Fall 2020: Recent Published OWP Writers
In the most recent issue of Rethinking Schools, three Oregon Writing Project teachers published poetry and articles: Kara Hinderlie Stroman, Mercedes Muñoz, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Both a poem and an essay about the difficulty for teachers, especially Black teachers, to return to their classrooms and teach after watching George Floyd’s death, but also about the necessity of turning that pain into a powerful lesson. Kara’s work is testimony, as always, about how to teach about race in a kindergarten classroom. Kara Hinderlie Stroman teaches kindergarten at Irvington School in Portland, Oregon. Her article “Black Is Beautiful” (fall 2017 issue of Rethinking Schools) appears in the book Teaching for Black Lives.
Mercedes’ poem came out of a poetry workshop led by Mariela Tyler during an OWP Teachers of Color Curriculum Camp. In the poem, she witnesses and describes the pain and horror of this year, but shows us to survive. Mercedes Muñoz is a special education teacher at Franklin High School in Portland, Oregon, is Oregon’s 2020 Teacher of the Year. She received the 2021 Award for Teaching Excellence by the NEA Foundation.
This thought-provoking article provides teachers with both insights and resources for moving beyond despair about fossil fuel headlines and into hope. As she writes, “Pipeline resistance, led largely by Indigenous people, is happening all over this country and our world, and our students deserve a curriculum that bears witness to this growing movement, and gives them an opportunity to critically reflect on their place in it.” Ursula Wolfe-Rocca s a Rethinking Schools editor and is an organizer and curriculum writer for the Zinn Education Project.
