Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz will be honored with the 2012 Hamilton School at Wheeler’s Life Achievement Award at the annual “Mind Your p’s & q’s Party,” Thursday, March 1 at 6:30 p.m. in an event on the campus of The Wheeler School in Providence.
Schultz, author of the memoir My Dyslexia, is a well-known poet, fiction writer and educator who has taught creative writing for nearly 40 years. He founded The Writers Studio in 1987 after spending four years as the director of New York University’s graduate creative writing program. Mr. Schultz has taught undergraduate and graduate fiction, poetry, literature, and craft classes. In addition to receiving the award on Thursday, he will spend part of the day, Friday, March 2 with students at Hamilton and Wheeler, sharing with the students his own struggles with a learning difference.
Each year for the past 19, The Hamilton School at Wheeler selects a noted individual who has overcome the challenges of learning differences to succeed in life. Past recipients have included the late Fred Friendly, President of CBS News; children’s author AVI, TWISTER game inventor Reyn Guyer, former NFL player Duke Fergerson, and migrant farmworker turned pediatrician Dr. Mary Groda-Lewis.
The Hamilton School at Wheeler is a ‘school-within-a-school’ on the campus of The Wheeler School. Founded in 1988, the program educates bright students in Grades 1-8 with language-based learning differences. In 2006, Hamilton received the National Association of Independent School’s Leading Edge Award for Curriculum Innovation, the first LD program to do so. A brief video story about Hamilton can be found on YouTube by searching for The Hamilton School at Wheeler. Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVVD9RFPetg.