People

Simone Zelitch has been a professor at Community College of Philadelphia since 1993, and is founder and former director of the college’s Certificate Program in Creative Writing and its English Degree. Simone is also the author of five novels and has been awarded a fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. As a CCP professor of fiction writing, Simone used artifacts from the PHS collection as prompts for students’ creative writing. The resulting fiction was collected into a booklet funded by BKBB, and was edited and designed by students in the class, printed at CCP, and presented at an end-of-semester gathering at the PHS building. The project reminded Simone how much students benefit from being exposed to radically unfamiliar material; it stretches their imagination. She enjoyed seeing how students were genuinely moved by a site visit, by putting on white gloves and handling the artifacts--the best learning experiences engage the senses.