Teaching History
Rebecca founded Writopia Lab in April 2007, currently directs the national organization, and teaches writing workshops in NYC and at special events throughout the country. Rebecca has won multiple teaching awards including the 2008 and 2009 National Gold Apple Teacher Award for "submitting the most outstanding group of submissions on the national level" in the Scholastic Art & Writing event each year. She lectures at schools, events, and parents' organizations on a variety of topics including "How to Inspire the Writer Within Your Child" and on "Identifying and Participating in Positive Competitions." Previously, Rebecca established the creative writing program at the Abraham Joshua Heschel Middle School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a consultant. While she was there, the program outperformed every other school in the city (including every elite public and private institution) in Scholastic's prestigious Art & Writing Awards competition. She was awarded recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as an "outstanding educator" in 2006, 2007, and 2008. (Writopia won Scholastic's official endorsement in 2007.) Rebecca was also nominated by students and selected to be entered into the 11th Edition of Who's Who Among American Teachers.
Rebecca has taught at SUNY Albany, New York University, The Katherine Gibbs School, and at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. In 2002, she had the pleasure of working with young writers in New York City public schools for the first time as a resident writer with the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. By 2003, she was working at the Heschel School, planting the seeds for a unique and successful creative writing program there. She also participated in the judging of the Scholastic competition in 2006 and currently serves as a judge of several national youth writing competitions (in which her students are not involved).
Writings
Rebecca began writing for publications in 1997 as an intern at The Village Voice. Over the next ten years, she contributed five cover stories (and other pieces) to the Voice, served as Senior Editor at Psychology Today Magazine, contributed op-eds and thought pieces to The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Nation, and New York Newsday, and contributed to dozens of other magazines and newspapers including New York Magazine, Salon.com, and Spin. She won Salon's "Best People Story of the Year Award" for "Love Labor’s Flossed" and received recognition for other pieces as well. In 1999, she became a Journalism Fellow at Brandeis University. In 2003, she entered the world of comedy writing, and began writing and performing sketch comedy around NYC. She won a “Best Sketch” competition at the Upright Citizens Brigade in 2006. A full-length comedic screenplay she co-wrote is currently being represented by The Dorothy Palmer Agency.
