Penn-Edison/Writers House Partnership
From Al Filreis, 4/27/96:
Dear Writers House planning group pals:
A student at the Edison Fareira High School - William McKeever - has
visited the Writers House and is very very keen to be involved in our
programs for high school writers beginning in the fall. Anyway, you might
be interested to know that William has his own
homepage.
Minutes of meeting: January 26, 1996
Present: Evelyn Bender, Al Filreis, Shawn Walker
A few of the major tasks facing this partnership: identification of
writers at Edison, transportation so that kids can participate in Writers
House events, regular planning and coordination.
What can be done with 10th and 12th grade classes? (We discussed
that the Penn-Edison partnership already in place would make it easy to
coordinate events at first, until our own program is well set in place,
at which time we can expand this affiliation.) Tim Waples at Penn
presently directs the 12th grade partnership, and Karen Schiff directs
the 10th grade partnership.
Some ideas: Theme workshops. Transportation has already been
arranged for a partnership with Edison and the Penn Med School. If there
is room on the bus that they use, possibly some writers could come for
regular workshops at the Writers House. We discussed the possibility of
providing a stipend (budget undiscernable) for regular attendance at a
workshop which meets once a month for a year at the Writers House. The
students could also work ahead and on their own with poetry exercises in
the Penn-Edison program.
Overnight Event: Early in September or October, we would like to
plan a day and a half retreat for some Edison students, from Friday-day
until Saturday. They could have all sorts of events: workshops,
cooperative writing, etc. Lorene Cary was suggested as someone who would
work well with high school students for part of this event.
Edison already has some cooperative precedent with Germantown Friends
School. GFS has a great English Department; the contact would be Anne
Gerbner. Possibly cooperative efforts could include a retreat like
above, cooperative writing, etc.
Also, Evelyn suggested that it would be good for high school
students to have a) some literary/poetry material that they could own
themselves and b) guidance about what writers they might be interested in
reading. This could be given through workshops, such as described
above.
In addition, we would like the Edison and GFS students to be able to
cooperate to put together a literary chapbook of their own writing next
fall. In conjunction with this, we could put together a film of students
reading their work, kind of like a "Video Chapbook." Edison has its own
television studio.
Along with forming partnerships through student programs, we would
like to involve high school teachers with the Writers House. However, we
did not get far with specifics in this category.
Aurel Nister and William McKeever attended the January 20th event in
the Writers House. Al suggested we pursue asking William to take on a
sort of "coordinating role" from the Edison end of the program:
identifying other writers, coming up with ideas, etc. We are working on
getting him an e-mail account.
Minutes written by Shawn Lynn Walker.