Poet and teaching artist Jamie Houghton collaborates with CCHS
From 2008-13 teaching artist Jamie Houghton, formerly of Bend taught annual 10-week creative writing workshops at Crook County High School. She will return for two days in January 2016 in collaboration with Crook County High School teacher Rebekah Picard and Principal Michelle Jonas.
Crook County High School has long contributed to their student’s arts enrichment, including the literary arts. In 2011, head of the drama department Anita Hoffman brought The National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Out Loud competition to CCHS. Nathaniel Dunaway, 18, a senior at Crook County High School in Prineville, won Oregon statewide Poetry Out Loud competition and competed in Nationals. English teacher Jim Churchill-Dicks began collaborating with The Nature of Words (former Bend non-profit) to bring creative writing workshops into classrooms in 2009 and went on the collaborate with his students and The Nature of Words with his online literary magazine http://www.torchesnpitchforks.com/ that publishes youth (with parental consent).
Houghton has been teaching creative writing for eight years. Her students have ranged from youth and adults in public schools as well as a range of educational settings including workshops at The Warm Springs Museum, New Leaf Academy (a boarding school for at-risk girls) and Shepherd’s House habilitation center. She is the book reviewer for High Desert Journal, teaches in Portland Public high schools for Literary Arts Writers in Schools program and is honored to be part of the 2015-16 cohort of the Teaching Artist Studio, a professional development program offered by Young Audiences of Oregon and Southwest Washington. http://www.ya-or.org/for-artists/the-teaching-artist-studio. More information about her individual and collaborative projects can be found at http://www.idreamofdreamhouse.org/.
Dreamhouse is a collaborative effort dedicated to honoring the creative spark founded in 2014 by Jamie Houghton and Andréa Huckleberry Iannone.