Mother Tongue Books

Connie has been involved in the Mother Tongue Book project since the beginning. She has created books with students in Cambridge, MA and Lagonav, Haiti. She has led teacher workshops in Cambridge and Lagonav on using the books as mentor texts for teaching writing and as inspiration for social studies, science and math curricula.

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Writing Workshops

In Schools

Connie Biewald is listed in the Massachusetts Cultural Council roster and is therefore eligible for Massachusetts Cultural Council grants. She has done a wide variety of writing workshops with students of all ages and will work with classroom teachers or independently to create the workshop that best suits the needs of the class. Workshops can be open-ended and extend over a school year or focused and for a more limited time. Some examples of her workshops include: Memoir, Sports Writing, Screen Writing, Poetry, Playing With Language, Fun With Fairy Tales, Historical Fiction, Creating a Character, Imaginary Worlds, Writing a Mystery.

Outside of Schools

Connie Biewald has led afternoon writing workshops for students in 6th-8th grade and high school. Students develop their writing skills through exercises and feedback. Each six week session ends with a reading for friends and family and the distribution of an anthology of the group’s work. In addition to growing as writers, students develop critical thinking and social skills and grow in self-understanding and self-esteem through listening and responding to each other’s work.

Teaching

Connie Biewald is listed in the Massachusetts Cultural Council Roster and is available to lead writing workshops in schools for any grade level. Most of her teaching has been collaborative which qualifies her to work with classroom teachers to tailor her workshops to the needs of the classroom. Her philosophy of education can be summed up by Deborah Meier’s statement that “Teaching is mostly listening and learning is mostly telling.”
She received an undergraduate degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978 and a Masters Degree in Education from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City in 1980.