Dear Parents,
I have read that in Japan, teachers are given ample time to collaborate with colleagues and to craft and recraft their lessons to near perfection. Most teachers, especially during these times, don’t have this luxury. They are planning for tomorrow’s lesson while simultaneously teaching today’s lesson (on two platforms), covering for absent colleagues, writing reports, advising students, and keeping up with correcting and correspondence.
But somehow, extraordinary teachers, like ours, manage to create and deliver outstanding lessons anyway. Through thoughtful and creative planning, reflection, feedback from students and colleagues, and years of teaching, their lessons become more than noteworthy. And sometimes, someone outside our small school community notices. This is what happened to Steve Glazer last week.
Minutes after Steve and I talked about and looked at Irene’s artfully illustrated and extraordinary thirty page book, articulating her deep understanding of the life and writings of Emily Dickinson, Steve received this message from the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts:
I’m writing to you today about a lesson plan you created during the National Endowment for the Humanities Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry and Place workshop in Summer 2017. As part of our efforts to expand the Museum’s educational resources and make them accessible during this unprecedented time, we are selecting a small collection of these lesson plans to be showcased on our website. We would love to include yours, as an excellent model of creatively integrating Dickinson into the classroom.
Steve was delighted to receive this honor, and we are so proud of him and of all of the students over the years who have shared his love for and deep understanding of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Please join me in congratulating Steve.
For more information about the Dickinson Museum, visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org.
Warmly,
Jean
