Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane established her state’s first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island’s state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2024). Her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) was released in August 2024.
Janelle Bence is a high-school English teacher with 24 years of experience teaching in Texas. Her favorite project is a Spoken Word event where freshmen support a local non-profit of their choosing. She is a longstanding member of the National Writing Project and enjoys collaborating with researchers to deepen her praxis. Currently, two projects she is working on are Transdisciplinary Civic Composing Collective (UT Austin) and Colorado State Sustainable Teaching and Learning (Colorado State University). Her writing is published in Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Mirra & Garcia, 2023) and Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices (Edited By Meghan E. Barnes, Rick Marlatt).
Mahogany L. Browne is a Kennedy Center Next 50 fellow, writer, play-wright, organizer, and educator. Browne received fellowships from ALL ARTS, Arts for Justice, AIR Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, and Wesleyan University. Browne’s books include A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theatre), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. She is the inaugural poet in residence at the Lincoln Center and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D. (she/her), is a Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her poetry collections, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (2020) and The Peace Chronicles (2021), explore themes of love, healing, and growth toward liberation. She is co-author of the multiple award-winning Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces (2021). In 2024, Yolanda was recognized for her scholarship with the Dorothy Height Distinguished Alumni Award from NYU. She has been named to EdWeek’s EduScholar Influencers list four years in a row, placing her among the top 1% of educational scholars in the U.S. At Teachers College, Yolanda founded the Racial Literacy Project @TC, fostering dialogue on race and diversity for over 17 years.
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About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/.
Ballenger shares her teaching journey and the core ideas in her book about the power of inquiry-based learning, which encourages teachers to honor students’ unexpected questions and ideas as opportunities for deeper exploration. Ballenger also discusses the challenges teachers face in maintaining time for reflection and collaboration, as well as the importance of fostering democracy and inclusion in the classroom.
“Taking on the pose of Teacher as Writer requires that you do what writers do—that is, write, and write often. Establishing your own personal routines around this practice can help you maintain it.
The more we write, the clearer it becomes to us that writing is a practice in the same way that shooting free throws is a practice. To write requires doing what writers do. Writers must create routines and habits that help them embody their writing identities.”
Kelly Wissman is the director of the Capital District Writing Project and an associate professor in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning within the University at Albany School of Education.
Christina Pepe is a Language Arts teacher at Shenandoah High School in Clifton Park, New York. She is the co-director of the Capital District Writing Project, and for 18 years has served as a public high school, career and technical, and community college educator in New York State. She is currently pursuing a CAS in TESOL.
Matthew Pinchinat is the inaugural Deputy Managing Director of DEI for the New York State Teachers Retirement System. He also served as a co-facilitator of the Freedom Dreaming for Educational Justice Project. At the start of the project, he was a tenured member of the social studies department of Guilderland High School, shortly transitioning into a role as Guilderland’s inaugural Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He passionately believes in the power of dreams and to his core envisions a world where all are seen, valued, and treated with the dignity they deserve.
Amy Salamone was a high-school English teacher for over 35 years and a proud co-director of the Capital District Writing Project.
Leah Werther is the K-12 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Teacher on Special Assignment for the Guilderland Central School District in Guilderland, New York. Prior to this role, she taught English Language Arts for 16 years. Leah serves as a co-director of the Capitalist District Writing Project and is the cochair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s Asian/Asian American caucus.
Keenan Jones is an author who currently resides in Plymouth, Minnesota, who spent his childhood in northwest Indiana (Gary, IN) and south suburban Chicago (University Park, IL). He comes from a family of educators, pastors, athletes, and musicians. After suffering a career-ending injury while playing college basketball, Keenan switched paths to pursue a career in education, serving as an elementary school teacher before returning to his passion of writing.
As an author, Keenan believes that literacy can inspire young people to dream and strive for greatness. He is committed to providing every child with the opportunity to immerse themselves in great books. Keenan writes stories that reflect the beauty of Black culture in America and aims to create representation in children’s literature. Keeanan’ latest book is Saturday Morning at the Shop.
Keenan is interviewed by Ali Adan who was born in a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. He arrived in the U.S. in 2004 at age 10. He is the oldest of 14 brothers and sisters and the first generation to attend college. He graduated from Suny Brockport with a bachelor’s degree in Physical Education. Before that, he went to Nottingham High School, where he met Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield. Bryan became a mentor and a guide in Ali’s life; he introduced books, poetry, and writing that helped Ali express himself and stay focused on his goals. Currently, Ali is a 5th-grade teacher at Delaware Primary School with a passion for inspiring young learners and a focus on fostering creativity, critical thinking, and a love for learning.
“Public writing not only helps students better understand, connect, and clarify the issues, but it also establishes their stance, empowers them to speak out, prepares them for activist leadership, and gives them hope for the future.”
“Stories are an important part of climate change work. They can persuade others by helping make the impact of climate change more real; they can also make inaccessible information more relatable; and they are essential to building inclusive and effective movements.”
“Recognizing our students’ humanity and acknowledging and leveraging the interdependence in this ecosystem—among the students, between the students and the teacher, and among the students, teachers, and texts—are the keys to addressing the wicked problem of teaching writers and of positioning our students as decision makers. This positioning means addressing each writer and writing situation as unique, the heart of the wicked problem that teachers face when guiding students to navigate the ecosystem in the classroom and to raise their awareness of their own decision-making power.”
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