PORT TOWNSEND — Blue Heron Middle School plans complementary programs designed to connect visual and literary arts this month.
The Writers in the Schools program starts today with each of five professional writers assigned to one grade to coach students about effective writing and help them complete a creative project.
At the same time, a photography exhibit that portrays people and scenery throughout the world will be hung in the halls for students to contemplate as they move between classes.
“I want the students to be more positive and more confident in their writing,” said Diane Lashinsky, the school’s principal.
“I’d like to see them sharpen their observation skills and see a story when they look at a photograph.”
A total of six writers will participate in the program, one for each grade level at Blue Heron and one in the high school.
They will be housed at Fort Worden State Park, courtesy of Centrum.
The course study includes Rachel Kessler, memoirs, fourth grade; Karen Finneyfrock, fiction, fifth grade; Samar Abulhassan, flash fiction, sixth grade; Laura Gamache, poetry, seventh grade; and Peter Mountford, fiction, eighth grade.
“I don’t know how famous these authors are, but they are famous to us,” Lashinsky said.
Ed Skoog will teach poetry to 11th-graders at Port Townsend High School.
At the end of the two weeks, each grade will host a “Cocoa House,” where they will read their works in public in a coffeehouse format to which parents will be invited.
Additionally, each grade will publish an anthology of students’ writings as a keepsake, with each volume submitted to the statewide Writers in the Schools program for consideration in a best-of-state publication.
Lashinsky said about six Blue Heron students make the cut every year.
One new component this year is the addition of a professional training module for teachers in the hope of sustaining what’s learned during the two-week period and broadening it to other subject areas.
“The writers are meeting with teachers so they can inspire good writing in all classes,” Lashinsky said.
“This is to provide inspiration and structure so teachers can convey detail in science, math and history.”
The photography exhibit represents the work of the late Robert Radin, a professional photographer whose daughter, Carol Eskelin, is a Blue Heron parent.
Lashinsky said Eskelin is the curator of her father’s work and manages a traveling exhibit of his photographs.
“We were having a casual conversation, and Carol mentioned that her father had willed that his photographs that he’d taken around the world be shown around the world,” Lashinsky said.
“I said, ‘Why not Blue Heron?’ and we fit it in between other locations.”
Radin’s exhibit will be hung today and stay in place throughout this month, Lashinsky said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
