Tag: Teaching Writing

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...

Vlog: The Feminine Pronoun Series: “I Contain Multitudes” (No. 34)

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
I titled this video “I Contain Multitudes, “as a nod to poet Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” I love the poem because it is an expansive celebration of the visceral kingdom, the body, pleasure, our mortal reality, and the justice of seeing everything as part of a converging whole. I like to think...

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...

The National Women’s March: Sisters, What Are You Willing To Destroy?

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
What follows are the remarks and the poem (“Oath: 1957”) I delivered on Saturday, January 21, 2017 at the St. Louis arm of the National Women’s March. When I was first asked to participate in the national women’s March, I declined because I thought it was just another example in the long line of...

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 ...

The Feminine Pronoun Series No. 32: #WRITERSRESIST

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
All over the country, writers assembled in vocal resistance to the rhetoric and planned policies of the incoming Trump administration. The movement was named #WRITERSRESIST. (You can find out more about #WRITERSRESIST here. In this video, my kids and I I travel to Millsaps College in Jackson, Mis...

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...

The Feminine Pronoun Series: Poetry. Pedagogy. Justice. (No. 30)

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
The tagline on my website for Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC is “Poetry. Pedagogy. Justice.” Those three powerful terms almost encompass my life/work philosophy. I say “almost” because Parenting is also a major part of my life’s work, as it were, and each of the terms inform each other and tak...

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...