Since 1982, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Writers in Education programs have successfully connected teachers, administrators, and parents to support academic achievement and active engagement in the literary arts (poetry, fiction, drama, and other creative writing) for learners of all ages. The program’s record of excellence has been recognized by a New York State Governor's Arts Award and a Buffalo Alliance for Education award. 

Just Buffalo Education programs are delivered by accomplished and professional writers—affectionately known as the “Writers Corps.”  Their professionalism and expertise ensure that our programs meet academic standards and support strengthened student achievement. We specialize in custom-designed programs to meet curricular needs.

Writers in Residence Workshops
Just Buffalo’s Literary Teaching Artists specialize in providing intensive Creative Writing instruction to students in grades K-12.  During a residency, Just Buffalo’s writers work closely with teachers over a five-week period, engaging students in writing, reading, listening and speaking with step-by-step interaction that leads to the successful creation of their own unique poems, stories, and essays.  These works are then eligible for publication in Wordplay, Just Buffalo’s annual anthology of student work.

Options include: bookmaking, drama & performance, poetry,
short fiction, spoken word / SLAM, storytelling

Writing with Light: Combining Creative Writing and Photography
This collaborative project between Just Buffalo and CEPA Gallery offers students a unique learning experience that combines literary art with photography. In “Picturing Poetry” or “Flash Fiction,” a CEPA teaching photographer and a Just Buffalo writer guide students in ten one-hour sessions that lead to a public exhibition of the work. Themes and overall goals are set by teachers, artists, and administrators. Designed to bring parents and community together with teachers and students, the responses have been dramatic.  One fourth-grade student commented, “I comprehend now that I am art, a living poem, a breathing painting, a moving music.” A fifth-grader, reflecting on what he had learned, noted, “Inspiration means imagination. This project changed my life.”

A Picture’s Worth—A Thousand Words: Writing at the Art Gallery
This dynamic program for students in grades 3-12 combines the inspiring setting of the art gallery with the literary teaching artistry of Just Buffalo’s Writers Corps. Participating galleries include Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Burchfield Penney Art Center, CEPA Gallery, and UB Anderson Gallery. During a ninety-minute session, students and their teachers interact with select works of art and discover new possibilities for their own creative writing. Gallery docents focus student attention on specific details of several works of art and Just Buffalo’s teaching artists engage students in creative writing exercises to stimulate poetic responses to these works.

A Symphony Down In My Soul
“A Symphony Down In My Soul” is a celebration of American History through music and poetry through an original performance written and arranged by Annette Daniels Taylor, conceived of and directed by Joyce Carolyn.  The performance features 5 to 7 musicians, singers, and poets.  With songs and words of slavery and salvation, “A Symphony Down In My Soul” weaves African American classic folk songs, hymns, work songs, the blues, gospel and jazz with a collection of poems and prose by such notable African American writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mari Evans, Langston Hughes as well as original work by Annette Daniels Taylor.

 

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For more information, please call Barbara Cole, Education Director, 716-832-5400.

 

This website is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties.