Bread Loaf Teacher Network Newsletter |
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Summer BLTN Preview—Teaching and Writing in the Anti-Woke Moment: What Are the Stories that Sustain Us?
Spring 2023 Change Action Grants Awarded
Santa Fe Indian School to Host April 19 Event: “Planting the Seeds of Good Mental Health”
April 6 BLTN Meeting Recap: DEI and the Anti-Woke Climate
- BLTN NextGen Youth Share (and Dance) Across Difference at Aiken Retreat
Fellow Feature: Shaleisa Brewer's "These Halls Can Talk" Honored by Atlanta Board of Education
BreadWeb and Middlebury Email Accounts
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Summer BLTN Preview—Teaching and Writing in the Anti-Woke Moment: What Are the Stories that Sustain Us? |
We are pleased to share that over thirty-five fellows will be attending Bread Loaf for Summer 2023. This summer, our theme of "Teaching and Writing in the Anti-Woke Moment: What Are the Stories that Sustain Us?" will link our weekly conversations across campuses. Meetings on the Vermont campus will be held in-person each Thursday evening from June 29 through the end of July. Zoom connections will be provided for students on other campuses.
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Spring 2023 Change Action Grants Awarded |
Congratulations to the recipients of the first round of Change Action Grants from the Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation. Bread Loaf will offer a second round of Change Action Grants following the summer session.
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Fallon Abel teaches Finnish high school students about multi-disciplinary projects at The Sharon Academy in Vermont. Fallon received a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Research to carry out educational research in Finland this semester.
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Fallon Abel (MA '19) designed "a yearlong academic course and international collaboration between Vermont and Finnish high school students as they research and implement action projects that address problems in their respective communities. In doing so, youth will be empowered to make meaningful change in their communities, which will help remedy their sense of powerlessness and alienation – and thus, decrease rates of suicidality, self-harm, and substance use."
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Dr. Rabiah Khalil has secured a second year of funding for "Insight on Sight," a project which "seeks to centralize literature of North Africa in the high school English curriculum and provide space for dialogue that counters stereotypical representations of history, culture, religion, and identity of the region. Insight on Sight brings together high school students across two schools, one in Maryland and one in New York City (with Lauren Davenport), to discuss Leila Aboulela’s “Farida’s Eyes,” meet the author, create storyboards, share a meal, tour the United Nations, and ultimately develop a deeper understanding of the literature and of themselves."
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Susan Miera (MA '97) will apply Change funding to designing future writing workshops and to supporting students' documentary film work at Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS). The writing workshops "bring students and community members to write about and discuss indigenous/human issues," while the films will address the "physical, spiritual, and mental well-being of indigenous students at SFIS by building on the core values of pueblos and tribes. "
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Santa Fe Indian School to Host April 19 Event: "Planting the Seeds of Good Mental Health" |
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BLTN members and friends are invited to attend the final session of the four-event sequence of writing events sponsored by the Santa Fe Indian School, with support from BLTN and Write to Change. This event is hosted by the students in Bread Loafer Alicia Fritz's class. Note that the event time, 6:30 pm on April 19, is in Mountain Time (that's 8:30 p.m. Eastern.)
These events are a great opportunity for middle school or high school youth with an interest in writing and sharing and learning about the cultures of Northern New Mexico's pueblos.
Zoom link: http://bit.ly/SFIS_seeds
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April 6 BLTN Meeting Recap: DEI and the Anti-Woke Climate |
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Genithia Hogges did a masterful job facilitating a panel discussion on teaching and organizing, as well as managing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the anti-woke climate. On April 6, panelists Kayla Hostetler, Marianela Rivera, Leslie Schallock, and Donté Tates spurred discussion on how teachers and community organizers are navigating and claiming space in the anti-woke climate. Contact Tom McKenna if you are interested in viewing the meeting recording.
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Although the April 6 meeting was the final BLTN Zoom meeting for the year, conversations on this theme will continue all summer.
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BLTN NextGen Youth Share (and Dance) Across Difference at Aiken Retreat |
“Cultural difference was very big here, from how we danced to how we talked. It was all different but because of that I felt we could connect and learn about one another.” One youth member of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN)’s Next Generation Leadership Network beautifully summed up a March gathering of the seven-site network in Aiken, South Carolina. The gathering, partially underwritten by Conflict Transformation funds, brought four sites of the national network together for a long weekend focused on team building, cross-cultural and cross-generational understanding, and the sharing of strategy for local social action.
Aiken youth hosted guests from the Navajo Nation, Santa Fe Indian School and Louisville, Kentucky. The weekend began with cooperative team-building challenges (including low and high ropes courses), moved to community-based writing activities, a visit to the Center for African American History, Art and Culture, collaborative art activities, an evening with an activist guest speaker, and a culminating activity where youth learned about unique and not-so-unique social conflicts in each locale. Each night’s campfire turned into an impromptu dance party, where young people made sure joy was an integral part of the weekend’s agenda. Reflections on the event underscore BLTN’s commitment to learning across difference as part of Conflict Transformation. “There is a whole world of culture that I wasn’t aware of,” wrote one youth. Another remarked “We shared conflicts and we all learned something new about each site. This definitely opened more doors to opportunities to help each other across sites.”
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Fellow Feature: Shaleisa Brewer's "These Halls Can Talk" Honored by the Atlanta Board of Education |
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On February 6th, 2023, the Atlanta Board of Education recognized the contributions of "These Halls Can Talk" (THCT) to Atlanta Public Schools. THCT is the non-profit organization run by Shaleisa Brewer (MA '22) and students to record oral histories of former students, staff, and alumni of Atlanta's historic Booker T. Washington High School. Congratulations, Shaleisa, and THCT students!
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Clicking image will open Facebook Live page with video. Direct link is here. Tribute begins at 1:57.
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BreadWeb and Middlebury Email Accounts |
Active Bread Loaf School of English students, staff, and faculty will soon switch to using their Middlebury.edu email accounts to login to BreadWeb. Doing so will allow users to access Middlebury resources like Canvas and library resources from within the BreadWeb environment. Look for a notice in May about this shift. Others will continue using their home emails to login. Contact Tom McKenna with any BreadWeb questions.
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Please notify us of accomplishments you’d like to share in the monthly newsletter. Contact Tom McKenna if you’re interested in publishing in the BLTN Journal, under this year’s theme, “Teaching and Writing for Joy.” Look for that issue in mid-May. This issue is the final newsletter of the 2022-23 school year. The next issue will be published in September.
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