Why we need the National Writing Project
Graduates of any National Writing Project summer institute understand that writing goes hand in hand with the teaching of reading. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Kelly Gallagher, an NWP grad and the author of four books about reading and writing: "My concern is first and foremost that teachers are really under the gun because they are being forced to pursue an unrealistic number of unobtainable standards, and as a result that instruction is sped up. It skims over the surface. There’s no time to stop and go deep. We’ve become the sorts of classrooms where coverage trumps depth. So my first piece of advice to teachers is to do less and do it better—let students really immerse themselves in projects or books. That may mean you’re going to have to consciously not teach all the standards that your school system wants you to. But in this case, what your school system wants you to do is not in the best interest of the kids. What good does it do if a kid gets a good grade, or gets a good test score, but at the end of the year can’t really read deeply or can’t really write with deep thought?
Writing in particular has been put on the back burner, because teaching writing takes a lot of time and dedication. Teaching writing is really hard, and it takes time—time that teachers don’t have when they have to cover an ungodly amount of standards in X amount of days.
The irony, as I said, is that if you teach kids to read and write well, they’ll do fine on the test. But if you teach kids only to take tests, they’ll grow up and they’ll never read and write well. So my advice is to try to get into some authentic reading, some authentic writing. The book I’m writing now is about trying to get kids to go beyond what I would call “fake” school writing and into the kinds of writing we actually want them to do in their lives, now and in the future.
Probably the best thing I did in my entire teaching career was to spend a July with the National Writing Project, which has sites sprinkled throughout the country. I can’t think of anything else that helps teachers become better teachers of writing than enrolling in the NWP. I’ve found that the best writing teachers I know are teachers who have gone through the Writing Project, who continue to read the professional books and journals, and who are plugged in to the conversation. To some extent, it’s about engagement." You can read the whole interview at http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2011/04/04/02gallagher.h04.html Joanne Lannin
Southern Maine Writing Project
Writing in particular has been put on the back burner, because teaching writing takes a lot of time and dedication. Teaching writing is really hard, and it takes time—time that teachers don’t have when they have to cover an ungodly amount of standards in X amount of days.
The irony, as I said, is that if you teach kids to read and write well, they’ll do fine on the test. But if you teach kids only to take tests, they’ll grow up and they’ll never read and write well. So my advice is to try to get into some authentic reading, some authentic writing. The book I’m writing now is about trying to get kids to go beyond what I would call “fake” school writing and into the kinds of writing we actually want them to do in their lives, now and in the future.
Probably the best thing I did in my entire teaching career was to spend a July with the National Writing Project, which has sites sprinkled throughout the country. I can’t think of anything else that helps teachers become better teachers of writing than enrolling in the NWP. I’ve found that the best writing teachers I know are teachers who have gone through the Writing Project, who continue to read the professional books and journals, and who are plugged in to the conversation. To some extent, it’s about engagement." You can read the whole interview at http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2011/04/04/02gallagher.h04.html Joanne Lannin
Southern Maine Writing Project
