Poetry Leaves anthology publishes a poem about the Chicago blizzard of 1979

My poem “January Blizzard” was recently printed in Poetry Leaves: Adult Contemporary Anthology, edited by Emily Kazmierczak and published by the Waterford Township Public Library, 2020, on page 75.  Poetry Leaves submissions come from all over the world. There was going to be an exhibit of all of the poems at the library in Waterford, Michigan from May 20 to June 3, 2020, but that got canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic.  I had been trying to get "January Blizzard" published since February 1979.  I wrote it after about two feet of snow fell on Chicago, where I was living and teaching at the time.  The city administration had trouble dealing with all of the snow, and the resulting mess helped Jane Byrne to get elected mayor, the first woman to hold this position. Attachment Preview Janet Ruth Heller reading her poems at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra

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Advice about Teaching Children at Home During the COVID-19 Epidemic

Janice Acosta of Learning Success has posted a video of me giving advice for people who are teaching their children at home during the COVID-19 epidemic.  Chad Ream of Imaginarium Pictures in Portage, Michigan, made the video for me.  You can find this video at https://www.learningsuccesssystem.com/tips/nhs/janetruthheller Below are some of my comments. Children learn best when they can participate actively in the lesson.  Therefore, do not just lecture children.  Instead, ask kids questions about the topic that stimulate analytic thinking.  Push them to develop their ideas and write about their ideas.  Or take the children outside and do an experiment.  For example, when I was about eight years old, our teacher asked us to form groups of two to measure our shadows outside at different times of the day.  I have never forgotten that shadows grow longer as the sun gets lower in the sky, either in the east or the west.  This brings science to life.

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