Tomorrow I leave for a week on the road: three days of travel, two days of teaching, one evening of visiting with my college boy. So if you don't hear from me, assume that I'm driving through mountains in snow, or inflicting poems on high school science teachers, or touring an infinitesimal dorm room.

I'm able to take this trip thanks to a gift from the Schafer family, which has generously decided to help fund Frost Place outreach programs in the schools. If you've ever participated in the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, you're eligible to apply for this funding, so please be in touch if you're interested.

Plans for the 2013 conference are well underway. The inimitable Teresa Carson steps up as associate director, and we have lined up two wonderful poets as guest faculty: Terry Blackhawk, who founded and directs Detroit's acclaimed Inside Out Literary Arts Project, a poets-in-the-school program that serves more than 5,000 students every year; and Jeff Kass, a high school teacher who also coordinates the literary arts programming at the Neutral Zone, a teen center in Ann Arbor. Check out Terry's thoughts about teaching, which appear regularly on the Huffington Post blog, and here's a review of Jeff's book about teenage boys. You might also be interested in one of Teresa's projects, bringing poetry to health care workers. And to top off the list, here is an essay about teaching by Baron Wormser, emeritus director of the conference and now the Frost Place's director of education outreach.