The Merwin Conservancy Launches 2018 Teaching Fellowship

In Summer 2018, the Merwin Conservancy launched a teaching fellowship dedicated to exploring and developing teachers’ creative potential, imagination, and social-emotional learning. Fifteen Hawaii-based teachers were selected to participate, and teachers throughout the state whose students are in the “middle years” of ages 10 through 15 were eligible to apply. A partnership with Maui-based professional development expert Marnie Masuda-Cleveland and her company The Creative Core, the Merwin Creative Teaching Fellowship began with a five-day professional development workshop led by Masuda-Cleveland and her co-facilitator Naomi Shihab Nye, who is an educator, celebrated award winning poet and children’s book author, and former Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. The institute was held June 20 – 24, 2018 on Maui’s north shore.

The Merwin Creative Teaching Fellowship offered Hawaii’s teachers the opportunity to experience W.S. Merwin’s living legacy first-hand and receive unparalleled guidance and support, providing them with the renewal, rejuvenation, and inspiration they need foster their own creativity, engage their imaginations, and gain new tools to make creativity and imaginations come alive in their students.

The Merwin Conservancy’s selected a cohort of talented Hawaii-based teachers, from public and private schools who teach students between the age of 10 and 15, to be part of this unique professional development opportunity on Maui, spending time immersed in nature on the grounds W.S. Merwin’s residence and his world-renowned palm garden. Approximately half of participating teachers will be from Maui County, with the remainder coming from the rest of the islands.

“The Merwin Teaching Fellowship is like no other professional learning opportunity teachers have ever experienced,” said Marnie Masuda-Cleveland of The Creative Core, who co-developed the Fellowship program with The Merwin Conservancy. “The Summer Institute, and the intensive collaboration which follows, changes the way teachers approach teaching and creates deep, transformative relationships between teachers and their students.”

Poet and author Naomi Shihab Nye, shared that she was hopeful that the program would “infuse teachers with a similar great joy and confidence in writing and reading poetry, and energizing their own curriculums, that William Merwin’s poetry has given all his readers all these years.”