Category: Strategies for Teachers & Writers

How To Talk About Race, Class, Gender, and Ability

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
  Have you ever had your ant-racist beliefs questioned, and were unsure how to explain why you feel the way you do? Here’s a way to organize your thinking so you never have to feel “stumped” again.     JOIN MY NEXT CREATIVE WRITING CLASS!  

Poetry in Spaces of Recovery

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
  I love the photo above because you can’t tell which hand is mine. Just like if I was standing together with these women in the Magdalene house, a safe place for women recovering from addiction and a life in the sex trade, (whether being trafficked or deploying their labor in instances of surv...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #5.The Writing Classroom is Uniquely Suited for Finding Undiscovered Gems

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
In part four of this series – “Our Classrooms Benefit from the Voices of our Most Marginalized Students” — I discussed (partly) how valuable the “marginalized voices” are in our classrooms. But really, I was speaking to the notion that the “marginalized” is the majority. I encourage you...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #4. Our Classrooms Benefit from the Voices of our Most Marginalized Students

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
  In last week’s blog, “The Students are Co-Creators In the Classroom,”  I emphasized how important envisioning a future past the classroom for poor students and students of color is. But often times, when educators and activists discuss “poor students and students of color,” it is as ...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #3.The Students Are Co-Creators in the Classroom

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
In the last entry in this series, “Students Are Not Empty Vessels,” the general point could be summed up as “the students have a past.” A past that can be unpacked and surveyed for what is usable and valuable in the classroom. This week’s blog, “The Students are Co-creators in the Cl...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #2.The Students Are Not Empty Vessels

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
One of my favorite photos of Fannie Lou Hamer is one of her in front of a mass meeting teaching freedom songs. Mrs. Hamer came from a spiritual tradition that included countless songs. Some of them can be heard on the album Songs My Mother Taught Me, and I often devote a portion of my interactiv...

5 LESSONS TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER: #1. Writing & Speaking in Standard English is Not Proof of Intellect

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
At a recent presentation, I talked about five lessons teachers could take from the life of Fannie Lou Hamer. In response to my assertion that the ability to speak or write in Standard English was not an indication of intellect, an audience member said the following: “Speaking and writing in stan...

The TOP 5 Ways Faculty Can Support Student Activists

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
You want to jump up and shout because the students on your campus or the individuals in your community are calling out structural bias and even protesting, organizing, and making real headway against it.   Or you’re wondering what the hell is going on. Either way the young people need to be supp...

The Feminine Pronoun Series #23: These Are the Times That Try Women’s Souls

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
In this week’s vlog I watched the democratic convention and spent time with the Hurston Hughes Scholars. HHS is a self organized group of black parents and teachers who read black literature and invite guests like me and fellow poet Cheeraz Gormon to share our work with them. Coincidentally, I wa...