The purpose of this blog is to facilitate discussion of a writing exercise whose use I’d like to try promoting in the schools. To learn more about this exercise, my thoughts on lowering the barriers to adoption, and how you can help, check out the four topics in the About section below on the right, starting with The Exercise.

The Help I Need

There are a number of tasks that will need to be accomplished to realize the idea:

  • Finding good texts suited to the exercise. (Generally, they should be short and simple, yet still stylistically distinctive. I’ll soon create a new page where I’ll list all the suitable texts I find or am sent.)
  • Designing trials of the exercise that can be conducted in a school.
  • Finding schools willing to host a trial.
  • Learning what needs to be done in the way of securing permissions to use the texts. (I’m guessing this wouldn’t be required for the trials, but would be before going live with the service. But I might be wrong about even this.)
  • Publicizing the service to schools.

Of these tasks, the only one I have any qualifications for at all is the first, and even then, there’s no way I’ll be able to find all the texts that might eventually be needed. If a school decided to hold modeling workshops two afternoons a week for 3/4 of the school year for every high school class, they would need 200 texts. And they might decide to offer two possible texts per session, or to hold workshops more days each week, or to use only poems or only prose. I’d like to make 1000 texts available to schools when I go live with the service.

So I need help with everything. If you have expertise in any of the above areas, please let me know. If you have any texts to suggest, send them in! (If possible, let me know what grade levels you think they’d be best for.) Contact me directly or post a comment to one of my blog entries.

Next:  FAQ

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Just to be clear: This is not a money-making venture! The texts will be downloadable for free from an ad-free site by any school or individual who wants them.  At the most, I can imagine a grant-funded non-profit organization forming some day to manage the whole program, but if the idea ever succeeds to that degree, I’ll be happy to step away and let real educators carry it forward.