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From the BLTN Director: Teaching and Writing for Joy

As I sit here preparing another “From the BLTN Director” statement, I am filled with anticipation and excitement that BLTN fellows will be gathering in person on our three Bread Loaf campuses this summer. I look forward to conversations in the Barn in Vermont and to the pictures posted on BLSE social media from our

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The Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal, published annually, is edited by Tom McKenna, BLTN Director of Communications. Beverly Moss, BLTN Director, provides the guiding vision for the network and its digital initiatives. Contact Beverly Moss or Tom McKenna for more information or to submit content for upcoming issues.

Learning in Community Spaces

With this, the 12th issue of the BLTN Journal, we invited submissions under BLTN’s year-long theme of “Learning in Community Spaces.” In a year where uncertainty is a constant, BLTN teachers remind us of the critical importance of finding resources and finding resourcefulness in the communities, students, families, and colleagues with whom they work. 

In “Learning across Community Spaces: An Urban Exchange,” Monica Rowley of Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia reflects, “I must note, as a teacher of over twenty years, that this year has been one of the most challenging years of my career—rolling absences, waves of [COVID-19] transmission, concerns around building safety and ventilation, a returning population unsure of what the year will bring or if another shoe is waiting to drop, and all of us not used to classroom environments…” Lauren Jewett, in “Revolutionary Rest: Reflections on Survival and Hope at Year’s End,” reminds us, “There has been no collective breath to fully process every micro-trauma and major-trauma or to recognize that what some may term ‘disenfranchised grief’ is actually grief that needs to be validated and honored. Educators have accumulated a ‘trauma load.’”

And yet…

The pieces in this issue give us much to celebrate. From BLTN teachers’ generous invitations to one another to enter their classrooms— dropping shoes and all—to their steadfast commitment to the intelligence, eloquence, and capabilities of their students, to their tenacious defense of student voice in public discourse, maybe this issue does offer us that collective breath.

Yaneris Collado, BLTN’s new Associate Director, remarks on the value of creating “brave spaces” and “safe spaces” in our work together. As we release this issue, What’s the Story? The Vermont Young People Social Action Team, is hosting Yaneris, her cohort from Chelsea, Massachusetts, along with BLTN NextGen students and mentors from New Mexico and South Carolina in a documentary film showcase which honors the very different community spaces from which the film makers hail. I think you’ll feel BLTNers’ bravery, and their commitment to helping to create safety, across all of the pieces in this issue. 

Not to be missed in this issue, too, is Kayla Hostetler’s reminder of the power of BLTN collaborations—which often extend the boundaries of school learning— to foster cross-generational learning. When I visited Kayla’s students in May, I pitched in as a grandfather roto-tilled the ground while BLTN NextGen youth cleared obstructions. A grandmother simultaneously pulled weeds, encouraged everyone, and taught us about what might grow best in the plot the youth were cultivating as a memorial for peers who have lost their lives in Aiken’s recent violence. On the same trip, I marveled at Shaleisa Brewers’ students’ accomplishment in documenting the rich history of Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington high school (interviewing, among many alumni luminaries, a set of centenarian siblings). Meanwhile, I received a text from Ceci Lewis, Site Mentor for La Casa Roja, our NextGen group on the Navajo Nation, as they finished up a set of films capturing survival lessons from Navajo elders. 

This year, Middlebury College embarks on a multi-year journey to form a school-wide collaborative in “conflict transformation.” As we begin to take on some of BLTN Director Beverly Moss’s probing questions about “Teaching and Writing for Joy,” we will contribute our ongoing learning from the community spaces to which BLTN teachers show such extraordinary commitment.

As always, we welcome your comments.

-Tom McKenna, Editor

Featured

• Organizing Youth Voice when the Stakes are High
• Fraught Imaginaries: The Messy and Necessary Work of Giving Voice to Incarcerated Youth
• What’s the Story? A *National* Young People Social Action Team
• Yaneris Collado: From BLTN Fellow to BLTN Staff
• Revolutionary Rest: Reflections on Survival and Hope at Year’s End