Ian Frazier's "Hungry Minds"

After reading the article "Hungry Minds", I am able to understand the true value of a writing community. In this article, Frazier writes of a minister's description of the soup kitchen volunteers as providers of “a window into what makes humanity human, into the deepest levels of being." As people help one another gain the necessary resources for survival, they become a tightly-knit community of compassionate, understanding human beings. This is also the product of the product of the community of writers created by the writing workshops that are held by the church mentioned in this article. By working together to help one another excel at something for which they are very passionate, these people are not only getting to know one another and helping each other with grammatical errors. Rather, these people involved in the writing workshop become a team; a support group. Through their interactions and through their sharing of their works, these individuals are also providing a view into the essence of humanity.

This article was very relevant to me as an educator for a few reasons. First, I would love to help create a writing workshop at a local soup kitchen in Portage County. From a previous presentation that I delivered to my residents in the past year, I understand that Portage County is one of the hungriest counties in the state of Ohio. Thus, I think that it would be incredible to help serve food at the kitchen and then facilitate writers' workshops to help people grow together, learn together, and, most importantly, find hope in someone else's praises and feel as if they belong to something larger than themselves. Another reason that this is relevant to me is because I believe that through participating in similar activities in a classroom, students would be able to grow as writers and communicators. Most importantly, though, is that by creating writers' workshops, educators are empowering students to know one another very closely and to grow as intellectual, well versed human beings.