Balancing School Visits with Teaching

As a full-time special education teacher, doing author visits to schools can pose some challenges. My job doesn’t stop when I’m not in my classroom. Over the years I’ve used part of my Spring Break to do school visits outside of my own school district.

But often, the requests come from within my district or from within my own school. I like to be accessible for local kids who are reading my books so at my school if a teacher is using one or more of my books in their classes I’ll pop in for a question & answer session during my prep period.

When I get an invitation from another school, I’m sometimes able to work out using professional leave to cover the visit. I do a few of these each year, also question & answer sessions for classes that are using my books.

In general, I have found these sessions to be extremely enjoyable because they are so interactive: the students have a lot of ownership over what happens.

Also, Q & A sessions don’t require much preparation on my part so I can drop what I’m doing in my classroom and switch gears without a lot of stress. I ask the teachers and librarians involved to have kids prepare some questions ahead of time as a starting point.

Recently I spent a school day at Tanana Middle School. I met with seven groups of students for question & answer sessions. I met with every student in the building in groups ranging from 25 to 70 students. When it was time for English class, they came to the library.

On this particular day, half the school was participating in a vow of silence for 24 hours. Some students came with whiteboards and wrote their questions out and held them up. Others typed them on an IPAD and they appeared on a big screen.

I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged the “vow-of-silence” students were and at how the room would focus whenever a whiteboard was held up or a question appeared on the big screen. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time about the vow-of-silence activity because I would have worried about whether there would be enough student engagement for dynamic conversations and all of my worry would have been for nothing.

Thank you Tanana Middle School Students for a great day!

Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.

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Surviving Bear Island School Visit

I had a wonderful author visit today at Barnette Magnet School in Fairbanks, Alaska. One hundred 7th and 8th grade students had read Surviving Bear Island. I was met at the door by two students who escorted me to their “old library” which is a warm open space. For the next hour I stood and answered questions from a very polite, engaged and interesting group of students. Every student had a journal to take notes. Because of privacy guidelines I can’t post photos of the students but here is one of me and Heidi Imhof, one of the teachers that used Surviving Bear Island in her classroom.

I’m always amazed at the insights students have and today was no exception. When they asked me how and why I started writing fiction, I shared with them that when I worked in an alternative school and was designing and doing creative writing assignments with my struggling readers and writers, I discovered that I liked writing stories so if it weren’t for my students I may have never undertaken fiction writing.

Students teach teachers as much or more as teachers teach students. I’m still a teacher and I still continually learn about life from my students.

 

We got to talk a little bit about my next book: The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), which comes out in January. It’s another Alaska survival story which you can read about on my website.

Right now it is a screaming pre-order deal on Amazon for $12.32. The regular price is $17.99!! Surviving Bear Island is now out in paperback for $6.95.

 

Thanks for stopping by!!!!

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Student Art inspired by stories

Classroom Poster created from a Surviving Bear Island Quote.

 

One of the unexpected treats of being an author is getting to see student art inspired by Surviving Bear Island. On a recent school visit where the entire Freshman Class had read Surviving Bear Island, I had great time in the Library telling them some of the true stories behind the stories in the book and fielding questions. Later, when I stopped by a classroom I was surprised by a Wall of Surviving Bear Island Art!

A couple weeks later, on another school visit, I got to see book trailers that fifth graders made. Not long after that I discovered this trailer created by Carter, a fifth grader in Nebraska who had read Surviving Bear Island.

As a teacher, I’ve had my students do lots of art over the years related to books we’ve read, but I never thought about how that art could brighten an author’s day until I became an author.

So, I just want to thank all the students, teachers and parents who encourage and support art-related literary activities. Creating art is a great way to express a response to a story.

Thanks for stopping by!

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School Visits and a Contest

A couple days ago, I did my first Surviving Bear Island school visits. I visited two schools where I was student back in the 70’s, John Marshall and Andrew Jackson Intermediate Schools for grades five to eight.

I felt very taken care of at both schools. The visits were set up on really short notice and the school staff did a fantastic job of being prepared. And the kids were just awesome and full of questions about writing and about Alaska.

Later that day, I got my first letter from a student who had read my book.

The next night I went out to dinner with my high school English Teacher and signed books for him and for the school library.

If you’d like to schedule a school visit or book signing check out my schedule and contact information by clicking here.

Surviving Bear Island comes out March 25^th. Look for it in bookstores or order online now at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

On the 25^th I’ll be celebrating the release of Surviving Bear Island and will be giving away ten copies of my book!! One of them could be yours!!

I hope you’ll stop by then for a chance to win!!!

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