Am thinking deep, contemplative thoughts as a method of trying to verbalize what
exactly the National Writing Project means to me. I’ve been affiliated with NWP
for about fifteen years now. My first experience was when some local Teacher
Consultants presented their demos in those “one and done” type of professional
development sessions conducted at the beginning of the school year for other
teachers. I was hooked because they shared ideas that could be used not only in
their language classes, but in everything from art to music and across all grade
levels. Later, some of these same teachers gave of their time and efforts to
have a Summer Writing Camp for middle and high school students. My son was
involved and it was a great experience for him and others. They followed this
program for several years, until they grew up and no longer met the age limits.

Life later allowed me to participate as a Summer Fellow so that I could put the
title Teacher Consultant after my name. I was hooked. This “one and done”
professional development grew into sustained, continuous, life-long learning
that has been the fuel to fire my teacher’s soul every summer to send me back to
the classroom to move, motivate, and educate students. I teach Family and
Consumer Sciences to middle schoolers. They are vigorous, lively tweens and
teens who are searching for a place to belong and a walkway to the future. I
use techniques that are pulled from my “Writing Project Magic Bag of Ideas”
regularly—at least weekly. Yes—in the FACS classroom that addresses issues like
childcare, parenting, consumer education, management, foods, nutrition, sewing,
and dozens of other life skills—we write. We write poems; we write paragraphs;
we write exit slips; and we write laboratory reports, among other things.

NWP funding is now in dire jeopardy. I cannot imagine that the lawmakers that
we put into office in our Nation’s Capital can possibly see education of the
caliber that is provided for teachers across this great nation going down the
tubes with “typical earmarks.” Somebody wake me from this nightmare! What has
been the dream professional development that has kept me alive in the day and
age of all the educational reforms that remove accountability from students and
parents and put it on the backs of teachers is now facing DEATH! H e l p!! NWP
is a bridge to the future. It is a means whereby we can still create lifelong
learners who have ingenuity and skills to meet the needs of the global world of
the future. I need the work of NWP to keep me until retirement—and to sustain
those teachers who will continue when my bones are dried from time in the grave.
This program that began in Berkley over 30 years ago under the genius of Jim
Gray and others must continue. It is unbelievable that it could not be funded
as it has in the past.