The Poet in the City: The Poetry Barn & Birch Wathen Lenox School Announce Partnership

The Poetry Barn is pleased to announce a new partnership with Birch Wathen Lenox School. The Poetry Barn will host a a four-week blended learning workshop titled “The Poet in the City,” for high school students enrolled in Honors English. Students will engage in poetry “scavenger hunts” revolving around New York City parks, libraries, museums or literary events. 

Regularly scheduled class time will be replaced with “field work” meant to inspire poems written in response to students’ visits to iconic NYC places. Each student will create an account and profile on The Poetry Barn’s online platform and use it for reading the weekly lessons, posting their poems, and providing each other with feedback.

The workshop will be taught by Kim Noriega. Ms. Noriega teaches writing to all ages in recovery homes and public libraries and heads San Diego Public Library’s family literacy program. She was a finalist in 2017 for the Toyota National Family Teacher of the Year Award. 

The workshop was conceived of and will be co-facilitated by Ryan Clinesmith, Assistant Headmaster & Poet-in-Residence at Birch Wathen Lenox School, along with The Poetry Barn’s founding director Lissa Kiernan.

The goal of the workshop is to introduce students to a mode of learning that is being adopted increasingly throughout all levels of education, as well as allowing students to become independent of the classroom; thereby allowing creativity to blossom through discovery and interest-driven inquiry.