All entries by this author

Meet the Fellows: BLTN 2023-24

May 31st, 2023 | By and

BLTN Fellows come to us from 21 U.S. states, Washington D.C., Egypt, and Scotland. They will study at all three of our campuses this summer, and some will participate as online students. Throughout the summer they will discuss issues in the field with a special focus for finding voice and impact in the anti-woke climate.

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Joy Notes – Full Text

May 31st, 2023 | By

Kayla Hostetler I have been blessed to have so many joyful moments in my classroom over the last twelve years of teaching. I can remember the very first smiles, jokes, and laughs from my first year of teaching in 2010. Years of writing, projects, poetry nights, family literacy nights, community volunteering, after-school meetings, and soccer

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NextGen Youth Learn, Write, Listen, Share, Act, Love, and Dance across Difference

May 31st, 2023 | By

Here are a few of the school year’s events and highlights from the BLTN’s youth leadership network, BLTN NextGen. To keep up to date on NextGen events and community action work during the school year, be sure to sign up to receive the monthly BLTN Newsletter. NextGen Cross-site travel and local programming have been funded

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Change Action Grants: BLTN Sparks Conflict Transformation

May 31st, 2023 | By

Middlebury’s Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation fortified BLTN’s longstanding tradition of teaching and learning across difference by supporting grants to teachers and community organizers who designed school or community projects focused on creative solutions to conflict-based systems and situations. BLTN awarded 16 grants during the 2022-23 school year. (A new round of offerings will be

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NextGen Confronts Violence

May 31st, 2023 | By

On May 18, NextGen members and supporters gathered to discuss safety and violence in their communities. The meeting had an air of poignancy and urgency. One of NextGen’s founding youth members from South Carolina, Na’Zae Baltimore was killed less than a month prior, in an act of senseless gun violence. After a tribute to Na’Zae,

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BLTN Classroom Spotlights: Virtual Visits to Teachers’ Communities, Schools, and Classrooms

Jun 3rd, 2022 | By

“Educators spend most of their time distanced from their colleagues. Instead of forcing them to compete with each other, we should help them find new ways to work together.” By Jeffrey Mirel and Simona Goldin Jeffrey Mirel and Simona Goldin, “Alone in the Classroom: Why Teachers are too Isolated,” The Atlantic, April 17, 2012 Even

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BLTN NextGen: Learning and Growing in Community Spaces

Jun 3rd, 2022 | By

Once again this year, the BLTN NextGen Youth Advisory Board (YAB) led cross-network planning for the network as a whole. In March of this year, following last year’s successful cross-site virtual writing conference, “A Day in the Pandemic,” the YAB convened youth and adult participants from across the nation to write together under the theme

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A Day in the Pandemic: A BLTN NextGen Writing Retreat

May 28th, 2021 | By

On February 20, 2021, the Youth Advisory Board of the BLTN Next Generation Leadership held a virtual writing retreat drawing youth and educator participants from Alaska to Kenya, with many sites in between. Our goal was to capture moments and insights from the remarkable and trying life of students and teachers during the pandemic. When

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Re-Imagining the Teaching of Writing: An International Collaboration

May 28th, 2021 | By

Early in the morning on February 27, 2021 for attendees from all U.S. time zones, and early in the evening Pakistan time, over 70 educators gathered from across the farthest reaches BLTN, the Andover Bread Loaf Peace Literacy Network. Inspired by the 10th anniversary of Karachi-based The School of Writing (TSW), Director Mohsin Tejani (MA

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“We Be Family”: A Student and Teacher Collaboration

May 28th, 2021 | By

“It was very fun writing a chapter together,” comments Kayla. “We laughed reviewing memories to build the chapter. We learned a lot about how to balance both of our voices and connect back into the larger framework of the overall book. We hope that the book will be purchased by educators and community organizations, to

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