MCELA Matters

programs, resources, connections

December 2022

My favorite month of the year!

In this newsletter:

Conference sessions announced!
Conference and Pre-Conference Poetry Night registration
Member spotlight
Writing opportunities for your students
A fellowship opportunity for educators
Call for Contributors: The Emotional Lives of English Teachers
Free PD from a neighboring NCTE affiliate
Claudette Brassil's book stack

I was born on the winter solstice, also called the hibernal solstice. December not just because of my birthday and the holidays but because as the days get shorter and chillier, I am afforded the opportunity to slow down. I just finished up all of my winter prep chores on the farm and now I can focus my time on hibernation to rest, recover, and lead to how I want to grow next. The shorter days of December encourage me to head home earlier, to cuddle up with a good book, to be still, to reflect, and to set my intentions. I wonder what it would be like to make space for the hibernal solstice in my classroom, too, and would this slowing down actually lead to greater learning growth in the spring.

As you rest and recover this winter, we hope one of your intentions for 2023 is to join us in person at our March 17th MCELA Conference in Portland, to reconnect, renew, and revive for your spring growth.

Cheers to the hibernal solstice,

Patti Forster, MCELA President

maine.ela@gmail.com

MCELA website: mainecela.org

Programming Matters

Register now to save your spot!

In-person conference March 17, 2023

Pre-Conference Poetry Night March 16, 2023

Portland, ME

Click here to register to join us in-person in March!

Opportunities Matter

Authentic writing opportunities for your students:

Maine publishing company called Toad Hall Editions, has an annual student writing contest for their teen journal called Buttered Toast. This year's theme is Lost & Found. The deadline is 12/20. No prizes but could get published in their print journal.

https://www.toadhalleditions.ink/buttered-toast

The Sejong Cultural Society has a writing contest to introduce young adults to Korean culture through literature and poetry. They have a poetry and essay division with cash prizes. Deadline is March 31, 2023.

https://writing.sejongculturalsociety.org/

Young Writers USA is currently running a poetry contest titled Through Their Eyes. No cash prizes but many entries are published in their book for the New England Area (which they then offer to sell to authors/authors' families). Students who enter and are selected do not have to buy the book and will get a certificate recognizing their accomplishment of being published. This organization also provides teaching resources for their contests.

https://youngwritersusa.com/contest/middle-high/through-their-eyes

Fellowship Opportunity for English Teachers Who Are Creative Writers

New Literary Project is now taking applications for the second round of annual Jack Hazard Summer Fellowships. 2023 Fellowships of $5,000 each will be awarded to full-time educators who are creative writers teaching in accredited high schools in the United States. In Summer 2022, NewLit awarded eight $5,000 fellowships to California teachers. Applications close 4 January 2023; ten to twelve Summer 2023 recipients are expected to be announced in March 2023.

Jack Hazard Fellows must be writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir.
They commit to concentrating upon their creative writing during Summer 2023.
They must be full-time, current instructors (in any department, not just English) in an accredited high school (grades 9–12, teaching in the 2022–23 academic year).
They must be contracted to return to full-time teaching in Fall 2023.
Applicants must submit a writing sample along with other related support material requested.
Consult the website for details and procedures.

Link to apply here.

Jack Hazard Fellowships honor, reward, and incentivize talented writers who teach in secondary schools. These writers-who-teach inspire their students, high schools, and communities, and provide a professional model of writers working to find meaning and to create art in chaotic times. With these fellowships, NewLit celebrates teachers’ life-changing contributions and gives them public acknowledgement along with much-needed freedom to devote to their own writing.

Membership Matters

Member Spotlight

Michelle Deblois is an MCELA member and Executive Board Member who is developing a web-based application contains numerous features that manage and automate the workflow around independent reading.

Click here to read more

NCTE Affiliates Matter

Call for papers from Kentucky Council of Teachers of English

Call for Contributors: The Emotional Lives of English Teachers: Stories from Our Classrooms (Edited Collection)

We invite you–English teachers and pre-service teachers a

t all levels--elementary, middle, secondary, and college—to tell your stories. We seek a range of approaches: personal narratives; research-based articles; essays that combine research and the personal. The final result, we hope, will be a book by English teachers, for English teachers, about the emotional work of being an English teacher.

Please send an abstract of 300–500 words–with a CV, resume, or brief biography–to Jonathan Cullick and Ginger Blackwell (cullickj@nku.edu; blackwell@nku.edu).

Deadline to submit abstract: 30-March-2023

Notification of acceptance: 30-May-2023

Full essays of 5000–8000 words due: 30-October-2023

Best wishes,

Jonathan S. Cullick, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of English

Northern Kentucky University

Ginger Blackwell, Ed.D.

Associate Dean, College of Education

Clinical Associate Professor

Northern Kentucky University

More details here

Free PD from Connecticut Council of Teachers of English

MCELA IDEA Matters

December is Universal Human Rights Month. December 10 is HUMAN RIGHTS DAY. This year's theme is EQUALITY: Reducing inequalities, advancing human rights.

What are our basic human rights?

☞ ILLUSTRATED VERSION

☞ SIMPLIFIED YOUTH VERSION (You can also sign up to receive a free educators' resource kit on this website)

☞ AUDIO VERSION (In over 80 languages)

Interested in teaching about human rights in your ELA classroom?

☞ Facing History and Ourselves

☞ Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance)

☞ Amnesty International

Book Matters

Here's what Claudette Brassil, Retired ELA Educator and MCELA Executive Board Member is reading right now:

I am in the middle of The Weir by Ruth Moore. It was her first published novel but she had much success with all her subsequent novels (Spoonhandle was very enjoyable). She is a Maine writer who was favorably compared to Wm. Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

I can't believe that none of my teachers in high school ever recommended her books. I'm coming to them in retirement and am really enjoying how well she captures the personalities of coastal Mainers back in the first half of the 20th century. I grew up knowing people who acted like or expressed themselves like some of her characters.

I just finished rereading The Hours by Michael Cunningham and will soon start Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which I read thirty years ago.

The reason for rereading these two is that on Dec.14, I will be attending the Metropolitan Opera's presentation of The Hours broadcast at Regal Cinema in Brunswick with an old teaching friend who has introduced me to many classic operas in retirement.

Next on my list--I heard the author interviewed on MPR-- I will read Of Boys and Men Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves. You can most likely infer why I am interested in this topic. I hope to learn and discover meaningful ways to listen to and engage with "modern males" including my grandsons. Jonathan Haidy says on the back cover, "There is a boy crisis across the developed world. Reeves deftly navigates the minefield of the culture war over gender to give us the facts, the causes, and some surprising solutions. As a father of three boys, he speaks to our hearts as well as our heads. A powerful and important book."

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