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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In December of this year, my students and I were made aware of an “innovation proposal” that would close our public, open-enrollment high school and re-open it beholden to a private board. The “innovation school” process takes advantage of a curious loophole in Massachusetts state law that allows any parent, teacher, or organization related to
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Leslie Schallock, English Teacher at Secure Juvenile Detention Center, VA: In the spring of 2020 I saw a blurb for a new book release, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, by Nicole Fleetwood. I bought it, read it, and let it simmer until last summer when I was inspired to do a
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Over the past two years, What’s the Story? Vermont has begun to redefine “community spaces.” Originally conceived as the Vermont Young People Social Action Team, the program is in its eighth year of offering an unparalleled opportunity for Vermont students to work on issues of local importance, conducting interviews and other forms of research. During
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I am pleased to announce a new addition to the BLTN administrative team. BLSE alumna and former BLTN Fellow Yaneris Collado will be joining the Bread Loaf Teacher Network as our new associate director. Yaneris, who completed her M.A. at the Bread Loaf School of English in 2021, comes to us from Andover Bread Loaf/Phillips Academy where
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It has taken me several days just to get to a point where I am starting to somewhat feel like I am in another galaxy or atmosphere of recalibration, regulation, and reflection (or as my friend Anna has framed it, revolutionary rest) after finishing my 13th year of teaching. Growing up, I used to look
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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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When I think about BLTN’s commitment to youth advocacy and activism through literacy, teacher and youth collaboration across and within difference, and inclusivity and socially transformative pedagogy, I could not imagine, given our mission, how we would not engage in discussions about anti-racist pedagogies. We cannot be activists and support our students’ activism if we
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When I first read Parable of the Sower in a 2017 Bread Loaf School of English class titled Cli-fi, it gave me chills. The apocalyptic novel, published in 1993 and set in 2024, seems prophetic, and in no uncertain terms, eerie. Butler’s work stood out to me because it was so prescient and seemed to predict,
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Background Last summer we had the opportunity and privilege to meet with Bread Loaf professor Dr. April Baker-Bell as she presented on linguistic justice during a BLTN session. Her calls for “critical conscious-raising of linguistic justice” and for confronting systems of white supremacy in both language and society were catalysts for our collaborative unit for
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