The poet on the AP literature test? I saw that dude at Fremd
The short story is that in the early 1990s, Tony Romano and Gary Anderson, a couple of English teachers sitting in the back of a boring staff meeting at Fremd High School in Palatine, started chatting with each other about how cool it would be if they could bring accomplished writers to the school to talk to kids.
For the inaugural Writers Week in 1995, they managed to lure science fiction legend Frederik Pohl from his home a block away. Pohl's only compensation was a promise that they wouldn't let other writers know he was speaking for free.
With Romano, Anderson and other teachers tirelessly making pitches to writers, interest and the budget grew. Romano remembers feeling "a little embarrassed" giving a gifted writer a check for $14 in gas money. But the program took off.
Celebrating its 15th anniversary this week, Fremd's Writers Week has hosted more than 150 authors, poets, screenwriters, performers and other creative types who have read to and spoken with thousands of students. Teachers from St. Louis are attending this year's Writers Week to see how it is done.
When Fremd students discuss a Gwendolyn Brooks' poem in some college literature class, they can say, "Well, when she came to my school, she told us it was really about this,'" Romano says.
Fremd students taking the Advanced Placement Literature Exam have a personal history with poets laureate.
"They see Billy Collins on the AP test, and they say, 'Oh yeah, I remember that dude,'" Anderson says.
Now helping run Writers Week, second-year English teacher Russ Anderson, 24, remembers sitting in the auditorium as a student hearing activist and author Nikki Giovanni, poetry slam founder Marc Smith and poets such as Reggie Gibson and Brooks.
"How many people have come through this room in 15 years? It's remarkable what they've been able to do," Anderson says of his teaching mentors Romano, Anderson and the entire Writers Week team.
Oprah's Book Club favorite Jane Hamilton ("The Book of Ruth"), author Mary Karr ("The Liars' Club") and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman have taken the stage at Fremd alongside writers such as Cristina Henriquez, Charles Dickinson, Alex Kotlowitz, Naomi Shihab Nye and Harry Mark Petrakis. So have teachers such as Romano, whose debut novel, "When the World Was Young," led to a collection of short stories titled, "If You Eat, You Never Die." Anderson, a prolific poet, has had dozens of poems published in journals and anthologies, and co-wrote a textbook with Romano.
P.E. teacher and coach Jason Hogrefe, 28, will be reading today from the journal he wrote during his therapy last year for testicular cancer.
"This is the first time I've really spoken about it," Hogrefe says. A 6-foot-5, 230-pound athlete who attended Northern Illinois University on a football scholarship, Hogrefe hasn't gone public with his writing since his childhood essay titled "Why would you want to sponsor an outhouse?" won a contest sponsored by the Heritage Festival in his hometown of Downers Grove.
"Sometimes I just free-write to clear my mind, and not many people know that," says Hogrefe, who does compose and perform a poem for his family every Christmas. "That's what's so cool about this Writers Week. I can tell they (students) are looking at me differently _ 'What? This P.E. teacher writes?' I'm excited about that."
In addition to professional writers and faculty members, more than 80 students also will share their work in an auditorium with 550 peers. Some people who read as students, such as spoken-word artist Kelly Tsai, have come back years later to read as professionals. Kids learn how to listen, share, respect and care.
"It's more about the personal connections," Romano says. "It's more of a week about perseverance and dignity."
"It makes reading and writing something that is not academic _ fun, meaningful and part of being human, not just part of being school," Anderson says.
"It really didn't hit me until after I graduated," Russ Anderson says. "This is something special."