The Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN) has named seven Teaching, Writing, and Acting for Change Fellows for 2022-23, a cohort to support the goals of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation. Additionally, BLTN is offering Change Action Grants to active BLTN educators who undertake school or community projects focused on “conflict transformation”: the development of creative solutions to conflict-based systems and situations.

Here, from the announcement, is a description of the initiative and the fellowships.

The Change Initiative. As part of a Middlebury initiative on conflict transformation, the Bread Loaf School of English is offering a new curriculum on Teaching, Writing, and Acting for Change at our Vermont campus. The 2022 curriculum consists of three courses – Writing, Identity, Change; Transcultural Literacies; and Creative Practice: Reimagining the Classroom – that will meet independently and jointly across the summer. Our aim is to engage a networked cohort of teachers in the investigation and development of practices for negotiating within and across difference, navigating conflict, and catalyzing social activism and cultural change….During the 2022-23 academic year, Change Fellows will pursue a BLTN project that they will develop out of their Change coursework, in collaboration with BLTN peers, and put into action in their schools or communities.

Announcing our 2022-23 Change Initiative Fellows:

• Rabiah Abdullah, Roland Park Country School, Baltimore, Maryland
• Mary Baillie, Grangemouth High School, Grangemouth, Scotland
• Jacob Belvery, Conestoga Jr./Sr. High School, Murray, Nebraska
• Amanda Donovan, Match Charter Public Middle School, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
• Meriwether Joyner, Conservatory Green High School, Denver, Colorado
• Marianela Rivera, Andover/Lawrence Public Schools, Lawrence, Massachusetts
• Anna Russell Thornton, YES Prep Southeast Secondary, Houston, Texas

Bread Loaf Professor Brenda Brueggemann will coordinate the collaboration among all students in the Change Initiative courses. BLTN Director Beverly Moss notes the synergy between the Change Initiatives and BLTN’s core commitments, and anticipates the summer’s planning and conversations.

“The Change Initiative, with its focus on conflict transformation, and the Bread Loaf Teacher Network, with its focus on “socially transformative teaching and learning,” engage teachers and their students from diverse backgrounds in pedagogically-innovative collaborations across differences.  In a moment where mistrust, divisiveness, and violence dominate national discussions, the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation provides a major source of support for BLTN fellows and all BLSE students to explore with their students and peers ways that literacy and creative expression can lead to activism grounded in effective communication.  We look forward to the Change Initiative projects that emerge from the Change curriculum and BLTN collaborations.”