With vigor, grace, and courage, in this brilliant new book, Ehrenworth raises the stakes in the teaching of writing.
—Maureen Barbieri, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University
Mary Ehrenworth tempts, suggests, arouses; she helps us over the obstacles to the mastery of writing, of rediscovering the self through storytelling and writing poetry.
—Maxine Greene, Teachers College, Columbia University
Looking to Write will open your English/language arts classroom to deeper seeing and knowing.
—Tom Romano, Miami University, Ohio
Breathe new passion into teaching writing. Teach it as an aesthetic experience. Have your students of writing start with art.
Mary Ehrenworth particularly appreciates the meaning and inspiration the visual arts can afford the writing process. An art historian turned literacy consultant, she conducts workshops that use visual prompts as tools to help students locate significant things to write about and craft beautiful writing in response. She also helps teachers discover new possibilities for themselves as curriculum developers and storytellers.
Each of Ehrenworth's chapters describes one way to employ visual art in the writing workshop with reasons to do it, guides for trying it, images, and worksheets. Included throughout the book are breathtaking examples of student writing using artworks as starting points for:
- imagining different perspectives and making them real through story
- practicing empathetic imagination to create narratives and poems of desire and loss
- giving imagination play through contemporary mythmaking
- restructuring identities by communing with a particular work.
Look closely.
In the looking, find things to write about.
And in the writing, experience what Dewey called that "delightful perception."
There's no better way to get there than with Looking to Write.
