Tag: virtual visits

Winterkill presentations with Hamilton students for Holodomor Memorial Day

On Friday, on the lead-up to the Nov 25th Holodomor Memorial Day, I had the honor to speak with 16 classes of 8th grade students in the morning and one class of high school students in the afternoon, all from the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board. It’s a difficult subject to speak about but students asked perceptive and intelligent questions. Many thanks to HREC Ed for funding these sessions and also for their wonderful resource materials. Thank you, Betty Hicks, Evelin Niemiec, Paola Kontic and Mary Holadyk for coordinating and organizing.

Participating 8th grade students from St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Elementary School
Ms. Cave’s class at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Hamilton.

Fave Qs from Boyd W. Arthurs Middle School (MI)

I had the pleasure of visiting Arthurs MS in person in 2019 and so it was really neat to catch up with them again, albeit virtually. Those kids are now in high school but it was great to see the same wonderful educators and another crop of avid readers, including Alex, who described himself as my biggest fan. Also, they used the same Welcome Marsha sign! How cool is that?

Here are my fave questions from this session:

In Winterkill, Auntie Pawlina’s songbook is destroyed by the shockworkers. In real life, what was the fate of her collected songs?

Why were you banned by Russia?

When you write a novel, do you use an outline?

Why does Russia hate Ukraine?

Favorite questions from Eleanor Van Gelder (NJ) students

I like to leave lots of room for questions when presenting to students and this morning’s questions were superb! The topic was Winterkill, set during the Holodomor. Plus, I always talk about my own struggles as a kid, for example not reading til I was 9, and being bullied. Here are some of my favorite questions of the day:

If the Holodomor was such a huge event, how was it possible to hide it?

How did you deal with the bullying, and were you able to get it to stop?

Did you ever regret writing your first book about the Holodomor (Enough), seeing as you were subjected to so much hate because of it?

enough

Thaden School virtual visit

It was so nice to visit with 6th to 8th grade students from Bentonville Arkansas. We talked about my WWII novels and the real people behind the stories as well as what it’s like to be dyslexic and to write books. Middle School Student council members fielded the questions and did the introductions. Very well organized and great questions. There were 140 students participating and Sarah the librarian got this snap of one of the classes. Thank you so much for the invitation, Sarah!

First visit of 2023

The wonderful Ms Bartholomew invited me to Riverside Elementary, Suwanee Georgia, for two back to back visits this morning. I think this is the third time I’ve visited Riverside and always, the students are such a pleasure to speak with. Thank you, Ms Bartholomew and Riverside educators for your great prepping!

I didn’t think to ask for a photo until the second session was almost over — that should tell you how excited I was to get back in the class with students after the holiday break. This spring I have a number of in person visits scheduled and I’m really looking forward to that.

Look at these smiling faces!

Cuthbertson MS and Winterkill

The final virtual visit for 2022 was with Cuthbertson Middle School’s 800 grade 6, 7 and 8 students in 29 different classrooms. Check out this pic!

Michele Bost had done an amazing job prepping the students and they were visibly engaged in the discussion. There were oodles of questions and we could have continued for quite some time but the school day was ending. Here are more pics from the other side of the screen: