Day One: Blue Met

It's Day One of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival here in Montreal  -- and I've had a super stimulating day. I've already met lots of students because I did two educational workshops. That's Kayla in today's pic; she's a student at CDC Lachute Adult Ed. Kayla didn't need much inspiration from me -- she already loves to write, and in the pic, I am looking over one of her poems. Keep writing, Kayla, and remember, unless you're as clever as Dr. Seuss (or Samuel Taylor Coleridge), death to rhymes!!

This afternoon, I worked with students from CDC and also from H.S. Billings; this morning, I had students from Laurier Senior High School in Laval, as well as three students from AKULIVIK! (I put Akulivik in capitals because even writing the name of the village gets me excited -- it's one of the villages in Nunavik I visited in December.) 

All day, I tried to introduce exercises that combine work and play. This morning, I asked students to come up with the name of an imaginary character. Justin, who goes to Laurier Senior, came up with the name "Sora Neva." He told us later this means "bird" in Japanese, which I thought was very cool. A student named Amanda, also from Laurier, wanted to write about someone named Andrea Moore; I told Amanda I like the last name "Moore" because it reminds me of "more."

When the morning group broke up at lunch, the students from Akulivik were heading out with the students from Lachute. I guess I'll have to wait to find out how that went -- I'm hoping you guys got to chat a little and learn a bit about each other.

There's more to tell you, but I'm outta here... heading back to a Blue Met event tonight. And oh, if you're one of my students at Marianopolis and are missing me like crazy today and tomorrow, you can check out this link on CTV. And the lady on TV with the big blonde hair won't even give you weird homework assignments like dating yourself out on a date or going for a "glide"!!