Sparking creativity in students at Southpointe

I wrapped up a writer-in-residency at a local school, Southpointe Academy, in April. It seems like a lifetime ago because, since then, my family has moved homes for the first time in eighteen years (more on that in a future post, I imagine!).

I’ve now had time to reflect on the residency and look back at some of the photos from my week at the school. We accomplished a lot of writing and storytelling!

I was asked to develop a plan for K-5 and so came up with a different project for each grade. 

Kindergarteners: Costuming a Character 

Grade 1s: Magical Boxes

Grade 2s: Enchanted Trees

Grade 3s: Secret Doorways

Grade 4s: A Spellbinding Shopping Trip

Grade 5s: Lost in the Library

I kicked off the week with one general presentation to the entire school, which allowed me to introduce myself—and my philosophy—so that I didn’t have to repeat this each time I visited the specific classrooms.

The fantastic aspect of a residency is that I get to spend multiple blocks with the same class. In general, the system was the same: enter the classroom, introduce the project with some brainstorming and scene starters, then follow up in additional sessions with more specific writing advice, presentation, and an in-depth Q & A.

Of course, the format was tweaked depending on the age.

Another positive to spending an entire week at the school was that I could set up my museum of artifacts in the library and students could come view them throughout the week for extra inspiration. 

Finally, the school asked me to write a story about them during my time there and I did just that. This turned out to be a lot of fun, and I ended up writing about an imagined misadventure with the Grade 5 classroom’s mascot, Yorick the skeleton.

Afterward, I was happy to receive these kind words from Southpointe’s writing coordinator:  

“Everyone at our school loved having Lee as our Author-In-Residence, as he is such an engaging and inspirational writer and teacher! He connected with all our students from K to Grade 5 who loved his fun, interactive workshops, which focused on making the writing process accessible to all! I would recommend Lee without hesitation.”

Verity Pritchard
Southpointe Academy

More info about my residencies can be found on my website.

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The doorway to adventure . . . and to writing!

I’m prepping for a week at a school next week and will be rolling out one of my favourite workshops: The Doorway to Adventure! I’ll be doing this one for Grade 4s, but it’s easily adjusted to fit any age (I’ve done it for grades K-9).

For a typical school visit, I deliver a hybrid “presentation-workshop,” which combines my author introduction and writing approach with a hands-on activity for the students. In “The Doorway to Adventure,” I showcase the doors I’ve “collected” from around the world (some of my favourites picture here) and explain how they’ve inspired my books (especially The Secret of Zoone)! Next, I lead students in an interactive brainstorming session, helping them design their own doors as they consider storytelling questions. Students then use this brainstorming as a scene or story starter.

More information about my author presentation, craft workshops, and residencies on my website.

Writer-in-residency, magic & monsters style

I recently wrapped up a writer-in-residency with a group of gifted learners through the Vancouver School Board and Artstarts. Over the course of several weeks, myself and fourteen students came together in a central location to talk writing and reading—and to create.

My teaching partner and I led students (and their characters!) in an epic journey, exploring various facets of storytelling. I had students take each week as a scene, doing my best to slow them down and take each part of their plot as an important “moment.” I wanted them to concentrate on idea-building and the process of story development, as opposed to simply the product.

As part of this approach, I had them work on many hands-on activities over the course of the program. There was plenty of visual brainstorming, but also some prop-building. Students crafted magical creature eggs, created potions from kits I prepared for them (you should have seen our house that day!), and wrote riddles in invisible ink.

I was in a gifted learning programming myself as a kid, so am always extremely grateful to work with classes like these, where we can pursue our passions and explore our imaginations. It’s hard to capture the magic of these situations, but I’ve done my best with a few photographs that I could snap along the way . . .

School visits, author residencies, and writing workshops

Hard to believe the new school year is already here!

I had a very busy—and fun—2021-2022 season as an author, visiting schools, libraries, and learning institutes in Canada, USA, and Korea. Many were done virtually, but I also was thankful to see a return to in-person workshops (especially in Korea!). Many of my workshops were built off the release of my latest middle-grade book, Spell Sweeper—which meant a focus on magic potions, mysterious monsters, enchanted pets, and spell-binding shopping trips!

If I had an official resume, it would read like this for 2021-2022 . . .

• World Read Aloud Day (virtual readings for schools across the US and Canada)
• Canadian Children’s Book Week Tour (virtual workshops for schools in Alberta and Ontario)
• Several in-person workshops for libraries and learning institutes in Korea
• Several virtual author presentations for schools and libraries in Canada, in which I rolled out my trademark interactive brainstorming sessions

Writer/Artist-in-residencies for:

• Vancouver School Board gifted learning program
• Star of the Sea School, Grade 5
• Kamloops School of the Arts (grades 8-12)
• Hume Home Learning school (K-8)

I delivered activities for The Imagine in the Park festival in Hamilton, Ontario, and I even led events for adults, delivering presentations for CANSCAIP, The Writers’ Union of Canada, and WriteOnCon.

What magic will this school year hold? I’m prepping for my scheduled creative writing classes, writer-in-residencies, and school visits now, but you can still book me for an in-person or virtual author visit! Just visit my website.

Welcome to Enchanted Earth!

At the end of June, I finished up a year-long project at an arts-based high school in Kamloops (about four hours outside of my home city of Vancouver). Over the many months, I delivered a series of world-building activities, all via Zoom, first because of the pandemic and then because the roads were cut off after our extreme flooding (and then because of covid again). 

I do a lot of teaching and speaking over digital technologies, but it’s always a bit more challenging when art is involved because I simply don’t get a chance to lean over shoulders and see what everyone’s working on in the moment. Sure, people can send me photos and files, but it’s never quite the same, mostly because I find it harder to connect with the students.

Luckily, I was finally able to make the trip to Kamloops in the last week of June to deliver a keynote speech to the entire school body and to view their amazing gallery of work. The biggest surprise? The students were so engaged, asking me so many questions, and showing some genuine interest—these were things that I just didn’t pick up on during our virtual sessions. So, there was a connection, and that made the experience extremely rewarding.

As for the specifics of the project, the students were divided into teams to create five different realms: Ice, Sky, Underground, Land, and Water. The worldbuilding was applied to every course in the curriculum—not only the obvious ones such as art and writing, but also science and math. 

The result was really amazing. As I wandered the gallery of their Enchanted Earth, I found sculpture, myths, recipes, maps, constellations, language systems, field guide entries for creatures, dioramas . . . pretty much every corner of these worlds was imagined and explored. 

I’m showing pictures of just a fraction of the amazing pieces.

I want to extend my thank you to all the students and staff at Kamloops School of the Arts (secondary pod), in particular my partner Melanie Gilmar, who spearheaded the entire initiative. A big thank you to ArtStarts, the funding body for the project.

Cherishing our family stories

Today, I received a package from Quilchena School in Vancouver where I did a (virtual) writer-in-residency on the theme of family and cultural stories. 

Over the course of several weeks, the students, teacher Kelly Enns, and I explored family connections through personal memories, heirlooms, old photographs, and legends passed down through the generations. We spoke of different family situations, what makes a family, and the different cultures that have contributed to our lives. Kelly is Japanese Canadian and could speak a lot about her family’s experiences during the internment of World War II. I was able to speak about how my wife and I adopted our son internationally, and what it means to embrace and incorporate a new culture into our daily lives. And, of course, the students had many stories to share.

Along the way, we produced many different writing pieces. We wrote poems or descriptive paragraphs about an item or moment in our lives. We wrote short stories inspired by family legends, and even imagined our family homes telling a story about us.

I loved seeing all of the heirlooms and photographs that the children showed me; some of them very old and beautiful, coming from all corners of the world. Along the way, I showed some of my own family heirlooms and photos. 

It’s not always easy to know what kind of impact you leave as a visiting author, but it’s even more difficult in this age when everything is online. So, I am extremely touched that the teacher prepared this book of writing and artwork! I will cherish it always.

The students drew many pictures of how they connected with me. There are a lot of drawings of the characters from my books: Kendra Kandlestar, Tug the skyger, Fidget, Ozzie . . . plus many pictures of brooms, since I talked to them a lot about my forthcoming book, Spell Sweeper, and how a large part of it was inspired by my grandfather handmaking his own brooms.

You will also notice many pictures of chickens. Students are always amused to hear the stories of me being attacked by the rooster when I was a kid! So, in short, it seems that when kids think of me it goes like this: flying tigers, chickens, and brooms. Seems about right!

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Virtual author visits!

I’ve had a lot of queries and questions about author visits lately, so thought I would write a little bit about how I’m currently approaching them. 

First thing: I’m still doing them! I’ve delivered single “get-to-know-the-author” type of visits, and I’ve been able to do all the things I would do in a “live” situation. That means sharing the visuals of my writing process (which includes character sketches and props that I build), taking questions, and leading interactive brainstorming sessions.

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The interactive brainstorming entails me helping students design a story building element, such as a character’s suitcase, a magical market, or the contents of a monster’s fridge. I am still doing these “old-school” setting up an easel in front of my camera so that the students can see what I’m working on. The students then either call out or ideas or they type them in the chat feature and the teacher calls them out to me. So far, it’s been really successful!

I’ve also been doing several writer-in-residencies, including one for the Vancouver School Board gifted program. In this series of workshops, I’ve been working with the students to create their own wizard schools. Even though I’ve been delivering the classes over a digital platform, we have still been able to do some hands-on activities, such as making potions. I assembled all the spell kits in advance, and had them delivered to the students. Then, on the designated day, I led the live prop-building activity, which then led directly into a writing project. Here are some photos that the students have been sending in—so far the props look AMAZING! (And so are the writing projects that have been inspired by these props.)

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I’m also working with another class on a series of writing projects that build off the students’ personal cultural and family stories. This one has been a lot of fun, because I have been hearing all kinds of interesting and fascinating stories. One of the benefits of this theme is that all the hands-on stuff can be found right at home, because it involves the kids finding old family photos and heirlooms.

Finally, I’m leading a residency with a third school, in which I provide regular writing prompts and activities to inspire and engage the students. It’s been a great experience to do these repeat engagements, because it has allowed me to really get to know the students.

Working in the digital realm means I’ve been able to add some extra elements, such as using interactive “character choosing” wheels that provide students with a quick writing prompt and allows them to “play.”

However, the most important thing I’ve learned about this transition to teaching and presenting virtually is that you still have to be YOU. Never mind the digital platforms and all the tricks and tools that might come with them. What kids are looking for (perhaps more than ever) is someone who is engaged, present, and sincere. And, yes, many readers want to hear me talk about the books I’ve written, but they also want to explore their OWN ideas. They want to know how I create so that they can apply it to their own process—which is why I’ve still kept the interactive brainstorming as an integral part of my presentation/workshops.

I’m used to traveling to different places to do school visits and, thankfully, I can still do that virtually. I’ve been able to deliver presentations and workshops for students located across Canada and in other places around the world such as Singapore, Australia, China, and Korea. It’s not quite the same as being there in person, and the time differences can be tricky, but at least we can still connect.

If you’re a teacher or librarian looking for visits, check out my own website, or explore cwillbc.org (The Children’s Writers’ and Illustrators of BC), where you can search the database for a speaker that is perfect for your situation. (You can perform a search using various criteria—for example, you can search for creators who deliver presentations virtually). Another great organization is CANSCAIP, which also has a directory of authors and illustrators across Canada.

Until we meet in person . . . happy learning!

Jewelry, wands, and masks: creating characters through costume

I spent the last few weeks as an artist-in-residence at a school for particularly awesome teens. It’s a specialized school with only fifty students and, since this is my third or fourth stint there, I’ve had the opportunity to really get to know the kids.

For this term, I decided to embrace the Halloween season and have the students imagine character through intensive costume and prop-building. As an instructor, this is a challenge because no one is doing the same thing. That means there’s not a lot of demonstrations on my part, but a whole lot of problem-solving.

This means finding the right type of material for each student’s individual project and then helping them build what’s in their imaginations.

The Theme

We loosely chose the theme of superheroes, though many students decided to lean towards a fantasy or steampunk design.

Over the last few weeks, they drew, painted, sculpted, and built!  Here’s some photos of some of the many projects they created.

Jewelry Design

One of the main projects I introduced was jewelry design and creation. Using glass cabochons and fingernail paint, the students came up with different designs. These make fantastic accoutrements for superheroes, wizards, magical thieves .  .  . you name it.

I think they are all beautiful, but I will admit I’m partial to the ones that look like dragon eyes!

Masks and Goggles

Every good superhero needs a mask, right? Many of the students chose to build masks or decorate goggles to help bring their characters to life.

Enchanted Bottles

I brought so many containers of supplies to the school that I wasn’t even sure what I had there half the time. But one of my students found the “bottle box” and from then on many of them became obsessed with building enchanted bottles. Using colored sand, acrylic gems, beads, moss, feathers, and other material, they created a veritable wizard’s den!

Wands and other magical props

Many of my students chose to build props that you can hold and carry.

One of my friends showed up at my house one day with a box of sticks that he had pruned from some trees on Vancouver Island. “I figure these will make great wands,” he said. (I guess I have a reputation as a prop-builder.)

I decided to share the sticks with my students, and many of them made some cool items with them.

Drawing, painting and multimedia

A significant part of the project was drawing, designing, and conceptualizing characters.

Many of my students combined these drawings and brainstorming notes with their props to submit final “character design” projects.

Wrapping up and saying good-bye

It’s always a bittersweet moment for me to wrap up a term at this school. These kids are so FABULOUS. They come to class each week, often thinking of themselves as less-than, and all I ever think is how I wish more people were like THEM: introspective, caring, creative, and community-minded.

We built a lot of amazing props over the course of the last nine weeks, but we hopefully we also built a lot more.