session dates: 2/20; 3/20; 4/17; 5/15; 6/19

Cost: $125

Participants must access their own copies of the following texts:

• Slave Old Man, Patrick Chamoiseau
• Human Acts, Han Kang
• Weather, Jenny Offill
• Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

Deadline to register for both courses: February 3, 2020

Both courses provide CTLE credit.

Looking to start a new piece of writing or creative project? Longing to get back to the page, but finding yourself blocked? Join the NYCWP for three days of generating your own creative writing! Over this three-day “boot camp,” writers will have the opportunity to engage with a variety of prompts and participate in micro-studies surrounding various craft elements, creative forms, and model readings. While participating for all three sessions is encouraged, as the activities will build, a pop-in model is also acceptable for those with limited time.

Choose one session to attend or all three:

• Monday, December 28
• Tuesday, December 29
• Wednesday, December 30
  • All sessions are from 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Cost: $20 per session, or $50 for all three sessions

The I Matter! poetry contest was launched by high school student Isabella Hanson and is hosted by the National Youth Foundation as a way for students to engage with why Black Lives Matter. Students from across the country are invited to submit their poetry.

The top prize is $500 and selected poems will be published as a PDF book.

Contest Rules

• Each entry must be an original poetry creation that is solely created by the student.
• The poem submitted must be on the topic of Black Lives Matter.
• The contest is open to students in grades K to 12.
• One entry per person.
• The entry must be received by July 23, 2021.
• The contest is open to residents of the United States.
• To enter, complete the “I Matter” Poetry Contest Form:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-Dla-iWNf_2WIXi3qNbhPg1Lzxm-rmWKQDy9lnwmgbcK4Cg/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0&gxids=7757

For questions, e-mail: ContactNationalYouthFoundation@gmail.com

For more information, visit: NationalYouthFoundation.org

In the tradition of the Writing Project, we will offer a variety of interactive prompts to support writing as well as the ever-present opportunity to let your pen take you in any direction. We will conclude our session together by asking for your input about the best ways for us to continue to write together and how we can support you as we all move forward during these times.

Continued from the Spring, join us for another evening of writing together. We will be inspired by photography of the beautiful natural landscapes, historical sites, and recreational areas of the Gateway Recreation Areas across New Jersey’s shores and New York City’s boroughs.

When: November 20, 2020, 7:00pm

Where: Online, Zoom invitation to follow registration

Free Registration:

A Reading and Discussion with the Leonard Leif Library, School of Education, and Women’s and Gender Studies

A vibrant story about what makes a place home and the ties between culture and pride. – Kirkus

Sanders’ first book in a children’s book series, I Can Write the World, features Ava Murray, a Black girl journalist from the Bronx.  After Ava and her mother watch the news together, her mother explains, Sometimes the way the world sees us / Is different from how we see ourselves.

The next book in the series, A Place of Our Own,is scheduled for publication in 2021.

Joshunda Sanders is an author, journalist, and educator.  She is creator and host of a BookTube channel, Black Book Stacks.  Sanders is the Communications Specialist in the President’s Office at Lehman College and an Adjunct Lecturer in Lehman’s English Department.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

4:00 – 5:00 PM

Virtual Event — Link will be sent to those registered

RSVP by November 9^th: https://lehman.libcal.com/calendar/events/Sanders

Information: Alison.LehnerQuam@lehman.cuny.edu

Rebecca Harper, director of the Augusta University Writing Project in Augusta, Georgia, has put together an impressive schedule of conversations with authors of young adult literature as part of the AU Writing Project Book Club and invites you to join. All educators are welcome, even if you haven’t read the book. Join one or more of the year’s final meetings, and watch this newsletter for an announcement of the spring line up.

• Nov. 21 at 10 a.m.—Gary Schmidt, author of Orbiting Jupiter
• Dec. 5 at 10 a.m.—Jerry Pallotta, author of the Alphabet Books series
• Dec. 7 at 6 p.m.—Katie Henry, author of Let’s Call it a Doomsday

Click on the hyper links above for registration and meeting information.

The Pulitzer Center invites K-12 students in the U.S. and around the world to enter the 2020 Local Letters for Global Change contest! Students, make your voice heard this election season by writing a letter to your representative explaining the global issue you want them to prioritize. You could have your letter, photo, and bio published, and win $100 for your class!

Deadline: November 13, 2020

Contest details here: pulitzercenter.org/localletters

Prizes:

First place winners in the high school, middle school, and elementary categories:

• $100 to support global community engagement in your classroom (prize distributed to your class teacher)
• Publication of your letter, photo, and bio on the Pulitzer Center website

Finalists:

• Publication of your letter, photo, and bio on the Pulitzer Center website

Eligibility:

Any current K-12 student in the United States or abroad may enter. Letters may be written in English and/or Spanish. Students will be judged separately in high school, middle school, and elementary categories, using the same judging rubric.