About Your Teaching Artist

Stephen Peters’ residencies aim to foster a love of reading and writing. They inspire, energize, and encourage students to begin thinking of themselves as writers—and as readers who think like writers! Stephen’s joy in working with children is contagious; he and the children seem to hit it off quickly in the fun, high-energy workshops he has offered for over 20 years. Stephen’s work has appeared in many publications. He is author of Pennsylvania, a non-fiction book for 5th graders, and Kerfuffle!, a collection of cartoons and poems, and he has published short fiction in a variety of publications.

About Your Residency

Stephen’s residencies provide the structure within which creativity thrives and takes shape. Using storytelling and cartooning, Stephen will show students how to add vivid sensory details to their stories and how to understand story structure. Each student creates an original character with a problem, the character is placed in a conflict scene, and is then challenged by a variety of antagonists. Using the critical thinking skills of implication/inference and cause and effect, the character has to try to solve the problem and learn and grow through the struggle. This model is adjusted for each grade and class personality. Stephen stresses the writing process—from inspiration to final product—and he makes an emphatic case for reading, rewriting, and learning the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation.