I grew up in a town where our parents were ship builders, bakers, waitresses, and cashiers, and where books found their right and proper place in the local library. Ours was an oral tradition, with the sounds and voices of elders and neighbors in inflections of Portuguese, Greek, Irish, and Italian – all of which I quickly learned to imitate. The result was a technical training that served a writer. I learned by ear the necessity for music in language, the power of truths told in nods and quiet breaths, and the critical importance of timing. And, I learned at my kitchen table that if you’re going to tell a story, it must be artful and it better be worth everyone’s time.

At the age of ten, I met the woman who would become my lifetime mentor – Miss D, my fourth grade teacher. She would unleash my passion for literature and the arts and teach me how art connects us. A few years later, at the age of fourteen, I was awarded my first literary prize – 1st place in a poetry contest hosted by Boston’s Emerson College. In a packed campus theater, the contest judge, renowned poet Charles Simic, handed me a check for a hundred dollars and mumbled, “Good job, kid.” Even at that early age, I understood that writers thrive on affirmation – not because the ego needs it, but because it confirms that through our art, we connect. At that moment, my life as a writer was confirmed.

My passion for languages and literature took me on a course of studies to some of the best colleges in the world. At each college, it would be the Poet in Residence that I would seek out. At Williams College, Lawrence Raab and Richard Wilbur taught me to unleash the mystery in poetry; at Brown university, Michael Harper tuned my ear for the music in poetry; at Goddard College, Alfred Corn and Michael Klein honed my technique in poetry; and at Harvard University, the Nobel-prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney mentored me in the mercy in poetry. I was immensely fortunate to share countless hours and discussions with Seamus (sometimes over a PBR and Powers) not only on the topic of how to write good poetry, but on how to be a good poet. “It takes a good person to be a good poet,” Seamus often said to me. I knew that this “goodness” was what Seamus himself strived for; it was a positioning of himself in service to the world that I continue to try to emulate in my work – empathy, authenticity, and self-effacement. It is Seamus and the mentors who preceded him that walk with me in my recognitions.

My book with Regal House Publishing, Beginner’s Mind, examines a topic that I have made my life’s focus: namely, education. In a time when our schools are dogged by institutionalized goals for our children, this book gives us a classroom where personal growth and innovative thinking happens in unimaginable ways because of a remarkable fourth grade teacher. Though my soul naturally defaults to the poetic, I have chosen a prose format for this book to more directly reflect the classroom dynamics. Beginner’s Mind is a collage of teaching moments that forever changed a generation of ten-year-olds, and examines the question, “How do we want teachers to educate our children?” The answer is given to us through a series of classroom vignettes that put on display the possibilities before us when a teacher’s love is combined with the beginner’s mind.