Since the Missouri River runs through town, we in Greater Kansas City rely on our bridges.

The most important bridge in my life is an asphalt ramp that crosses a tributary creek and brings me to my house in the woods. Second comes the teaching program the Greater Kansas City Writing Project, that has helped me bridge my varied roles and passions as a teacher.

As a GKCWP teacher consultant, I learned new ways to translate my passions for literature and writing into instructional methods that could engage any learner, regardless of her special needs. GKCWP courses reinforced to me that joy and zeal in the classroom bring about higher-order learning.

I can't resist sharing a personal anecdote. I once taught a special middle school class that included a young lady who was profoundly deaf and a young lady who was legally blind, with some usable vision. While attempting to explain the types of animals found in India's jungles, I decided to make this information both more real and more challenging. We read William Blake's poem, "The Tyger" and made tactile/visual illustrations of tigers based on the descriptive words in the poem. Students then wrote essays to illuminate the correspondence between the poem's elaborate descriptive vocabulary and the illustrations they had produced. 

The students went far beyond my expectations. The school's instructional coach was amazed at the intellectual rigor displayed in the girls' work.

It has been such a privilege to take part in the work of the Greater Kansas City Writing Project.

I hope that this bridge between teachers, students and intellectual creativity will stand!

Janice Stallings