#idyllwildarts

Nicole Da Silva (Boston International High School) is using her Fund for Teachers grant to attend the 6th Annual Trauma Center Summer Training Institute in Hyannis, MA and the Writers Week workshop at Idyllwild Arts in Southern California to design lessons that combine the healing power of creative  writing and trauma resiliency strategies for recent immigrant teens. Below she shares her motivation and plans for students. 

“In the previous school year, I taught five students who are homeless, three students who fled a civil war in their countries, six students who lost family members in an earthquake, and ten students who were afraid to return to their countries because of  gang violence. All students at my high school are recent immigrants  adjusting to a new life and  language in America and separation from  loved ones back home. They represent 40 different countries and speak  more than 30 different languages. 

As an ESL teacher, I have taken numerous  courses to improve my students’ academic writing, reading and language skills. What has been missing  from my teacher training is how to best support my students’ social-emotional growth and  help them overcome the various traumas in their lives. As my Writers Week instructor and renowned author Samantha Dunn (@SamanthaDunn) explained in our first class at Writers Week, "All writing is about trauma. No one ever changes...if everything is all right. It is these conflicts that help people (and characters) reach emotional resolutions, and writing is a way that we as humans can come to terms with the various traumas in our lives.”

Every minute of my experience at Idyllwild Writers Week has been inspiring as a teacher, reader and writer. Our mornings  include small group classes where we participate in writing activities, read mentor texts and workshop pieces. The afternoons are scheduled for craft talks with guest authors like Natashia Deon (@natashiadeon) and Victoria Chang (@VChangPoet), and the evenings are these amazing and  emotional readings by faculty members, fellows and authors. Writers Week has given me so many ideas to bring back to my classroom--from new  ways to "workshop" pieces to a monthly open mic project--but the most  important takeaway has been the conversations with authors and other participants about how writing has been a way for them to deal with the most traumatic experiences in their lives. In a craft  talk on the Regenerative Power of Writing, Luis Rodriguez (@luisjrodriguez), author of  Always Running and ardent activist, told us that ‘Art and poetry are the medicine to what is ailing our country...You have to  create your art through your healing.’ 

I am ready to bring that healing back to Boston and my amazingly resilient students.”