Teachers Write 2021 – An Invitation to Reflect, Write, and Renew

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we need as writers, in terms of self-care, in order to be able to tell stories.

Sometimes I write about real people, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the subject of my new picture book biography, Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor, or Coral Restoration Foundation founder Ken Nedimyer, who’s profiled in my picture book The Brilliant Deep.

And sometimes I write stories about characters who are Real – not real in the sense that they actual people in the news or folks counted in the census, but Real in the sense that they feel like they could be our neighbors, or the kids we teach, or that guy we saw that time at the dog park. Real in the way they hold certain truths about what it means to be flawed and vulnerable and human.

I’m going to tell you a secret today about both kinds of books: writing them well begins not with looking out but with looking in, at ourselves. And that brings me to the theme of Teachers Write 2021.

Reflection, Writing, and Renewal.

This has been a year unlike any other. And Teachers Write 2021 is going to be a different season of writing. There’s no pretending that we are the same people who gathered online just a few years ago to tackle daily writing prompts. This time we’ve lived through, this collective trauma, has changed us. For far too many, it has left literal holes in our lives – people who should be here with us are gone, careers that we loved have been swept out from under us, or faded into jobs we no longer recognize. Even those who escaped the harshest effects of the pandemic are exhausted and emotionally raw in so many ways.

It takes time to rebuild from that, and that’s the work we’ll focus on as we come together to write this summer – making time and space to reflect and renew in ways that strengthen us as writers and as teachers. One of the gifts of living a writing life is that it creates that space for us, and in looking inward, we not only begin the process of healing ourselves but also developing the insight and empathy we need to tell other stories.

Teachers Write 2021 will begin on June 28 and wrap up on July 30, with each week’s reflection and writing prompt delivered to your email inbox on Monday morning. Educator-writer Jen Vincent will also host weekly check-in posts on her blog, where those who wish can continue the conversation online, sharing reflections, writing, and feedback. And on July 8^th, everyone’s invited to a special Teachers Write Happy Hour with Authors, where we’ll chat informally about how we renew our spirits and fill the well for our writing lives during tough times.

This is going to be a no-pressure, participate-on-your-own-terms summer, so feel free to sign up, even if you think you might only try one or two prompts, or if you’d just like to watch from the sidelines. However you choose to participate, I think you’ll come out of this season of writing feeling a little more whole and with new strategies and ideas for writing that will help your students along on their journeys, too.

Join us, won’t you? You can sign up for Teachers Write 2021 here, and then look for an email from me in your in-box on Monday, June 28.