Fall 2017: Three OWP Writing Coaches Recently Published
Open gallery
Black is Beautiful
by Kara Hinderlie
A kindergarten teacher uses images, literature, poetry, and collages — as well as her own history — to challenge students’ implicit bias and preconceived notions surrounding the color black and to teach the lesson that Black is beautiful.
Kara Hinderlie teaches at Irvington School in Portland, Oregon. She works with the Oregon Writing Project, specializing in the emergent young writer.
Beyond Just a Cells Unit: What My Science Students Learned from the Story of Henrietta Lacks
by Gretchen Kraig-Turner
A science teacher includes Black voices and Black history in her classroom by building curriculum around The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In doing so, she shows how nonfiction books should not be relegated to language arts but can be effective in a science classroom.
Gretchen Kraig-Turner now teaches at Burlington-Edison High School in Burlington, Washington. Kraig-Turner’s article “Medical Apartheid: Teaching the Tuskegee Syphilis Study” was published in the Winter 2016–17 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine.
Who Do I Belong To? A Black Teacher’s Dilemma
by Natalie Labossiere
A teacher in a predominantly white school and classroom describes how she chose to protect and educate one of her Black students, rather than use him to educate her white students.
Natalie Labossiere is a high school teacher in Beaverton, Oregon. She has worked with Portland area teachers to develop social studies curriculum for their classrooms.
