Wordsworth: El Paso Strong

(Headline image: UTEP and EPCC T-shirts in "John's Grove," a beech forest near Dove Cottage which Dorothy and William Wordsworth held sacred in memory of their dead brother, John.  The photo was taken by Jeff Cowton in solidary with the victims of the El Paso Mass Shooting victims of August 3, 2019.) 

Connections through Tragedy
Written by Dr. Thomas Schmid, The University of Texas at El Paso
Faculty Fellow, The Humanities Collaboratorative at EPCC-UTEP

Jeff recently helped lead a second “Skills Sharing” conference in Grasmere to explore the potential of Wordsworth’s poetry to counteract modern stress, nurture empathy for others, and model connections with the natural world we all too often ignore (see Matthew Foster’s December 2018 blog for a description of our team’s participation in the first workshop. During the August 31, 2019, event (at which I presented online via Zoom), Jeff had each member of the group in Grasmere read one of the poems the Barron Elementary School students in El Paso had written last April (see my April 2019 blog). The poems were all about what makes life special for our students here: the relationships with family members, the favorite recipes of mothers, aunts, grandmothers, fathers, the views of the world from each child’s backyard, and the places in their minds where their dearest memories are stored. Many of these aspects of a child’s life and imagination enter into Wordsworth’s works, and as each poem was read out loud by the various scholars and professionals at the workshop—an artist, several archivists and Wordsworth scholars, a skilled hospice nurse, a noted writer on mindfulness, an executive with England’s Eden Project—the group applauded and expressed tender support and solidarity with these children so far away from their country and their experience. The poems brought us together, and Wordsworth himself would have been proud of the connections his life and work had engendered.

What made the day most emotionally powerful, though, was Jeff’s expressions of solidarity with El Paso in the wake of the August 3, 2019, Wal Mart mass shooting. Immediately upon hearing the news of the shooting, Jeff (who visited El Paso in 2017 and who has hosted numerous student groups from UTEP and EPCC since 2014) wrote to me in great sorrow; he photographed UTEP and EPCC T-shirts in a beech grove near Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home, and tweeted of England’s solidarity with El Paso during the horrific hours following the shooting; he shared and discussed one of the Barron Elementary School student poems with Britain’s poet laureate, Simon Armitage, in the context of the Grasmere connection with El Paso; and he shared the poems at the August workshop, as discussed above. In a stroke of extreme good will, Jeff draped his “El Paso Strong” T-shirt on a bust of William Wordsworth in the Trust library reading room in Grasmere, England:


(Image courtesy of Jeff Cowton.)

To me, this is what our Mellon Humanities Collaborative project is all about: learning from scholars such as Jeff about Wordsworth’s importance to our modern world, bringing that information to the El Paso community, and having our work deeply affect our friends and colleagues in England. I am very excited about the expansion of our plans this year, which Katelynn Hernandez will talk about in the following paragraphs, and to the contributions from two amazing new student fellows on our project team: Sarah Lord (UTEP) and Mikhail Atayde (EPCC). I know readers will enjoy hearing about Sarah’s and Mikhail’s hopes and aspirations for our Wordsworth-in-the-schools initiative, below! 

New Year, New Plans!  Written by Katelynn Hernandez, The University of Texas at El Paso
Undergraduate Research Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

While we gear up for another round of sessions with a new group of fifth graders (including adding two new El Paso schools), there are some important aspects that our team needs to consider and adapt from our previous session. The fifth-grade students with whom we worked in April are no longer at Barron Elementary School, and this is unfortunate because we would be honored to share with them the great distance their poems have travelled, from El Paso to Grasmere, along with the many professional writers and scholars across the sea who have read and shed tears over the poems. As the person who proposed the poetic exercise through which the students could share their lives, I am almost in disbelief over the emotional impact of the children’s poems, which has reverberated like a shockwave through so many people abroad. When heading back into the classroom this fall, Dr. Schmid and I agreed that we will make hard copies of each student poem for each class so that we are able to access the writing for possible publication in an anthology at the end of the year; the team also plans to highlight select poems in a collaborative article on our project. We are excited about both sharing the students’ work and getting responses from England back to them. Presenting to these students the paths their writing takes through the world can help spur their desire to learn more and write more often.

Our first session will be similar to our last. We will introduce the students to William Wordsworth, let them explore the photostat brochure for the Trust, and engage them in letter folding, wax sealing, quill writing, and writing their personal poems. A new addition to these activities will an ink-making exercise from Dorothy Wordsworth’s own recipe, which she recorded in her journal around 1800. Our plans for subsequent sessions will include a Skype call to Jeff Cowton, analyses of Wordsworth’s poetry, and a fantastic group poetry activity, which will explore the power of important places and people in our lives. We are thrilled to have another go at these sessions, to add two new elementary school classrooms to our roster, and to see where this year will take our group on our journey researching and teaching about the humanities . . . Wordsworth style!

Meet the members of our new team:

TEAM MEMBERS TOM SCHMID AND KATELYNN HERNANDEZ WITH NEW STUDENT FELLOWS MIKHAIL ATAYDE (SECOND FROM LEFT) AND SARAH LORD (FAR RIGHT)

From Lake District to El Paso
Written by Sarah Lord, The University of Texas at El Paso
Undergraduate Research Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

This past summer, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to take the Walking with Wordsworth course with Professor Grace Haddox and Dr. Tom Schmid. This course took us across the Atlantic to the Lake District in England, home of William Wordsworth, whose work we had spent the previous few weeks studying. We got the chance to explore the places and see the majestic sights of nature that inspired Wordsworth’s writings throughout his life. Being able to see the sources of his words and experience my own “spots of time” in the same places that he experienced his, gave me an insight that I could never have gained in the far-removed classroom we had gathered in back home. Also included on the trip was the privilege of studying at the Wordsworth Trust where Jeff Cowton, the head curator, presented us with many valuable artifacts and lessons. One especially rare and awe-inducing lesson was when he visually and physically presented us with the step-by-step progression of the writing of Wordsworth’s magnum opus, “The Prelude.” Seeing the first scribblings of a budding idea in the back of a journal through to the final publication gave me context that I would never have gained from studying the pristine version in my textbook.

As the trip progressed, I noticed how this immersive approach to teaching and learning about this great literary figure and his process changed how I interpreted his works and how I made connections between myself and my desert community with that of Wordsworth’s English countryside and that this was something I wanted to bring to the classrooms back home. The potential for making connections through the humanities was never more evident on the trip than when the poems written by the students at Barron Elementary School the previous year were read aloud in Rydal Mount, Wordsworth’s home from 1813-1850. The emotional impact each time one of those poems is read is undeniable and is a direct result of the Humanities Collaborative’s efforts. I am excited to continue this work and bring what I learned across the ocean to the El Paso community with Katelynn, Mikhail, and Dr. Schmid.  

Introductions and Interests
Written by Mikhail Atayde, El Paso Community College 
Undergraduate Research Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

I am very excited to join the Wordsworth humanities project and to enrich my understanding of the educational philosophy behind the poetry. I am especially interested in the question of how poetry from the Romantic Period can affect the education of contemporary and future generations. It is important to understand the history of public education, including the way in which primary education can connect children with the world around them and foster independent thinking—both of which concerned William Wordsworth as he wrote about his own experiences growing up in the North of England. Showing El Paso students Wordsworth’s own struggle to learn and grow can help foster attentive minds that interact more effectively with nature and society.

Wordsworth’s period initiated debates over the need for public education, so it is important to acknowledge that the public educational systems we enjoy today were not available to the overwhelming majority of Wordsworth’s contemporaries. Wordsworth did not merely create poetry: he helped draw attention to many important aspects of education that are still relevant today, including philosophy, politics, science, and the visual arts. Keeping the humanities alive in the community is one of the main goals of The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, and I look forward to our team’s working with the community and interacting with schools and students to explore how Wordsworth’s poetry can teach us and speak to us in the El Paso region today.