Last week while visiting Ireland, I found myself in the strange position of answering my cousins’ questions about gun violence in America. As we sat around the table with little cousins running in and out of the room, the adults wondered--how can we tolerate having...
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Poetry in the Bronx!
It was a joy to be the Visiting Poet at PS 86 in the Bronx last week! I attended kindergarten there, and PS 86 was also the polling place in our neighborhood. I have many memories of accompanying my parents to vote, and of my mother working as an election worker...
Watching an Author Make Magic
At the school where I work, the vast majority of children qualify for free and reduced lunch. A quarter of our K-3 students are English Language Learners, many from Brazil. Most of the children had never met an author, or had a book signed… until author Ana Crespo...
I’m on the Bronx Heroes podcast!
What a delight and honor to be invited as a guest on the “Bronx Heroes” podcast! My conversation with hosts Dan Zauderer and Rina Madhani was far-ranging. I got to talk about my deep affection for my home borough, growing up in a firefighting family, and how I try to...
Vitamin P: A Poetry Workshop for Teachers
This week I led a professional development session for teachers, “Vitamin P: Boosting the Use of Poetry in the Literacy Block.” For three hours, we played with poetry! We talked about how to infuse poetry across the curriculum, find rich and meaningful poems, and...
A portrait of Octavia Butler in poems: Ibi Zoboi’s STAR CHILD
There's one book I can’t stop thinking about-- STAR CHILD: A BIOGRAPHICAL CONSTELLATION OF OCTAVIA ESTELLE BUTLER by Ibi Zoboi. The brilliant combination of poetry and nonfiction is what drew me to Zoboi’s amazing middle-grade biography of author Octavia Butler....
Playing with Poetry– A Circle of Sun
Playing with poetry in the classroom-- that’s one of the best parts of my job as a Literacy Coach in an elementary school. Recently, I introduced the poem “Circle of Sun” by Rebecca Kai Dotlich in the first-grade classroom I work in each morning. It’s the opening...
Chasing Clouds- a Poetry Party!
On November 20, I will be joining a poetry party in England-- and you can come too! Back in 2016, I visited London and happened upon an enchanting holiday fair. It’s where I took this picture: Years later, I wrote a poem called “Wintertime Fair,” and it was...
Winning a grant is a pretty great feeling… and then watching the impact of that grant on young children is just joyful.
When author Ana Crespo made an author visit via Zoom to the school where I work as a Literacy Coach on Cape Cod, the joy in classrooms was palpable. Most children in our K-3 school had never met an author before, and they were excited to meet Ana. Crespo, a native of...
Finding Poetry in Robotics? Yes!
WHAT IS A FRIEND? I am delighted to be a part of a new poetry book for middle graders that answers this question. It’s a collection of poems about all aspects of friendship-- getting along, competing, trying out new ventures together. My poem, “Team,” is about a...