On Thursday, award-winning author, Deborah Wiles, was welcomed back to MICDS. Her first visit was fifteen years ago when she spent a week as a writer-in-residence (and when Ms. Dunson was in sixth grade).
Wiles, who writes picture books and middle-grade novels, is the author of Love, Ruby Lavender and Each Little Bird That Sings, a 2005 National Book Award finalist. Her writing is narrative in style and centers around the summers she spent in Mississippi as a child during the Civil Rights era.
Wiles talked to Middle School students about how they can use their lived experiences to create their own stories. “We are stories. Every moment we live, we are a story,” she said. Throughout the assembly, Wiles prompted students to write down the answers to questions that she asked about their lives.
In the afternoon, she led fifth and sixth grade students through a writing workshop where they used the five senses to describe a moment of time in their day.