How do we get students to "ache with caring" about their writing instead of mechanically stringing words together? We spend a lot of time teaching the craft of writing but we also need to devote time to helping students write with purpose and meaning. For decades, Georgia Heard has guided students into more authentic writing experiences by using heart maps to explore what we all hold inside: feelings, passions, vulnerabilities, and wonderings. In Heart Maps, Georgia shares 20 unique, multi-genre heart maps to help your students write from the heart, such as the First Time Heart Map, Family Quilt Heart Map, and People I Admire Heart Map. You'll also find extensive support for using heart maps, including: tips for getting started with heart maps writing ideas to jumpstart student writing in multiple genres from heart maps suggested mentor texts to provide additional inspiration. Filled with full-color student heart maps, examples of the resulting writing, along with online access to 20 different uniquely designed reproducible heart map templates, Heart Maps will be a practical tool for awakening new writing possibilities and engaging and motivating your students' writing throughout the year.

Deep in Our Hearts is an eloquent and powerful book that takes us into the lives of nine young women who came of age in the 1960s while committing themselves actively and passionately to the struggle for racial equality and justice. These compelling first-person accounts take us back to one of the most tumultuous periods in our nation’s history--to the early days of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Albany Freedom Ride, voter registration drives and lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Summer, the 1964 Democratic Convention, and the rise of Black Power and the women’s movement. The book delves into the hearts of the women to ask searching questions. Why did they, of all the white women growing up in their hometowns, cross the color line in the days of segregation and join the Southern Freedom Movement? What did they see, do, think, and feel in those uncertain but hopeful days? And how did their experiences shape the rest of their lives?

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, p, e, i, s, t.

Humanity and warmth. They are the cornerstones of quality nonfiction writing - even in genres more informational than intimate. With "Finding the Heart of Nonfiction," Georgia Heard demonstrates how with mentor texts you can help students create inviting nonfiction.

A Sweet Small-Town Romance to Warm Your Heart! Zoey is a New York executive and is used to getting her way. When bad luck strikes and she loses her job, she has nowhere to turn. As an orphan, she has no family, and her friends have all turned their backs in her greatest time of need. When she receives an unexpected inheritance from a father she never knew, she has no choice but to move to Harmony Cove, a small beach town in Georgia. The town and its people are not what she expected. They are kind and welcoming, and one particular person makes her love Harmony Cove even more. The charming photographer next door, with eyes the color of the sea, makes her believe that there just might be some good in the world. For the first time in her life, Zoey feels like she has found a home. Harley is a successful photographer who feels like he has it all. He has a wonderful family, true friendships, and a hobby that he loves. When a beautiful woman from out of town moves in next door, he can't help being drawn to her independence. He just hopes that he can show her that there is more to life than a career.When bad luck strikes Zoey for a second time, a misunderstanding occurs, and Zoey is once again left all alone. Can Zoey and Harley look past their differences and admit to their mistakes? Do opposites really attract?

On May 12, 1960, as John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency, Chester Burge—slumlord, liquor runner, and the black sheep of the proud (and wealthy) Dunlap family of Macon, Georgia—lay in a hospital bed, recovering from surgery. He listened to the radio as the news reported that his wife had just been murdered. Police soon ruled out robbery as a motive, and suspicion centered upon the Ku Klux Klan, which two weeks earlier had descended upon his house to protest his renting of homes in white neighborhoods to black families. Then, on June 1, Chester was charged with the murder, and when the trial finally began, the sweet Southern town of Macon witnessed a story of epic proportions—a tale of white-columned mansions, an insane asylum, real people as “Southern grotesque” as the characters of Flannery O’Connor, and a volatile mix of taboo interracial relationships and homosexuality. This was a story as fantastical as a Greek tragedy, complete with a stunning conclusion. It is told in riveting detail in Richard Jay Hutto’s A Peculiar Tribe of People. Chester Burge was a walking streak of deception and sex. After weaseling his way to be the caretaker of the last Dunlap sister and forcing his way into her will, Burge and his family inherited a fortune as well as one of the family mansions. Then came his numerous assignations with men—including his black chauffeur—and, either single-handedly or with help from a lover, the murder of his wife. The trial would spawn the first testimony in Georgia history of a black man disclosing that he had been a white man’s sexual partner. Burge would be acquitted of murder, but convicted of sodomy. And yet, this Southern grotesque tale would take even more twists and turns before coming to an explosive conclusion.