Every Wednesday morning, Ann Teplick walks down halls both colorful and labyrinthine, a suitcase on wheels trailing behind her. She arrives at her first destination—a classroom on the seventh floor of Seattle Children’s Hospital—and readies her papers, prompts, poetry, and pencils. All of Teplick’s students also happen to be patients at Seattle Children’s, where she has taught since 2011.

Teplick’s teaching happens in partnership with a program called Writers in the Schools (WITS). Operated by Seattle Arts & Lectures, WITS places professional writers in K–12 schools across the region. The program has been around since 1994 and has served over 100,000 students. This school year alone, WITS will reach over 6,000 students in nearly 40 schools around Seattle. Most WITS teaching artists work with youth either on a weekly basis for 10–14 weeks or in intensive programs where they visit a classroom daily for a two-week period. 

There are other WITS chapters in cities across America, but Seattle’s is unique in that it also offers the creative writing program at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where Teplick teaches alongside poet Sierra Nelson.

At Seattle Children’s, Teplick offers poetry and creative writing lessons to students from ages 5 to 19. Some she teaches in the seventh-floor classroom, and others she visits one on one in their hospital rooms. Her work takes her all over the facility, from the cancer and rehabilitation and dialysis units to the Partial Hospitalization Program and Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit. 

“I don’t know what’s going on in anyone’s life, if they’re inpatient or outpatient…all the things they have been through before 10am,” says Teplick. She begins each class with a check-in. “Today, my heart is like a ____.” There are, as one may expect, responses that indicate fear, sadness, hopelessness, anger. But there is also much joy and hope and humor within the walls of the hospital. 

“The youth I have the pleasure and honor to write with are my guides,” she says. The work is extremely fulfilling for Teplick, just not always predictable. She might work with a student multiple times or only once. Many of Teplick’s students are discharged. Some over the years have died. But she has so many beautiful memories, such as writing with a teen who had just had a heart transplant. “[He] showed me photos of holding his old heart in gloved hands, with a smile as wide as an owl’s wingspan.”

One way that Teplick preserves some of these memories is with Words of Courage, an annual compilation of work done by patients at Seattle Children’s and released each spring. Teplick and Nelson narrow down 20 poems or short prose pieces and collaborate with local letterpress organization Partners in Print (PiP) to create the anthology. Artists at PiP volunteer their time and expertise to create one-of-a-kind interpretations, complete with illustrations. 

Sadly, some parents must attend the book’s release party without their children. “Each year, some of the chosen Words of Courage poets are those who have passed away,” shares Teplick. “It’s an honor to include their work, which becomes part of their legacy.”