’burg and Beyond

Lewisburg

Poetry can be a powerful tool to stimulate children’s intellectual curiosity, promote emotional growth, and enhance language and vocabulary skills. With those benefits in mind, the students, faculty and staff of Bucknell’s Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts approached Lewisburg Area School District with the idea of launching a series of poetry workshops for students in first through 12th grades, timed to National Poetry Month in April. Their goal? To make the literary art accessible and fun while building the imagin-ations and confidence of budding writers.

What They Did

Bucknell students, accompanied by Jessica Nirvana Ram, Stadler Center publicity & outreach manager; and Professor Joe Scapellato, English, director of the Stadler Center, led the workshops, which were tailored to the grade levels. In each classroom, Bucknell students led the young students in analyzing poems and writing their own.

The Impact

After the workshops, Lewisburg students were invited to submit their original poems to the Stadler Center. One student from each grade level was invited to read their poetry during a public event May 1 on campus. The Stadler Center received 194 entries, spanning a wide range of ages.

“Students don’t often get a chance to write creatively; we spend most of our time writing academically and formally in school,” says John Haussener, a 6th grade teacher at Donald H. Eichhorn Middle School, whose students participated in the workshop. “Almost every one of my students submitted a poem for the public reading.”

Based on their initial success, Ram and Scapellato intend to make the program an annual spring tradition.

— Megan Collins ’24