Image Courtesy of Rian S. (flickr.com)
Since most of us here at YARN have been teachers in one way or another, we’re strong believers in education. In our earliest conversations about YARN, Shannon, Colleen and I always hoped teachers would use the fiction, essays, and poetry we publish in their classrooms. And we launched the “Teach” section to entice high school and college teachers to do so.
Bradley Philbert, our new Education Coordinator, has been looking at 2011-2012’s YARN and updating the lesson plans in the Toolbox with material we’ve published since last September–writing by teachers and students just like you, and also by the likes of Cecil Castelucci, Blythe Woolston, and Kirstin Cronn-Mills. If you have any questions, feel free to email him at bradley{at}yareview.net.
To the “Playing with Language” plan, he’s added 2 new groupings of writing, and added to old ones; in “Reading For and Writing About a Theme,” there are new groupings like “Broken Families, Broken Hearts, Broken Homes” (a big theme of last year’s YARN, it would seem!); and there’s equally great new work in “Thinking About and Experimenting with Technique.”
That last lesson plan really contains the key word, “experiment,” which is what we hope you and your students will do with YARN. And we look forward to the submissions from you and them that we hope will result!
What’s your YARN?
–Kerri
