Life is wonderful if you can accept it, and I am trying.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be teaching a writing class this fall at Bishop Maginn High School, I would have just laughed.

I’m starting in October, a visiting teacher. I can’t wait to work with 10 eager young writers, refugees, immigrants and native-born.

It was my idea, I got it a day or so ago. It just popped into my head, as ideas do.

The idea is to teach a six-week writing workshop (once a week) to Bishop Maginn High School students whose teachers believe they are promising writers or are eager to write. The subject is the mission and feel of the school itself.

Bishop Maginn is what the Catholics call a “mission,” school, the school has a purpose grounded in faith – to serve the needy and the vulnerable, of all colors and origins and faiths. It’s not a simple time to be a Catholic High School in a poor urban neighborhood, but Bishop Maginn has found its calling.

The idea of the workshop, I thought, would be for each of the students – looks like there will be 10 – to write about life at Bishop Maginn from their individual perspective, to tell their stories in their own voices.

I’ll ask each of them to come up with a different idea about the school, and what they feel about being there. I will want anecdotes and details and edit the pieces. This idea wants to be a self-published book.

I’ll work with these writers to balance and flesh out their ideas, and also help them with the writing and focus. At the end of the class, I’ll take the stories, along with some photos, and edit them.

This feels so right to me, I can’t think of a better thing for an author to be doing.

The next step will be to work with a graphic designer to publish a paperback with a title something like Tales From Bishop Maginn High School: Mission Of The Heart.

We’ll put the book up on Amazon with an ISBN number and sell it there, as well as in local bookstores and online. We’ll also print some copies for the school to give out to parents and new students and to sell in the community as well as on Amazon.

I met with Principal Mike Tolan and Art Teacher Sue Silverstein today and they approved of the idea and gave me the go-ahead to start the course in October. The staff at the school will pick the 10 students. I’ll take the photos unless one of the students wants to.

I love teaching and have been doing it on and off for more than 30 years, starting at NYU in the ’90s. But I’ve never taught refugee children before. I did teach for a few weeks in a high school writing class about 10 years ago.

I taught a Writing Workshop in Cambridge until the early Spring. The lastest class ran for five years, I think we all needed a change. I wanted to focus more on the Mansion and refugee work.

In the country, there are many talented people, but not too many who really want to write. I do miss that drive. I’m told some of the Bishop Maginn students have it.

Sue Silverstein took us to the special room where all the school supplies are being stored for students who have no supplies, or the money to buy any. Discreetly, and one by one, the students in need will go to the supply room.

Mike Tolan and Sue have worked out a plan. In the supply room, they can get a backpack, notebook, binder, pens, pencils and calendars, all courtesy of the Army Of Good.

This Fall, the teachers won’t have to spend their own money, and kids won’t have to without the basic tools of learning. So thank you for that.

It is an honor and privilege for me to teach writing to these kids, some of whom are refugees. I’m excited about this book, and I love the idea of using writing for good.

I wanted to share this happy news, I couldn’t be more excited. Later.