The first time the National Writing Project (NWP) transformed my practice as a teacher was in 2009, when I was selected as English department chair at La Esquela Internacional Sampedrana, a bilingual secondary school in Honduras. It was the second semester of my first year as a teacher. Isolated from the immediate presence of and public access to the library of familiar colleagues, I relied on social networking to help inform and affirm my decisions.

At the time the English Companion Ning (ECN) was an intimate group of a few hundred people.  Because shook hands with some individuals in this nascent community, I approached my interactions with everyone there as I did my teacher education cohort at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I did not look for the lines between scholar, expert, veteran, novice, and pre-service teacher, so I didn’t honor them. I asked questions openly and vulnerably. I read voraciously and critically.  I grew immensely, but so did the ECN. As I grew, I leaned less on my ECN colleagues and I worked on strengthening the culture of teaching and learning at EIS.  As the ECN grew, my personal mentors communicated to a more general audience. They addressed ECNers as a whole, like authors of books and like professors of methods, which I later learned is what they are.

In my journey as a department chair and as a new teacher, I had the privilege of challenging my colleagues and students to think and write in new ways. Their dissonance, created by my leadership and exploration, fostered questioning. As a young professional with a lot of responsibility, their questions forced me to look for answers. I returned to the ECN and found its size and messiness overwhelming. My next step was to follow the experts on Twitter. I was an avid Twitter feed reader. Even though it wasn’t a direct dialogue between my questions and potential answerers, the feed lead me to articles and blogs that I shared with my questioning colleagues. More importantly, it exposed NWP as a common thread between the ECNers I once saw as colleagues and the experts I was relying on to bring life to the threat of seclusion.

When I added NWP reading to my repertoire, it became obvious that  teaching, questioning, researching, and writing were all essentially connected - making my experience less unique than I thought. The isolation and authority that I experienced in my very first teaching experience forced me to explore professional networks like ECN, Twitter and NWP.  I now that I have experienced the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Invitational Summer Institute (UWMWP), I have the advantage of including scholar and reformer in my definition of teacher.

 The reason I am currently in the UWMWP is because of my experience teaching with a NWP Teacher Consultant. Her definition of a teacher was similar to mine, but she had a more systematic way of enacting it. Her contributions to our staff development meetings included phrases like “according to research on…” and “...would argue that the best course of action in this situation would be to…” When we outlined our unit outcomes and planned assessments together, we exchanged critical questions and discussed theoretical viewpoints. The advantage that she had, as a recent UWMWP Teaching Fellow, was experience with methods and practices to go with the theories. Midway through a successful teaching partnership with Amy, she gave me a brochure detailing the UWMWP and encouraged me to apply.

 

The idea of teacher inquiry was compelling, since questioning had always been part of my teaching experience.  I wanted to find answers with practical substance for the benefit of my colleagues and as a responsibility to students. I will admit that the NWP principle that teachers of writing must be writers read terrifyingly into my weaknesses as a member of professional networks and as a teacher to this point. I remember realizing that some of my ECN and Twitter mentors had made me the subject of their research on teacher development, and I decided to keep my online discussion prompts and discussions to a minimum and to stop publishing my reflections on teaching on my personal blog. I didn’t want a few well thought out compositions to be feign authority on what it means to be a new teacher.  It was paralyzing to the point that even writing directions for students’ assignments became difficult work.

Fortunately, my colleague, friend, and UWMWP alum is an expert Teacher Consultant. She’s also persistent. Even after allowing the deadline pass, she made sure I applied. I spent days trying to clarify my intentions for the application to the program, in writing. It forced me to revisit my definition of a teacher and consider the value of adding writer to the criteria.

Now that I am three weeks into the UWMWP, I understand why my colleague wanted to share this experience with me. It reminds me of what I found when I first started interacting with NWP teachers and before I knew that’s what they were; teachers in all stages of their careers have questions about their practice and the desire to resolve them.  Like all of the NWP teachers I have read and met, my group of UWMWP Teaching Fellows are here as professionals who question, research, and write in order to reform education on behalf of students and society. In addition to invaluable methods, stories, and relationships, the UWMWP makes me a legitimate member of the national network I have been looking into since I started teaching.

Even though there is still some degree of agony in my personal writing process, my ideas are starting to reside in words more often than they used to. When I get home from a day of UWMWP, I have a lot to write about and, more importantly, I actually write. I am reconnecting with the vulnerability that is necessary to grow as a writer and as a teacher of writing.

The potential that this whole experience has to impact the quality of instruction that I can provide to students at Sheboygan Falls High School is exciting, but the implications of this experience for my professional community is immeasurable. My recent discussions with my colleague have gone beyond celebrating the personal experience of UWMWP; our superintendent and curriculum director have charged us with designing a professional development opportunity that models the NWP in our district. As NWP Teacher Consultants, we are confident that providing this opportunity for teacher-centered professional development in writing instruction and encouraging teachers to be writers will reform our professional community and our school. 

Kimberly Johnson

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute 2011  

The National Writing Project has made a big difference in my teaching career. It has given me many professional development opportunities. I have grown tremendously as a writing teacher. Every day I use strategies learned through the DAWP in my classroom. I went through the Delta Area Writing Project about four years ago. Now each year I work with the Young Writers Program with excellent partner teachers. I learn new strategies for teaching reading and writing every summer, and I share new strategies I have used as well. This camp really works like a professional development since the teachers are constantly teaching each other new things. When I go back to school, I have a whole new collection of teaching strategies to use in my classroom, and I can't wait to get started! Throughout the school year we meet every month for continuity, and it provides me with constant support and feedback from other TC's. This program is very important to my professional life.

The Delta Area Writing Project is making a difference in the Mississippi Delta. Each year we get teachers from all over the Delta trying to make a positive change in their classrooms. It only with the help and funding of the NWP that we will be able to continue making such a difference here in Mississippi. We need your support.

Christy Zelinski

Delta Area Writing Project

Just now, a student came into my room between classes. “Carol” came to give me senior pictures and ask me to sign her memory book. But more importantly, she came to tell me that she loves to write because of me. Carol was a student of mine in the fall of her sophomore year. I was fresh off an amazing month at the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project; a newly minted Teaching Consultant. My enthusiasm for writing, and for teaching writing, had been reawakened, and we wrote with joy that semester. “Don’t look back,” I told them. “Just keep writing. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation.  Just barf your brains out onto the page.” Ideas were the most important thing.

Carol, who grew up in a volatile family situation where academic achievement was not a priority, told me that it was her experience in my class that made the writing portion of the ACT easy for her. She said that she looked around the room, and saw that many students were still working on the first part when she was well into the second part. I don’t know what her score will be. Her conventions needed work when she was in my class. But the confidence with which she approached the writing section assures me that her ideas and support were strong. More importantly, she has a love of writing that will be with her throughout her life.

Thank you, National Writing Project, for transforming me into a teacher who inspires a love of writing.

Ellen Steigman

Why does the National Writing Project matter? Because our students matter.
Even those students in small, underfunded ordinary public education schools
matter. They deserve teachers who are knowledgeable and energized by the
professional development that the writing project has to share.

Today I re-read the letter that I wrote in application to the Invitational
Summer Institute of the Dakota Writing Project. When I wrote that letter, I
was concerned that I needed to better myself in the field of writing
instruction in order to better prepare my students for their lives after
high school. This was important to me because I was the only high school
English teacher in our small rural school, and if I didn¹t do it right, my
students would suffer. My experience in that summer¹s institute not only
taught me new skills that I could, in turn, take back to my students, but it
also connected me to a larger group of teachers that energized me and gave
me the confidence to try new things. I was suddenly excited to infuse
writing into my lessons, and that excitement rubbed off on my students. I
was a better teacher all around.

That was six years ago, and I have been a writing project junkie ever since.
I got involved in almost everything that they had to offer; I was hungry for
the growth and collaborative energy. Currently I am a co-director of our
invitational summer institute and a member of the board of directors. The
positive energy and fresh ideas that I get from my writing project
involvement is still benefiting my students.

Yes, I am still concerned with preparing my students properly for their
ever-changing futures. The difference now is that I don¹t feel that I am in
it alone. I have the backing of an entire national organization to feed me
current information and ideas. Please don¹t make me go back to doing it
alone! There just has to be a way to continue funding the National Writing
Project.

Mrs. Karen Rahn
Karen.rahn@k12.sd.us
Rutland High School English
Dakota Writing Project ISI Co-Director

I am a beneficiary The National Writing Project is my benefactor I was born in the United States Spanish was my first and only language until I was 9 years old I am a strong effective communicator The National Writing Project teachers helped me I have a Bachelor's in Spanish, a Bachelor's in Social Work, a Master's in Social Services, a Master's in Law and Social Policy... I know how to write I can comprehend The National Writing Project teachers challenged me Who am I? I am a beneficiary of the National Writing Project!      Rosa Quintana

It's been more than 15 years that the National Writing Project invited me and engaged me in a national conversation that's had an immeasurable impact on my quality of life as a teacher of writing and those I teach.

It's almost a cliche to say that the NWP has saved me from burn-out from frustration with non-evolution of my practice and professional isolation.

Myles Horton, in his book with Paulo Freire *We Make the Road by Walking,* says in a recorded conversation that his education was saved by friends of his parents who put him up at their house and supported him in other ways in his endeavor to attend a school in the early 1900s.  These friends helped him "meet" books that fed his intellectual spirit and opened the world to him.

NWP opened the world of teaching writing for me. Through NWP, teachers have shared countless ideas and beliefs about writing, filling my mind and my shelves with invaluable tools and new approaches. They've taught me to view teaching in a broader, richer community context that has enabled me to see new ways to reach disaffected students. As well, NWP has invited me to teach others about my own lessons of my classroom and writing experience and helped me see myself as an expert teacher who can help other teachers take pride in the craft of teaching writing.

I have honored my NWP experience by becoming a teacher who has worked with thousands of students and has made space for them to grow as expert writers, finding their voices, expanding their range with words through genres and ideas. So many have surprised themselves by claiming they can now consider writing as a career, that they enjoy English, that they want to teach, that they passed. Each in their own way, joy was the spark they took with them.

Writing, as challenging as ever, became a tool, not to bludgeon their heads and their hearts against, but a space in which they could dwell peacefully, struggle mightily, and grow something in collaboration they never thought possible from the nub of a pen, a computer keyboard, mixing media.

If this country wants strong writers, the NWP and its networks that constantly buzz with the energies of professionals working and sharing with each other and broadening its resources is the answer. The road is paved and it will continue to be made with teachers teaching teachers writing with students  because NWP teachers walk it every day.

Phip Ross
Nebraska Writing Project
Lincoln, NE

The National Writing Project is the best professional development opportunity
for teachers, and it changed my professional life. My journey began in 1995
when I became a Fellow of the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project at
West Chester University. Since then, I have worked with hundreds of students,
hundreds of teachers, and at dozens of schools. I have taught and coordinated
summer Young Writers/Young Readers programs, led in-service programs,
participated in five national meetings, attended numerous PAWLP events,
interacted in virtual learning environments, and have read, reflected,
discussed, grappled, and learned from and with excellent teachers all over
the country. Losing funding is devastating news to me as this network has
given me so much, including the ability to contribute to our profession.

Mrs. Diane Barrie
K-12 Reading/Title 1 Coordinator
K-8 ILA/English Coordinator
Methacton School District
Phone: 610-489-5000 ext. 25035
The Methacton School District Mission
Learn, Lead, Succeed - Together!