In 1981, when I joined the New York City Writing Project, I'd been teaching English for fifteen years.  Sometimes I was pleased with the way things went in my classroom, sometimes not, but nearly always I felt a gap between my idea of good teaching and what I was doing myself.  I could imagine the classroom I wanted to create but didn't know how to create it; it seemed just out of my reach.  The teacher down the hall must know how to get there, I would think, but I seldom had a chance to ask her.  In the mid-1960s, at Joan of Arc Junior High School, I spent days in my classroom, nights and weekends preparing lessons and materials and reading students' work; I had little contact with other teachers.  At Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, in the 1970s, I admired some of my colleagues but had only a hazy idea of what they actually did.

Once I joined the NYCWP, however, the feeling of isolation vanished.  Here were the teachers I'd always wanted to meet: men and women who saw teaching the way I did, but knew better than I how to create the classrooms we all wanted.  Teachers who came together on Saturdays to read and write and talk about teaching.  Teachers who learned from each other.  We asked hard questions in those Saturday meetings; we were serious and passionate.  But we also laughed a lot.  

Writing groups.  Revision.  Active listening.  Writing about the writing process.  In my first summer institute and the Saturday meetings that followed, structures I'd been groping for began to fall into place.  Ideas as well: You learn to write by writing.  Writers need readers.  Writing can be a collaborative act.  Thirty years later, some things have changed -- students in my Adult Degree Program classes now respond to readings online -- but they and I still write together, meet in writing groups, celebrate finished writing in read-arounds.  Those early years still nourish and shape my teaching. 

As a member of the NYCWP, I've also studied and written about other Writing Project teachers, and because of this research have presented work at national conferences and visited NWP sites in various parts of the country.  Each of course was unique, but each felt familiar as well.  So many dedicated teachers, meeting on weekends or when they could, collaborating on projects, excited by what other teachers were doing...   I felt at home immediately.  

Through the NWP teachers like these can now serve students and teachers in their local school districts but also collaborate with teachers far from home, e.g., in urban or rural school districts, in an extraordinary network of teachers across the country.

What a waste of talent, experience and years of hard work If NWP funding is lost.  

Nancy Wilson

Lehman College, CUNY