In today’s episode we will talk about the recently published book, Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World. This comprehensive study of teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic has a lot to teach us about creating a healthy, resilient teaching profession able to face future crises.

Going the Distance

Ballenger shares her teaching journey and the core ideas in her book about the power of inquiry-based learning, which encourages teachers to honor students’ unexpected questions and ideas as opportunities for deeper exploration. Ballenger also discusses the challenges teachers face in maintaining time for reflection and collaboration, as well as the importance of fostering democracy and inclusion in the classroom.

Teaching Is Inquiry

Mahogany L. Browne is a Kennedy Center Next 50 fellow, writer, play-wright, organizer, and educator. Browne received fellowships from ALL ARTS, Arts for Justice, AIR Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, and Wesleyan University. Browne’s books include A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theatre), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. She is the inaugural poet in residence at the Lincoln Center and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D. (she/her), is a Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her poetry collections, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (2020) and The Peace Chronicles (2021), explore themes of love, healing, and growth toward liberation. She is co-author of the multiple award-winning Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces (2021). In 2024, Yolanda was recognized for her scholarship with the Dorothy Height Distinguished Alumni Award from NYU. She has been named to EdWeek’s EduScholar Influencers list four years in a row, placing her among the top 1% of educational scholars in the U.S. At Teachers College, Yolanda founded the Racial Literacy Project @TC, fostering dialogue on race and diversity for over 17 years.

The Write Time with Author Mahogany L. Browne and Educator Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz

Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane established her state’s first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island’s state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2024). Her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) was released in August 2024.

Janelle Bence is a high-school English teacher with 24 years of experience teaching in Texas. Her favorite project is a Spoken Word event where freshmen support a local non-profit of their choosing. She is a longstanding member of the National Writing Project and enjoys collaborating with researchers to deepen her praxis. Currently, two projects she is working on are Transdisciplinary Civic Composing Collective (UT Austin) and Colorado State Sustainable Teaching and Learning (Colorado State University). Her writing is published in Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Mirra & Garcia, 2023) and Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices (Edited By Meghan E. Barnes, Rick Marlatt).

About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at [https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/

The Write Time with Author Tina Cane and Educator Janelle Bence

This special episode of NWP Radio features many of the educators behind Empowering Youth to Confront the Climate Crisis in English Language Arts, a co-published book from Teachers College Press and the National Writing Project. Recorded in three parts, you won't want to miss this comprehensive overview of this important book. (https://shop.nwp.org/products/empowering-youth-to-confront-the-climate-crisis-in-english-language-arts)

00:00 – Introduction/Systems Thinking with Richard Beach and Fawn Canady

Richard Beach and Fawn Canady discuss chapter two of the book, focusing on how to engage students in critiquing and transforming systems impacting the climate crisis. Learn how students can use writing to examine how fossil fuel energy, capitalist economic structures, agriculture, transportation, urban design, and political systems need transformation to address our changing climate.

26:52 – Critical Media Literacy with Jeff Share, Andrea Gambino, Amber Medina, and Noah Asher Golden

This segment explores the intersection of critical media literacy and environmental justice/climate education. Our guests explain why climate change is not merely a scientific problem but an issue of priorities and narratives. Discover how educators can help students understand how dominant cultural stories contribute to our climate crisis and how we can change these narratives to create more sustainable and socially just futures.

50:04 – Writing of All Kinds with Allen Webb and Rich Novack

Allen Webb and Rich Novack share diverse writing approaches that empower students to engage with climate issues through creative expression, persuasive writing, research, and more. Learn practical strategies for incorporating climate-focused writing across the English language arts curriculum.

View all related resources at https://teach.nwp.org/empowering-youth-to-confront-the-climate-crisis-in-english-language-arts/

Empowering Youth to Confront the Climate Crisis in English Language Arts

Ellen Oh is an award-winning author and editor of middle grade and young adult books such as The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, YOU ARE HERE, Haru Zombie Dog Hero, Finding Junie Kim, The Dragon Egg Princess, The Spirit Hunters series (Books 1, 2, and 3), and the Prophecy trilogy (Prophecy, Warrior; and King). She is also the editor of WNDB's middle grade anthology Flying Lessons and Other Stories, and the YA anthology A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. Ellen is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in children's literature. Originally from New York City, Ellen now lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband, three children, two dogs, and has yet to satisfy her quest for a decent bagel.

Melissa Thom, MA, (she/her) is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in West Hartford, CT. She has been an educator for 22 years and is the immediate past President of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians (CASL). She was a 2019 AASL Social Media Superstar Reader Leader finalist and a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2022. In her free time, she sews #LiteracyInspiredCrafts for her Joyful Making Etsy Shop.

About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/

The Write Time with Author Ellen Oh and Educator Melissa Thom

Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and writer. Rob is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founder of Constellations Mentorship for the Octavia Project. He has poetry, stories, and essays in StarLine*, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, New Modality, Solarpunk Magazine, Apex, Clockwork Phoenix Five, Lightspeed, and others. Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, is a finalist for the Andre Norton, the Nebula award for middle grade and YA.

Max Limric is a pre-service teacher in elementary education entering a co-teaching year at Greens Farms Academy in Westport, Connecticut. He became interested in the power of children and young-adult texts while taking classes at Fairfield University, and further learned the power of literature when attending and presenting at the annual conference of the National Council of English. He grew up with speculative stories, being brought into the worlds of Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story, and looks forward to unlocking their potential in his future classroom.

About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/

The Write Time with Author Rob Cameron and Educator Max Limric

Catherine Con Morse’s debut novel, The Notes, is a 2025 Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Honorable Mention for Young Adult Fiction, a 2026 Panda Book Award nominee, and was shortlisted for the CRAFT First Chapters contest. Her newest book is The Summer I Remembered Everything (April 2025). A Kundiman fellow, Catherine received her MFA from Boston University, where she taught undergraduate creative writing for several years. Her work appears in Joyland, Letters, HOOT, Bostonia, and elsewhere, and has been a finalist for the Beacon Street Prize and the Baltimore Review fiction prize. While writing The Notes, she was one of the inaugural Writers in Residence at Porter Square Books, where she enjoyed writing in the back office and eating croissants with her cafe discount. 

In high school, Catherine attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a public arts boarding school, where she was as intrigued with her teacher as Claire is with Dr. Li. Catherine continues to play and teach piano today. Most recently, she taught English at Choate Rosemary Hall, and lives in the Connecticut River Valley with her husband and daughter.

Katherine Shizuko Suyeyasu brings 25 years of experience teaching in Oakland, Berkeley, Union City, and the Philadelphia area at the upper-elementary, middle, and graduate school levels. The majority of her teaching career allowed her to work with and learn from multilingual middle schoolers in the Humanities classroom. She is currently a co-director of the Bay Area Writing Project.

About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/

The Write Time with Author Catherine Con Morse and Educator Katherine Shizuko Suyeyasu

NWP Radio visits with Jessica Rubin, author of “Embracing gentle resistance to the slow violence of traditional English curriculum.” The article explains how a secondary English teacher, Kristen, maintained a commitment to nonviolence in her teaching through “gentle resistance” to the subtle violences embedded in her school’s curriculum and practices. By making purposeful, small-scale changes over time—such as omitting certain texts, reordering content, and elevating student voices—Kristen was able to push back against the slow violence of traditional English instruction without risking her job or professional relationships.

Pushing Back Against Slow Violence in Traditional English Curriculum

In this episode, we build on the ideas we shared last time about the “Create vs. Complete” mindset, and this time (tip of the hat, once again to Lindsay Bruggeman), we dig into what’s essential as we move into new ways of teaching and learning.

Email noah.waspe@gmail.com if you'd like to be part of our next OWP chat!

Conversation Participants:

Beth Rimer @BethRimer
Lexie Withrow
Lindsay Bruggeman
Katie Bills-TenneyStacey Reeder
Megan Rodney
Liz Dooley
Becky Fellers
David Tarr
Noah Waspe @MrWteach
Kate Bauer
Karen Long
Renee Arnold 
TJ WIlson
Luke Wiseman

“Four Hinterland Abstractions” by Ray Young Bear
https://poets.org/poem/four-hinterland-abstractions

008 What's Essential

Write Answers is brought to you by the Ohio Writing Project. This podcast is for writers, teachers, and teachers who teach writers. In each episode we pitch the biggest questions in the field to the smartest people in the field.

008 What's Essential

Write Answers

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