Who am I?  I found answers teaching my students about their creativity, a forgotten area that needs to be addressed in the schools.  I helped kids understand their creative and everyday lives, to be mindful and focus, to discover self-motivation independently, and to discover an organic purpose for learning.  Once children penetrate these inside worlds, they begin to see the world outside in fresh, imaginative, perceptive ways and realize the possibilities before them.

For thirty-four years as an elementary school teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York (NYCDOE, retired in 2002) to the present, I developed many original, innovative, and progressive projects in communication skills, character education, values clarification, creativity, concentration, writing, reading, thinking, poetry, and vocabulary, which culminated in Motivating Teen and Preteen Readers: How Teachers and Parents Can Lead the Way (Rowman & Littlefield Education, August 2011).  I consider myself a teacher-developer-researcher-experimentalist who was not satisfied with the traditional curricula in reading and writing, so I began making up stuff: call it experimental education. 

Newspaper articles have been written about the book: "Book Inspires Reading In Cyber Age" by Ross Barkan (Queens Tribune) and "Local Educator's Book: Love of Reading from the Inside Out" by Greg Hanlon (Greenline).  A recent book review, titled "Motivating Young Readers" by Kecia Burcham, can be found at www.examiner.com/review/motivating-your-kids-to-read.  My piece, "Dazzling Your Mind With Reading," came out in May 2012 in Skipping Stones: A Multicultural Literary Magazine. 

My students' poetry has been published in college, writers', gifted secondary, and children's literary journals, as well as in magazines, newspapers, and by major commercial publishers.  The children's poetry was juxtaposed with their prose in a compilation titled, "There's a Soul Arising in My Mind," and read on the public radio show, "Poetry-In-The-Morning" (WNYE-FM), sponsored by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in NYC.  I have written articles about my projects in professional magazines and newspapers (Teachers & Writers and New York Teacher).  An article in New York Newsday, "Making Life a Matter of Meter" by David Bornstein, describes my kids' poetry and prose whose source was an original form of writing called "Music" or "Contemplation" Writing.  Two pieces, from a series about The Contemplation Music Writing Project, have been published by Edutopia: "Using ‘Music Writing' to Trigger Creativity, Awareness and Motivation" (4/2/12) and "Build Reading and Writing Skills with Music" (6/6/12).     

I am currently a BAM! Street Journal Blogger on the BAM Radio Network, serving the greater education community (www.bamradionetwork.com).  Check out posts on EI, reading, music writing, teaching, and learning.  I have been interviewed about my work and book on Internet radio shows such as "Pure Imagination," "OnlineWithAndrea," "Raising Great Men," "Journey to Center," "Healing Through Creativity," "Unplugged Mom," "LearningRx," "The Learning Curve," with upcoming shows on "The Literary Showcase," and "Pure Imagination."  A profile page, titled Creativity, Imagination, and Motivation, can be found at: www.blogtalkradio.com/jeffreypflaum.  Check out www.amazon.com for more information about the book.  For additional articles on "Music" or "Contemplation" Writing, its various offshoots, practical applications, and samples of the children's published poetry, go to my website at www.JeffreyPflaum.com or contact me at jeffreyppflaum@gmail.com