Teaching and Offerings
Poetry of Place
Helping Students Write Their Worlds
Offering: Teacher workshops in guiding students to engage their worlds through poetry.
I offer a sequence of lessons that build a core set of techniques designed to connect them with the earth… and with their own perceptions.
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Flexible sessions include:
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“Education by Metaphor,” using techniques tested from 4th grade to college.
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“Classroom Games” to spark playfulness in language and thought
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“Visual Awareness,” with innovative methods of responding to visual art
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“Poetry & Place” to help students engage the natural world, from urban to rural landscapes
When The Art Is The Floor
Offering: Collaboration across art disciplines in shaping “art for our times”.
This is a film about the work of French-American artist Cadine Navarro’s installation entitled “It Sounds Like Love,” based in the recorded sounds of prairie seeds. I wrote the script and did the narration, along with co-teaching sessions with her in the gallery.
Poems About Visual Art
Teacher: Mindy Holmes, 8th Grade Language Arts / Heritage Middle School / Westerville, Ohio
Guest poet: Terry Hermsen / Otterbein University
Artwork by: Cadine Navarro, “It Sounds Like Love,” produced from recordings of native prairie seeds
In May of 2022, six students from Ms. Mindy Holmes’ 8th grade classes at Heritage Middle School in Westerville, Ohio, volunteered to read some of their classmates’ poems based in French-American artist Cadine Navarro’s installation entitled “It Sounds Like Love,” which features images created from the recordings of dry, dormant native prairie seeds.
Some of these poems are their own…
Seeds of Poetry Reading​
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The poetry exercises were conducted by Terry Hermsen, guest poet from Otterbein University.
We dedicate this video to Ms. Holmes… and her wonderful students… along with the nine seeds which inspired their writing… echinacea, big bluestem, wild bergamot, dogbane, black-eyed susan, milkweed, butterfly weed, switchgrass and little bluestem.
Teaching For The Earth
Project-Based Learning in a Climate Emergency
Proposal: A Higher Education Collaborative for Climate Change Action (via ROAR) Mission: We propose to address the emerging climate crisis through the establishment of a mutually-funded office to incubate, promote and establish collective and significant action.
Our goal is to engender cross-regional projects, along with concrete, small experiments that our institutions/communities can try out, implement quickly, and share. We envision the pooling of resources, research, community connections and collective buying power toward visible impact which will reach beyond what any of our campuses can accomplish alone.
