Writers in the Schools

Who
K-12 students, teachers, graduate students, writers. Teachers of K-12 students can apply to have a professional teaching writer do workshops in their classroom. Local writers or poets receive free training to become a WITS instructor.

Professional teaching writers who are mentoring the project are:
Eleni Sikelianos, director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver, is the author of six books of poetry and one book of creative nonfiction. Her writings and translations have won many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Fulbright Writing Fellowship, and The National Poetry Series.

Jack Collom is the author of nearly twenty books of poetry, and of several classics on teaching poetry to children. He is resident faculty at Naropa University, and has twice been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.  He has been teaching poetry in public schools for over 30 years.

What
Writers train with master professional writer Jack Collom, observing him as he conducts a residency in a public school. Writers then set up their own residencies in an elementary, middle or high-school classroom with teachers who volunteer to participate in the program. Residencies are five to ten weeks in length and writers visit a classroom once or twice a week. Writers in residence inspire student writing, help with revision, and to produce an anthology. This anthology contains one piece of writing by every student involved in the residencies.  The residencies end with a school-wide reading and celebration of the students’ work.

To view our list of writers and authors, please click here.

Why
Connecting a student’s experiences with his or her own writing makes writing relevant and the revision, reading and publication process exciting. When writing, revising and sharing writing with their peers and the resident writer result in contest entries, public reading and printed anthologies, students realize that books are made by other people quite like themselves.

We've loosely modeled our program on highly effective writers in the schools organizations in this country, such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City, Writers in the Schools in Houston and Boise, and California Poets in the Schools in San Francisco. These programs have proved that placing active poets, playwrights and fiction writers in the classroom inspires the young writer to make leaps of the literary imagination, and that this excitement and sense of autonomy impacts all other areas of language learning.

Where
Metro Denver, with statewide plans.

How Much
Cost share from schools for each residency (of up to 28 workshops) varies.

Start Here
EDUCATORS: To host a series of Writers in Schools sessions in your school, contact Josephine Jones, Director of Programs, 303.894.7951 x15 or jones@coloradohumanities.org.

WRITERS: This program is open to any writer who has been trained to conduct Writers in the Schools residency, either in our program or another state’s. DU is offering writers who wish to be residents in Writers in Schools free training beginning January 2009. Contact Josephine Jones, Director of Programs, 303.894.7951 x15 or jones@coloradohumanities.org.

University of Denver is a proud program partner