EDUCATION

 
If you are a teacher who would like to use LUNGFULL! as part of your curriculum we have several recommendations.
 
LUNGFULL! has been used with good results in such classroom environments as young children's afterschool writing programs, high school poetry classes, college courses & writing workshops for adults. It's an extrmently useful tool for creative writing teachers and for those leading courses in contemporary literature. By revealing the rough drafts of contributors' work LUNGFULL! strips away the false belief in all-or-nothing lightningbolt genius that can thwart a poem even before its written.
 
 
SUGGESTED LESSON PLANS for CREATIVE WRITING TEACHERS
 
1. Chose three poets from the magazine whose work emerges from different traditions & whose editing techniques are equally different from one another. Have students read the rough draft & the final version of each poem. Often the rough draft is difficult to to read, forcing students to bring their own interpretive approach to the experience.
 
2. Have students write a short poem of their own. You may wish to guide the form & content of their work to align with the specific focus of your course or workshop.
 
3. Have students read the process notes written by contributors whose poems were read earlier. This will provide explicit notions of how wrtiters create their work & subsequently change it.
 
4. Have students revise their poems, rewiting them on a separate piece of paper.
 
5. Students can then read their work to the class.
 
6. You may wish to create a class anthology at the end of the course with students' rough drafts and final versions.

VARIATION
 
1. Pick three poems. Have students read the rough drafts & final versions to the class followed by the process notes.
 
2. Discuss the choices the writers made.
 
3. Have students take out a poem they had writen earlier in the course, perhaps the first day, perhaps a poem the class had already provided feedback on.
 
4. On a separate piece of paper, have students edit their poems.
 
 
ANOTHER VARTIATION
 
As above except have students pass their poems to the student on the left who will then make edits based on his or her own sensibilities & the preceeding class discusssion.
 
 
LESSON PLAN for CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE TEACHERS
 
LUNGFULL!'s focus on the writing process creates interesting opportunities for exploring writers' work. By revealing the poem before every gear's been meshed & handle polished, students can see some of the techniques and traditions writers are responding to more explicitly than they would were they presented with the finsihed product alone. The process notes each contributor provides further opens the transparency of their apporaches. Have students select one writer to examine. have them propare a short report on the poet, connecting their writing to other work you have discussed in your course.
 
 
HOW TO GET COPIES OF LUNGFULL TO YOUR STUDENTS
 
You could of course photocopy the pages you are interested in. Nothing we can do to stop you, except to suggest that having your students each own their own copy of LUNGFULL! further intensifies their personal connnection to writing. Having LUNGFULL! in their bag as they walk around & then floating around their home makes them more prone to identifying themselves as part of a writing community.
 
 
There are three easy ways to get LUNGFULL!s into your students' hands. They are listed here in order of preference:
 
1. You can find out how many students want to order & which issues they would like & you can place an order directly through the site, arranging to have your students reimburse you. Alternately, you could send us a check from yourself or several checks gathered from your students. We could send the copies directly to you or to your students making their arrival more of an event.
2. We could make arrangements through your school bookstore. This works in two ways:
......a. A direct sale to the bookstore. (This is the simplest bookstore option)
......b. A consignment deal. The store returns unsold copies.
Have the bookstore buyer/manager get in touch with us if you want to go this route.
3. The students can buy individual copies through lungfull.org.

Several teachers have asked about ordering through Small Press Distribution. Unfortunately, SPD carries very few literary journals, usually those connected to a press that also publishes books.
 
 
Please contact us if you have any questions! We look forward to talking to you & to helping you make your class completely unforgettable for both your students and for you!

 

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