I’m so grateful to have a column in the Voice of the River Valley.
1. Even though it has a website, it functions largely as a print publication. You can see it all over southwest Wisconsin, lovely cream pages in stacks here and there.
2. It’s free!
3. The cover has fantastic photography, sometimes from my favorite photographer (hint: he has the same last name as I do).
4. It’s an audience I wouldn’t ordinarily reach. People come up to me in Richland Center, in Spring Green–they don’t read my blog. They don’t have a Twitter feed. But they read the Voice of the River Valley.
5. Regular deadlines help me. Speaking of which, today’s the 15th, isn’t it. Hm.
6. Word count maximums challenge me. I can write a sonnet pretty easily, or I can go on and on in prose–1,000 words, 1,500…. But 500 is HARD.
7. The editor/publisher Sara and I worked pretty hard to figure out what the focus of my column should be & when we landed on writing about the world of teaching from my perspective–long-time professor at UW-Richland and recent volunteer at the River Valley Elementary Studio School, we both knew there was a rich vein of material to mine.
8. I continue to be pleased with the name we settled on for the column. I wanted something to go with “pedagogy” in a way that was provocative or at least startling, and “stew” ended up being the one we kept going back to. It fits, you know? Because I do stew.
9. And so does Sara. The publication already has a pretty big audience and circulation, but she’s interesting in pushing the boundaries and experimenting, and I applaud that, in principle and in actuality.
Back to work on my 7th “Pedagogy Stew” column! The June column is available online; I’ll post it here when the July issue comes out.
marniere 