How to Do a School Visit Right

The author’s parking spot!

Last week I went to Biddeford Intermediate School to talk with the third, fourth, and fifth graders about poetry. If you want to try being a rock star for a day, you should be the visiting author at Biddeford Intermediate.

They reserve a parking space out front “for the author.” All the kids line up to clap as you walk into the building. (For real!) They brought me snacks (yes, I am a sucker for chocolate) and an actual gift bag with goodies and a new blank book and a gorgeous pair of earrings. !!!

Wow! And I needed a new journal. How did they know?

This sounds like a school just needs to offer me earrings and chocolate to melt my heart. (This is partly true. Earrings are optional.) But it’s not the whole story.
The kids just vibrated with excitement when they came into my workshops. They called my name in the hall and waved and a few of them jumped up and down. When I made eye contact their faces glowed. They were excited about words, about books, about poetry. Their teachers treat a visiting author like a celebrity and that fills the kids up with passion for writing and art and creativity.

The kids wrote incredible poetry.

Some of the poetry the kids created, based on the images from Imagine a Night. This was before I even arrived!

That’s why the gifts and the parking space and the chocolate are important–not because I need these things to enjoy a school visit (although, again, chocolate does not hurt) but because they are visible symbols of the commitment of the teachers at BIS to helping their kids care about literature. They are the real rock stars.