Category Archives: wits alliance

The Writers in the Schools (WITS) Alliance will present an exciting series of panels, meetings, and events at the 2012 AWP Conference in Chicago. Here is a schedule of all the WITS happenings. We will be in the Bookfair the entire time. Come say hello at Booth #609. See you in Chicago!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Membership Meeting
Wednesday, February 29th, 4:30 to 5:45 PM
Joliet, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor
Writers in the Schools (WITS) Alliance invites current and prospective members to attend a general meeting led by Robin Reagler, Executive Director of WITS-Houston.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Celebration in Any Language: Teaching Bilingual Students
Jack McBride, Alise Alousi, Merna Ann Hecht, Milta Ortiz, Cara Zimmer
Thursday, March 1st, 9:00 to 10:15 AM
Location: Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, 4th Floor
As student populations become increasingly diverse, most writing teachers work with bilingual students. We face specific challenges in creating an inclusive classroom community but ultimately celebrate linguistic difference through powerful writing and creativity. Panelists will discuss strategies for reaching all students, the challenges in navigating multiple languages in one classroom, and successes in creating a safe place for students to tell their own individual stories.

What You Need to Know Before You “Stand and Deliver”: K-12 Teaching 101
Rebecca Hoogs, Cecilia Pinto, Valerie Wayson, David Hassler, Cecily Sailer
3:00 to 4:15 PM
Location: Empire Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, Lobby Level
Standing in front of a classroom and delivering inspiring and effective lessons doesn’t just happen. And just because you’re a great writer doesn’t mean you’re ready to be a great teaching artist in a K-12 classroom. But this panel will help you understand the path to becoming the teacher you want to be, that your teachers expect you to be, and that your students deserve. We’ll share tips and tricks of the trade and offer concrete advice for how to get the experience you need to succeed.

WITS Alliance Reception
Thursday, March 1st, 7:00 to 8:15 PM
Location: Hilton Chicago Hotel, Astoria, Hilton Chicago

Friday, March 2, 2012

Finding a Common Language in the Public Schools
Long Chu, Renée Watson, Giuseppe Taurino, Keith Yost
Friday, March 2nd, 1:30-2:45 PM
Location: Private Dining Room 1, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor
WITS organizations have deep artistic roots, and may approach the teaching of creative writing in ways public school administrators and teachers misunderstand or find irrelevant to their concerns. How do we make the case for WITS programs as valuable partners in meeting schools’ goals for student learning, but still remain true to our artistic identity? This panel of school administrators and WITS leaders share real world ideas to strengthen outreach to school partners.

The Wired Writing Classroom: The Marriage of Technology and Teaching
Cecily Sailer, Jeanine Walker, Janet Hurley, Jim Walker, Bertha Rogers
Friday, March 2nd, 3:00-4:15 PM
Location: Lake Huron Room, Hilton Chicago, 8th Floor
With an endless supply of evolving technology, how can educators capitalize on innovative web platforms and social media to augment classroom teaching, inspire students, and showcase their work? In this panel, several administrators from writers-in-the-schools organizations share multi-media projects that marry technology and traditional teaching methods. These stories of “teachnology” touch upon best practices while considering questions of safety and authenticity.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Low Res, Full Res, No Res: The Poet and the Terminal Degree
Christopher Salerno, Amy Gerstler, Bob Hicock, Timothy Liu, Robin Reagler
Saturday, March 3rd, 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM
Location: Wiliford C, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor
This panel will address what about the different MFA/CW program models is transcendent, what is common, and what is hindrance. We’ll discuss ways poets use, ignore, dismiss, or are damaged by aspects of each. What intersections are there amongst the MFA options? How does one take ownership of their track? Is an MFA necessary? Panelists will discuss why they did (or did not) pursue their particular terminal degree, and how those experiences inform their teaching practices in these programs now.

Marketing the Literary, or Putting some Poetry into your PR
Robin Reagler, Alison Granucci, Tree Swenson, Kristine Uyeda
Saturday, March 3rd, 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM
Location: Boulevard Room A,B,C, Hilton Chicago, 2nd Floor
For many writers, the business of promoting literature does not come naturally. Many literary organizations are led by writers for whom marketing is unfamiliar terrain. But some programs are finding surprising ways to connect with a larger public through low-cost campaigns to promote individual writers, literary arts education programs, memberships, and donations.

Crisis Economics for Nonprofits
Amy Swauger, Rebecca Hoogs, Michele Kotler, Melanie Moore
Saturday, March 3rd, 3:00 – 4:15 PM
Location: Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, 4th Floor
How are some nonprofits thriving in the current economy while others struggle to keep the doors open from one day to the next? The panelists in this session, who represent presenting organizations, literary publishers, and writers-in-the-schools programs, discuss their strategies for weathering the financial storm by identifying different sources of funding, collaborating with other nonprofits and for-profit partners, and finding ways to maintain programs and services while cutting costs.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: education, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Tags: #awp12, awp chicago, awp conference. Leave a comment

Nov. ’10

Creating Community through Spoken Word

The 2010 WITS Writer Orientation featured special guests Michele Kotler and Keith Kaminski from the Community Word Project (CWP) in New York. Our friends at the CWP have given a great deal of thought to preparing writers to teach in classrooms. We at WITS Houston invited them down to see what it was all about. As you might guess, we were very impressed.

One of the cornerstones of CWP is creating poetry and art as a group. Michele and Keith led our writers in an exercise to help us produce a community performance. The process was fun and exciting. Have a listen?

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, Lesson plan, spoken word, wits alliance, writer, writers in the schools, writing prompts. Tags: Writers Resources. Leave a comment

Nov. ’10

I Have a Voice

Harriet Riley, a free-lance writer focusing on nonfiction and grant writing, is teaching her third year at WITS

As WITS writers, we all use weekly rituals with our students – Author’s Chairs, Power Writing, Writers Toolboxes and more. This year I’ve started a new and powerful ritual to end each class. The credit for this tool goes completely to Michele Kotler and Community Word Project who participated our August orientation workshop.

At the close of each session with my students, after I foreshadow the next week’s activities, we chant together: “I have a voice. My voice is powerful. My voice can change the world.”

This has become an important ritual with my sixth graders at Briarmeadow Charter School. It started as a call and response. I said a line and the students repeated it. But last week, my sixth visit to the school, I noticed that the students chanted the words along with me, ending with a rousing “MY VOICE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.” They say it, and they believe it. I see it in their writing as they relate their belief in their own power. Their words are strong and fearless.

We recently completed a poem based on George Ella Lyons’ “Where I’m From.” Like most teachers, I learn the names of the “louder” students first. There was one particular student that I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know – she was quiet and well behaved and hadn’t done anything to stand out in class. Also she was one of four girls in my two classes with the same first name. She had wire-rimmed glasses that hid her face, always wore her hair straight back in a tight ponytail and didn’t smile too much. She had written a very rough draft of her “Where I’m From” poem the previous week that needed a lot of revision. As I was walking among the students during our re-write time, I stood shock still when I saw her work. I read it to myself.

This is Where I’m From

By Mariam, 7th grade

I am from an endless path that runs into sunset.

I am from the jasmines blooming.

I am from the buzz of a busy bee.

I am from the bustling, bizarre crowds of a city.

I am from the sweet taste of sugarcane.

I am from the sound of the wolf howling at the moon.

I am from the sound of the guitar’s gentle strum.

I am from the laughter of children playing outside in the blazing hot sun.

I am from the waves crashing against each other at the sandy beach.

I am from the silent scent of goodness in the cool air.

I am from the enchantment of love.

I am from the creak of a stable door being opened from above.

I am nothing less then a kick of dust.

I am nothing more than a big blizzard.

I am a child who races the dark night.

Who was the girl who wrote these strong and powerful words and what lay beneath her polite surface? She had some deep, world-changing things to say and I almost missed her. I will definitely be getting to know her in the year ahead and much more about my students because they WILL change the world. Sometimes taking the time to state the obvious – “I have a voice” – and turning it into a cheer can make a difference and actually empower students to use earth-shaking, world-changing words.

by Harriet Riley, Writers in the Schools

WITS Writer Harriet Riley is a free-lance writer focusing on nonfiction articles and grant writing. She has taught undergraduate writing classes at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, where she lived for 11 years before moving to Houston in 2007. She has also worked as a non-profit director, hospital marketing director, and newspaper reporter. She has her M.A. in print journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and her B.A. in English and journalism from the University of Mississippi. She enjoys reading, running, and traveling with her family. This is her third year with WITS.

Posted by jrwatson5. Categories: creativity, education, imagination, inspiration, story, wits alliance. Tags: Arts, Community Word Project, Harriet Riley, Michele Kotler, Organizations, student, wits, Writers Resources, writing. 1 Comment

Jul. ’10

Thoughts on Global Travel and Facebook

I am in Bitola on the Macedonian border with Greece. One of the wonderful things that happened my first year teaching in Macedonia was the students asking me if I was on facebook, although I had to tell them I was not. Then I went home and joined facebook, partly on the advice of my Harvard-educated nephew who lived in a dorm where and when facebook was born. I remember the Ugly Betty episode where Betty is trying to decide whether or not she is willing to befriend Henry, her ex-boyfriend who has married someone else for complicated reasons, and I wondered at our making the decision between “ignore” and “accept.” So here is the question. I know that facebook is making us global, but is it also making us more accepting…even kind and perhaps forgiving. I know that it says “accept”, not forgive. What about local as well as global forgiveness?

This Spring the Macedonian teachers and I had global meetings on facebook. We did global craft-shopping. The teachers are already planning for March 2011 facebook meetings. Clicking that “accept” button rather than “ignore” is not contrition or absolution, in the sacred sense, but, as in Betty’s decision, it is an important decision that people need to band together to teach their young and that there isn’t all the time in the world to do it.

Merrilee Cunningham, WITS Writer to the Balkans

[postcard from skyscrapercity.com]

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: student, travel, wits alliance, writer, writers in the schools. Tags: bitola, facebook, forgiveness, macedonia, ugly betty. Leave a comment

Jul. ’10

The Museum of Stip and the Triple Hecate

The Play is the Thing (Times 7!)

Shakespeare said, “The Play’s the Thing,” and it was! Here in Skopje we just finished producing seven plays – 4 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. They included such titles as “The Nutty Granny,” “Revenge is a Dish Best Served up Cold,” The Magic Umbrella,” and “The Hero and the Dragon,” just to name a few. They were absolutely wonderful. The young actress who played the title role in “The Nutty Granny” also helped write the play as did most of the actors. It is very interesting how serious the students get about the plays. All this has caused a Children’s Drama Festival in Bitola so when I get to Bitola, I will finish the first week with a second week where we do nothing but plays. I have always wanted to direct a children’s theater, and, what luck, it is happening!

It is very exciting to visit with my wonderful old friends in Skopje, but it is also exciting to be going to a brand new corner and a new place. It has been a while since I have been to a new place. Last year I went to Croatia with my daughter Susannah, and we had an amazing time going to Diocletian’s palace and looking at the stone symbols on all the ruins in Split. This time I haven’t really thought about going anyplace. Tomorrow I am off to Stip and new places and new friends.

Merrilee Cunningham

Writers in the Schools (WITS)

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: education, teaching, travel, wits alliance, writer, writers in the schools. Tags: macedonia, skopje. Leave a comment

Jul. ’10

WITS and the Macedonian Express: Year 3

Beginnings are exciting, thrilling really, particularly when you know that they are filled with fun, energy, learning, reading, writing, and happy children. This is my third year of WITS in Macedonia and the beginning of the third year on the Macedonian Express, and that express has more stops than it used to. When we started, there were only three American Corner (AC) Libraries in Macedonian and now there are four. Next year there will be five. That’s pretty good for a country with only 4 million people in it, but what those Macedonians don’t have in quantity, they make up in quality.

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This is a nation of readers, poets, writers, artists, and their enthusiasm for the Creative Writing Workshops is so great that we have more students this year than ever before. In Skopje this year we have two completely filled workshops and have only new students in the workshops. That means that tomorrow morning there will be 20 kids in the morning and 20 kids in the afternoon in the AC. The younger kids come in the morning with all their energy, delight and excitement. If it is like last year, they come with their parents, the youngest not really sure that we can be trusted to take care of them until the middle of the first day. Then the second day they are so excited, so thrilled to see their new friends, to get started on their work from yesterday, and to do the warm-ups, probably starting with two truths and a “fiction” where they tell their new friends two things that are true about them and one fiction that they made up. You would be surprised how often that fiction or even “lie” get used in one of their stories. It also lets you know about their vivid imaginations. Trust the bright lights to tell you their favorite color is blue, place their blue folder on top of their desk so that you believe them, all the while knowing perfectly well that their favorite color is green. I know this is true because Emma tricked me with this at the WITS Creative Writing Camp “two truths and a lie” warm-up at Bellaire High School last month. She got me over and over again, and I fancy myself an excellent judge in this department!

I had a wonderful flight here. I had just finished a Common Ground Seminar for the University of Houston’s Honor’s College when I boarded a United Airlines plane for Washington Dulles and then Austrian Airlines to Vienna and Skopje (pronounced Skop-e-ah). I never seem to get over my love of flying. When I was a teenager my friend Russ Heil and I used to go to the airport just to watch the planes that would have liked to be on and I haven’t changed. I still am thrilled just to see a plane take off, and if I am on it is just where I want to be. I never had any desire to pilot a plane, but I do want a window seat, and a window seat to life is just what I got…all the way to Macedonia. Watching movies all night long, the second night without sleep, I was ready to sleep when I got to the hotel and that is just what I did.

By the time that I got to the American Corner library this morning I was ready to get rid of the 120 pounds of luggage that had the supplies that I had been buying for the past year…and they are wonderful. I have inherited from my father the importance that I place on having the best supplies for a Writing Workshop. When I got here the AC staff showed me t he great tee-shirts that they produced. The design is fabulous. I will send you a copy of it asap.

This afternoon we are interviewing the kids that will be camp counselors and then meeting with representatives from all the American Corners so that they can pick up a copy of the master plan, modify that plan to their liking and be ready for the camps when I get there. That means creating a word wall, an bulletin board with local historical buildings and ruins, and other uses of walls and blackboards as we prepare for the arrival of the workshop campers. But today it also means dividing the loot, the pencil sharpeners, the pens, the notebooks, the stick-on letters, the colorful wooden blocks on which they will hang their haiku, the satin ribbons that they will wrap around the box with their secret writings in it, the plain white paper plates that they will put their life clock on, the little brown bags that they will place something that they would love to “drown in the deep blue sea.”

I am so glad that I have the information that I got from participating in the SCWW camp adventures with Jennifer Aguirre and Pat Green. Those two amazing teachers taught me new stuff that I am not going to drop in “the deep blue sea” but that I have carried with me across that sea to implement here. Even the “two truths and a lie” warm-up was something that I had never done before until I did it in June with Jennifer and Pat.

A teacher must constantly be trained and WITS is the best there is about training. There is on-going training for teachers before and during the Workshops…and I believe in training. Training makes us different from what we would be without it. Training offers us more choices. Training makes us good at what we do. As Malcolm Gladwell says in his wonderful book Outliers, training makes us extreme variables of folks who do something, because we have worked those thousands of hours to become the statistical outliers on a graph of how well we can do something if we get training and practice, work intensely on getting better at something. And that is just what these young people in Macedonia are going to do…they are going to write brilliantly in a language that was not their first, but a language that they are going to become very good writers in like Joseph Conrad and others who learned a language in which they became great writers.

Tomorrow is a new beginning and I will tell you all about it just after it happens. Welcome to the first day of the third year of the Macedonian Express. Come with us to Macedonia and the Creative Writing Camps as the centers are filled with young, talented children from the land of Phillip and Alexander.

Merilee Cunningham

WITS Writer to the Balkans

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: books, creativity, education, teaching, travel, wits alliance. Tags: macedonia, skopje. Leave a comment

Jul. ’10

Get Ready for Round 3: The Macedonian Express

For the third year in a row, Writers in the Schools is collaborating with the U.S. Department of State to provide creative writing summer programs to young people in Macedonia. WITS Writer Merrilee Cunningham will be spending five weeks in the Balkans this summer. Her missives will begin tomorrow. Stay tuned!

[photo by Jaime Perez via flickr]

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: Houston, teaching, travel, wits alliance, writers in the schools. 1 Comment

Sep. ’09

Where Are We Now: Ben Moser at Brazos 9/14/09

ben moser

Former WITS student Benjamin Moser will read from his widely acclaimed new biography of Clarice Lispector at Brazos Bookstore Monday, September 14, at 7 pm. Get a copy of Why This World, get it signed by the author, and celebrate his birthday–all at the same time. You can get more information about this event on the Brazos website.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: books, event, Houston, publishing, where are we now, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Tags: benjamin moser, brazos bookstore, clarice lispector, why this world. Leave a comment

Sep. ’09

WITS Orientation 2009

: WITS Writers Kiki Przewlocki and Jane Koh interview one another at the annual WITS Orientation on Saturday, August 29.

: WITS Writer Karen Perez grooves along at WITS Orientation.

WITS Fall Orientation 2009 took place this past weekend with over 80 writers participating in the training event. Special thanks go to our two guest presenters, Laura Long and Yvonne Murphy, as well as to our hosts, the Houston Arts Alliance and The School at St. George Place (HISD).

Schools that have not yet signed up for WITS for the 2009-2010 year can make their requests to Associate Director Bao-Long Chu via email.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Tags: laura long, laura longsong, wits, writers in the schools, yvonne murphy. Leave a comment

Aug. ’09

“O” is for Orientation

Today WITS kicks off the 2009-2010 school year with a weekend of writer orientation and training. In this photo, guest presenters Yvonne Murphy and Laura Long talk with WITS Board President Robin Davidson and our guest from Georgia College WITS, Valerie Wayson.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Leave a comment

Aug. ’09

Our Indiana Jones and the Macedonian Hamburgers

Mere technology interrupted my transmittals from Macedonia. It seems that I was in line for a new computer at my university, and I knew that IT was going to take this time to get rid of my XP-powered bulky computer and arm me with my beloved Microsoft 2009 with all its many charms, templates, and almost apple-like advantages. Little did I know that getting rid of my literal machine would interrupt the flow of the Macedonia Express. But there is time now to catch up and my new machine, I trust, is awaiting me in my little office at the university, a better fate than Indiana Jones would have had in his handsome office at the University of Chicago. Yet there has been an Indiana Jones quality of this adventure. Five earthquakes, however small, in Bitola, a trip to Heraclea’s amazing mosaics, and a look at the on-going archeological work there, a wonderful ride from Bitola on the mountain rode to Tetovo, and we were ready for the second round of writing workshops.

The anthology from Bitola was amazing. The children outdid themselves, and the staff, Elena and Bijana, worked so hard to make the anthology happen and make sure that the students revised well, and their work was not in vain. When I left Bitola for my sojourn on a narrow road through the beautiful mountains on Macedonia, past Lake Ohrid, where the Roman amphitheater is and where the amazing golden mask, that looks a bit like the Mask of Agamemnon, was found. I will write more about that mask tomorrow as it is one of the images of our Ekphrasis assignment.

photo by Senol Demir

Today I want to write about our adventures in Tetovo. I was, once again, fortunate enough to have an enthusiastic and able staff of teachers and students who were more than ready to work. The walls hung with Leslie Gauna’s “found poetry” assignment as well placed words in Albanian as well as English on the walls. By now, we have a cache of words in Macedonian, Albanian, and English for the students to select from.

After the workshop, my colleagues took me to an amazing natural spring in the mountains where people came who wanted to both bathe in the waters and drink the spring waters for their health. As this site is an ancient Ottoman Empire site, the very center of the spring is circled by white material for the use of the women who want to bathe and enjoy the waters, while the men enjoyed the waters outside the very large white circle where they could not enter. The mystery of inside that forbidden place was almost more than I could stand as I watched women go in and out of the large white, covered center. After we bathed and collected water from the spring, offered us in used Coca-Cola bottles, we were off to have a Macedonian hamburger (the less said about this the better).

I was then off in my car to Skopje and the final week of workshops at the American Corners Center there. Tomorrow, more about the recent archeological discovery at Lake Orhid. And, not a single earthquake I hope.

Merrilee Cunningham, Writers in the Schools (WITS)

photo by Frans Alkemade

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: food, poetry, teaching, travel, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Tags: American Corners, creative writing, lake ohrid, macedonia, tetova, wits. Leave a comment

Feb. ’09

Bechtel Prize for Essays on Teaching Writing

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) awards the Bechtel Prize annually in recognition of an exemplary essay addressing important issues in the areas of creative writing education, literary studies, and/or the profession of writing. The deadline to receive submissions for the 2009 Bechtel Prize is 5:00 PM (Eastern), Tuesday, June 30, 39-4_cover-full 2009.

In 2009, T&W is seeking Bechtel Prize submissions that explore the teaching of creative writing in combination with another artistic discipline, such as dance, media arts, music, theater, or the visual arts; or with another academic discipline, such as math or history. We are seeking essays that shed light on the nature of the creative process and want to read your stories about viewing the art of writing through a different lens, and your take on the benefits and challenges of such cross-disciplinary work.

Questions that might be addressed in essays include, but are not limited to, the following:

What are the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching creative writing?

Are there aspects of the creative processes central to the literary arts that students can understand more clearly in the context of other disciplines?

What are the complications of teaching creative writing with another discipline?

Do writers who teach in an interdisciplinary way find that work influencing their own creative processes?

The winning essay appears in Teachers & Writers magazine, and the author receives a $1,500 honorarium. Authors cover_of_40-1-full of submissions selected as finalists for the award share honoraria of $500, and their essays may also be published in Teachers & Writers. The previous winners of the Bechtel Prize can be found here.

Prospective entrants for the Bechtel Prize are encouraged to review a sample issue of Teachers & Writers to familiarize themselves with the magazine’s style. To order a sample issue of the magazine for $5.00, click here.

Complete guidelines are available on the Teachers & Writers site. Questions regarding the Bechtel Prize should be directed to <bechtel(at)twc.org> (replace (at) with @).

[cross-posted on the WITS Alliance blog]

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: contest, essay, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Leave a comment

Feb. ’09

WITS at the AWP Conference in Chicago

Bao-Long Chu, Amy Swauger, Terry Blackhawk, Robin Reagler, and Robin Davidson pose at the WITS Alliance booth at the AWP Conference in Chicago.

Writers, staff, and board members from WITS Houston participated in the AWP Conference in Chicago last week. WITS leads a network of similar programs called the Writers in the Schools Alliance, which hosts a string of events during AWP each year. All the WITS events were well-attended. It is exciting and gratifying to see that the enthusiasm for K-12 education projects is gaining ground so quickly. You can read more about the WITS Alliance events at AWP here.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Leave a comment

Aug. ’08

Merna Hecht is Houston-Bound

Merna Ann Hecht will be visiting WITS-Houston and starring in the annual writer orientation August 21-24, 2008. A storyteller, poet, and educator, Merna’s personal mission is to support young people in holding to a vision of a more humane and peaceful world. She has built her life work around the vital role of story and spoken word in many cultures.

Her years of involvement with the Seattle Writers in the Schools program have provided her with a wide range of teaching experiences. She has led writing workshops at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center School, BRIDGES: A Center for Grieving Children, detention centers and facilities for homeless youth. She is a recipient of the National Storytelling Network 2008 Brimstone Award for Applied Storytelling.

Merna presents courses for educators on teaching humanities and social justice through integrated arts, and she performs widely as a storyteller throughout the Northwest. Her essays and poems have appeared in Kaleidoscope, Out of Line, Talking Points: Journal of Whole Language, The National Storytelling Journal, Standing: An Anthology of Women Poets, The Storyteller’s Classroom, Chosen Tales and other books and journals. She lives on a farm on Vashon Island off the Washington coast

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools. Tags: merna hecht. Leave a comment

A Poem A Day

Writers in the Schools (WITS) Celebrates Kids–in their own Words

Category Archives: wits alliance

Start Your Own Writers in the Schools (WITS) Program!

Writers in the Schools (WITS) at AWP 2012 in Chicago – Join the Movement!

Creating Community through Spoken Word

I Have a Voice

Thoughts on Global Travel and Facebook

The Museum of Stip and the Triple Hecate

The Play is the Thing (Times 7!)

WITS and the Macedonian Express: Year 3

Get Ready for Round 3: The Macedonian Express

Where Are We Now: Ben Moser at Brazos 9/14/09

WITS Orientation 2009

“O” is for Orientation

Our Indiana Jones and the Macedonian Hamburgers

Bechtel Prize for Essays on Teaching Writing

WITS at the AWP Conference in Chicago

Merna Hecht is Houston-Bound

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