Current and past calendars are here.

Conference speaking contact info is here.

A personal word about school visits:

When I visit schools, I teach. Within the assembly program, in all grades, K through college, I tell stories that teach personal narrative writing skills: where do ideas come from? How can we capture them? What do we do with them when we capture them? How do we give them voice and texture and meaning and flow and rhythm and heart?

I in-service teachers as well, during the assembly time, and often in separate workshops for all teachers in all grades. How do we teach to the test without testing? We don’t have to. We just have to get in touch with our good common sense and ways of telling that will inspire us as well as our students.  Let’s tell our stories. Speak them, draw them, sing them, move to them, and write them. You know how to do this; I’ll remind you, give you concrete tools for all grades, and set your feet back on the path, rested and ready to go to work. Use the literature as your ally, reclaim your classroom, empower yourself and your students — you can do it.

My books and others are the backbone of each assembly. I’ll make sure you have them in advance, before I arrive, so students can be prepared and ready for me. In assembly,  I show how personal narrative turns into stories. Students AND teachers bring notebooks to assembly and leave with stories to tell. We inspire one another. Students will embrace their stories, understand their importance, and ask to begin writing those stories as soon as they get back to their classrooms. Be prepared. Write with them.

I do up to four assembly programs in a day, two in a half-day.

I teach writing workshops or residencies as well. My sweet spot for teaching writing residencies is grades 4 & 5 and middle school. We can talk about how a writing workshop day is different and how it comes together for your students, teachers, schedules, and needs.

I hold an MFA in Writing and have taught writing in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms for over 20 years. I taught “Writing Techniques for Teachers” ECED 422, at Towson University in Baltimore, before moving to Atlanta. I always learn as much as I teach.

More on how I work in schools and teach personal narrative writing can be found here and here.

To start the teaching/school visit conversation, begin here.