{"id":55,"date":"2019-07-19T20:08:59","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T00:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/?p=55"},"modified":"2019-07-19T20:08:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T00:08:59","slug":"creative-writing-camp-the-prequel-to-my-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/creative-writing-camp-the-prequel-to-my-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Writing Camp: the Prequel to My Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My career as a teacher didn’t start in a classroom. It started in the woods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t really plan to be a teacher. I did like to write though, and I liked being a summer camp counselor, which was my summer job throughout college when I worked at Skye Farm Camps in Warrensburg, New York. During one week of the year for a few summers, I was the counselor for a Creative Writing Camp directed by Steve Burt. Steve is now best known as a horror and YA writer – his latest book is The Bookseller’s Daughter<\/em>. I cannot overstate the influence that working with Steve at this camp had on me. It made me want to teach. And when I became a teacher , every time I taught writing I was trying to recreate that same spirit of fun and meaning and sharing our writing – creating a community of writers who wrote for fun, wrote to express themselves, and wrote for each other. Twenty-seven years in, that’s what I still do, despite the way the system seems to want to undermine and sabotage the joy of teaching and learning at every turn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I drew this series in 2013 after getting back in touch with Steve after being out of touch for a long time. It is my Valentine to creative writing camp, and a reflection on what made me want to be a teacher. It also has some of my favorite drawings I’ve ever created for the strip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy. And if you are a teacher, think back to what made you want to teach. Find your inner young teacher again. Take that teacher with you into the new school year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My career as a teacher didn’t start in a classroom. It started in the woods. I didn’t really plan to be a teacher. I did like to write though, and I liked being a summer camp counselor, which was my summer job throughout college when I worked at Skye Farm Camps in Warrensburg, New York. Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}