Rhode Island Writing Project: Spring 2019

The Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference 2019 was an amazing event. There were two workshop sessions before the keynote speaker, Tina Cane, spoke. I wish I could have attended all of the workshops; they ranged from involving more imagery in personal writing, to talking about race, to involving mindfulness, to guided meditation and reiki! Unfortunately, I could only choose two workshops, so for the first session I chose “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”: Revolutionize Your Relationships and Practice.

This workshop was led by three English teachers: Ryan Burns, Janine Boiselle, and Ashlee Burns. This workshop began with a prompt asking us why we were here, if there was anything we needed to put away to be here more fully, and if there was anything we wanted to hold onto while we were here. Some people chose to read aloud what they wrote and then we split into three groups.

In groups, when working with Boiselle, we had another writing prompt asking us what was something you wished your teachers knew about you. After the prompt we shared and then discussed when is best to give this prompt out to our students: immediately before they know us, or after a little while when we have built trust? We then sorted real student answers to this prompt and discussed the findings and how important getting to know your students is.

In A. Burns’ group, she showed us pictures of her classroom. We talked about how creating a welcoming classroom environment is essential. We also discussed what even the little bits of décor meant to her and her students and the importance of hanging student work. Burns also showed us an assignment she gives to her students asking them to be detectives and to try to figure out her personality from what they can find around the room. This gets them walking around and exploring their classroom, possibly even making them more comfortable with Burns since they are really getting to know her as a person as well as a teacher.

In the second session, I attended the Finding Solace in Comics: Graphic Novels that Support Social Emotional Learning. This workshop was run by English teacher Michael Gianfrancesco and artist Cara Bean. Gianfrancesco went over a brief history of comics and then discussed some graphic novels that talk about history, mental illness, LGBTQ+ themes, and race. He gave us comics to flip through while he discussed these books and went over how some of them can even be brought into the classroom.

Bean discussed how we can bring doodling into the classroom and even had us create our own doodles. She talked about how most kids who doodle are in fact paying attention and which parts of the brain are activated during the doodles, as well as the benefits of it. She also talked about times when she was able to connect and help students through drawing when they weren’t comfortable saying what they needed to out loud.

The keynote speaker, Tina Cane’s poetry was absolutely amazing. She discussed some history behind the poems she read and talked about some ideas she had with teaching. Cane also had us list people who taught us important lessons and write a letter to one of them. From that letter we cricled words that stood out to us and created a poem from those words. Cane went over how she feels that the easiest way to teach students how to write poetry is to start with letters.

Overall this conference gave me a lot to work with for when I get out into the field. I am excited to use what I have learned to build my classroom as well as build positive relationships with my students. I look forward to next spring’s Rhode Island Writing Project Conference.