One of my favorite days of the year is the day I hang out with Lauren Redniss’ Senior Illustration Class at Parsons School of Design in NYC. It’s a special day, in part, because it’s such a thrill to see Lauren inspiring her students in her classroom; she’s a brilliant artist and author in her [...]

I was at a wedding this past weekend. The happy couple kissed. The dancing began. And soon enough it was toast time. One by one friends and family took the microphone to pay tribute to the bride and groom. And one by one those loving tributes turned into beautiful disasters. Still, everyone was in a [...]

The mission of High Tech High in San Diego, CA is to create an environment where students can get passionate about learning in a hands-on, project based way. Twelfth-grade English teacher Skye Walden is clearly an advocate for these principles, exhibited in the innovative way she teaches her students. Among her methods has been to [...]

Our Classroom of the Week is extra special for me—I taught it. Novelist and writing professor Jon Papernick invited me to speak and do storytelling workshops in his classes at the summer writing program he runs for high school students at Brandeis University. On the evening I arrived, I spoke to all of the 100+ [...]

Central Jersey Arts Charter School isn’t the typical school that would be found in a tough neighborhood in Plainfield, New Jersey. The arts-themed charter school was the central focus of a heated debate when it made its 2006 debut, but has been helping produce an alternative atmosphere for students that other schools in the area [...]

As another school year comes to a close, notes from teachers across the country continue to pour in with amazing stories of Six Words in the classroom. Whether it’s as a writing prompt, art project, or icebreaker, we love hearing—and seeing—how students are using the form to express themselves.
From Edinburg, Texas, 8th grade [...]

I never know where the next fervent Six-Word Memoir fan will come from. One day I might receive a note from a pastor asking his congregation to think about distilling faith down to six words. Another day, a high school friend I haven’t seen in years sent over a note that Six-Word Memoirs have [...]

We love hearing about how schools of every type have found Six-Word Memoirs to be a writing tool in the classroom. James Berman, Chef Instructor at Delcastle Technical High School, in Wilmington, Delaware, reports that “Six has been a large part of our class. The process takes a very busy environment and forces us to [...]

Across the world, teachers from grade school to grad school have found Six-Word Memoirs to be a great writing prompt for their students. But at the Augusta Elementary School in Arkansas, Jana Wilson, the literacy coach, took a slightly different approach to get everyone in her school writing. To break the ice, Jana first asked [...]

There’s not much better than seeing Six-Word Memoirs captivate a classroom. Rachel and I get emails every week, sometimes daily, from teachers across the world relaying how they used Six Words as a writing prompt, catalyst for self-expression, or way to break the ice with their students. We get invited into classrooms a lot, too, [...]