Hungry Minds: Tales from a Chelsea soup kitchen

I really enjoyed this article. I found it fascinating that a writer's workshop was taking place in a soup kitchen. I think that this shows that writing happens everywhere, not just in a classroom. Another interesting part to this article was the fact that everyone who participated produced such beautiful pieces of literature. It was amazing to see that a lot of this writing was also published in various writing mediums. For example, Donald had an opinion piece published in the "Op-Ed page of the Times" (page 3). I also liked that at the end of the last session of the writer's workshop each year a public reading is held. I think that this public reading makes everyone who participated feel like they have accomplished something. Their work is even printed and bound into an anthology.

Something else that I noticed in this article was the fact that the homeless who participated in the workshop had so much to say. Each and every person had a unique story. Donald wrote his entire memoirs of being homeless, William wrote about an intergalactic battle among God, and Norm who wrote a poem entitled "On Achieving Section 8 Housing." Everyone had lived through different experiences and these experiences helped to shape them as writers. Again, this article showed me how successful writers workshops are. I would love to incorporate a unit on writers workshops into my classroom. This article showed how successful that they can be.

Aside from this article, I have been reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe. For my unit I am teaching "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat." I recently bought a large anthology of his works and have been really getting into his stories! I especially like "Murders in the Rue Morgue," which is also considered one of the first modern detective stories. And just today, I bought a comic book/graphic novel that is based off of his stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." If I ever teach either of these stories I think it would be fun to bring in the comics and show my students how artists portray the two stories.