A New Job Position

I've been working at Brave Writer for ten of the twelve-plus years that the company, the brainchild of Julie Bogart, has existed. I started with teaching an online poetry class and with writing the monthly language arts subscriptions. This past school year I taught eight courses: Literary Analysis: Anne of Green Gables, MLA Research Essay, Groovy Grammar Workshop, Playing with Poetry Workshop, Literary Analysis: Little Women, Literary Analysis: Merchant of Venice, and Shakespeare Family Workshop. Whew!! The fall wasn't too bad, but I taught straight through from January 3-June 15. It was crazy but fun. 

I'm also teaching a summer course at Brave Writer in writing Fan Fiction (class #8 for the 2011-2012 school year) which starts next Monday, July 9 and runs for four weeks. It will be fun to explore writing stories based on already-existing characters, from Jane Austen to The Hunger Games. Fan Fiction writing is especially helpful in luring reluctant writers to the keyboard as they create new adventures for their favorite video game, movie, TV, or book characters while they absorb basic story structure which will assist them when they approach literary analysis as high school students. Plus...they're actually writing during summer break!! Yes, Virginia, miracles can happen!! ;)

Recently Julie offered me a new position that will be of greater assistance to her in the running and expansion of Brave Writer. I signed the contract and mailed it back on Friday, so we're ON!! My new title is Senior Teacher, Staff Writer, and Curriculum Developer. Pretty cool, eh?

I'll be working with the language arts subscriptions again; Julie now has three: The Wand (grades 1-3), The Arrow (grades 4-6), and The Boomerang (grades 7-9+). We used to have The Slingshot (grades 10-12), but there just wasn't that much call for subscriptions for high schoolers; they prefer the interactivity of discussions, so Julie has added a Boomerang Discussion Group, plus we'll be offering several literary analysis courses this year as well.

I'll also be helping with new staff hires (probably at a later date), with creating a "staff handbook" of sorts to keep all the online classes organized similarly, with creating and editing curricula, with some information for the website, etc. Teaching classes will still be a large portion of my work; I'll be teaching six courses (one in the fall, three in winter, two in spring), then possibly a seventh class in Fan Fiction again if this summer class starting next week does well. I'm to be working twenty hours a week with teaching always being the first priority.

So I'm really excited about this new position at Brave Writer--no more freelancing!!! And I'm also looking forward to teaching the following courses in the 2012-2013 school year:

MLA Research Essay
Groovy Grammar Workshop
Playing with Poetry Workshop
Literary Analysis: The Importance of Being Earnest
Literary Analysis: Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare Family Workshop
possibly...Fan Fiction in summer 2013

Please do feel free to check out all that's going on at Brave Writer by clicking the bolded, colored words or by typing in www.bravewriter.com.

Writing bravely with you,