Meet Brett
I’m passionate about helping students write with confidence and read voraciously. I teach English class to five groups of freshmen each day in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I love talking to teachers about how to make the classroom a meaningful, engaging, creative space for our students and how to reach them in ways that impact them for a lifetime.
“A master teacher — practical and accessible, nuanced and detailed.”
– Joel Garza
THE BOOK
How can brief pauses for poetry help elevate all of the writing we ask our students to do in class?
My new book from Corwin Press demonstrates how poetry pauses can help students with:
- Brainstorming, organizing, and shaping ideas
- Drafting narrative, argument, and research
- Revising for diction, rhythm, and clarity
- Employing punctuation and grammatical structures for heightened effect.
Ultimately, move away from the annual poetry unit each spring and toward a more inclusive vision with poems as primary mentors for any writing skill you need to teach.
THE BLOG
How can we move the writers we teach?
Each month, Brett publishes a blog post with Moving Writers, a community of teachers obsessed with the question, “How do we go beyond moving the writing our students create and move the writers we teach?”
Some of my students taking a closer look (literally!) at For Everyone by Jason Reynolds.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT POETRY PAUSES
[It] nudges us to consider that poetry is not just a genre to be studied one month a year, but a genre that unlocks possibilities for student writers at every stage of the writing process.
– Rebekah O’Dell
Keep this on your desk; you will return often.
– Penny Kittle
Brett Vogelsinger 