rss search

next page next page close
next page next page close

National Writing Project Annual Meeting

“How do we find material (financial and organizational) support for our work that will sustain the core ideas of the National Writing Project?” This question seemed to be mixed into every conversation at the NWP Annual Meeting this year. Lil, Cindy and I spent a lot of time talking with other sites about how they are figuring things out given the absence of direct federal funding. In the formal sessions designed to focus on these ideas and talks with colleagues in-between, we found some answers and also more questions. There were discussions of varying models for Summer Institute. Some sites were focusing more on their youth programs; still others were connecting to community organizations with interests in writing and literacy and working with their departments of public instruction to design workshops around the Common Core Standards. Everyone seemed focused on meshing Writing Project work with initiatives that are important to schools and teachers. The UNC Charlotte Writing Project has been thinking about all of these things, too, especially since our Sustainability Institute last summer. We are excited about our work with Common Core Standards, about our new summer youth programs being sponsored by schools, and our ongoing partnership work with area schools and districts. While we did not find big answers, and it was really useful and energizing to connect with other Writing Project sites who are just as deep in this work of imagining new possibilities.

The NWP seems tenacious and eager to work with local sites to sustain our work together. If you haven’t joined NWP Connect, you should do so right away to stay abreast of all that is happening http://connect.nwp.org/national. Our site has a presence there so that we can stay in conversation together and with the national community. Also, if you haven’t already, check out our site’s work on Digital Is http://digitalis.nwp.org/. We are going to stay alive in this new terrain… and we are going to hold on to our principals even in this new terrain.


next page next page close
thumbnail Mapping zoom
next page next page close

NCETA Conference


 

 


next page next page close

Summer Institute Reunion and Professional Development Meeting

On Thusday 9-22-11 two events took place in room 419 of Fretwell Hall at UNCC: a reunion of several 2011 Summer Institute  participants and a professional development meeting involving many of those same 2011 Summer Institute (new TC’s) as well as TC’s from at least 5 different years of the program!

What would a Summer Institute meeting be without a chance to write into the day? Or, rather, into the evening as we began around 5pm. We responded to Marge Piercy’s poem The Low Road before a bit of a “shake down.”

We wandered through small bits of red tape and reflected back on the summer while thinking ahead to our own classrooms. I always love how a “theme” starts to develop, even if one wasn’t originally planned. Don’t you find that that happens in your own writing? For this evening of the UNCC Writing Project the overarching message was Mapping.

One activity was to draw maps of our classrooms and schools. We were then to map out where writing could be found for student’s as well as teachers. We overlayed a transparency that allowed us to draw connections between where writing circulates in our classrooms and schools. I found myself asking who are the audiences for the work that my student’s create? What about my own writing? Should I share it with students?

This description just touches the tip (or perhaps compass) or the Map and the connections we are making as teachers, writers, and TC”s. We finished off our meeting by looking at the UNCC Writing Project map projects to see where we might belong.

At 6pm the other TC’s joined our group. We had a chance to get to know each other before pizza, snacks, and traveling around to “Choose Your Own Adventure” stations which were geared towards developing programs for upcoming camps, spring conferences, and fund raising ventures for the UNCC Writing Project (see – I told you there would be more maps).

It was wonderful to be around many of my 2011 Summer Institute TC’s and I felt that I was brought in to the larger Writing Project community by meeting participants from previous years as we all tried to tackle what we could do to map out creative writing ventures for our students, fellow teachers, and ourselves as writers.

I can’t wait for the next trip.


next page next page close

The Fall 2011 Digital Is Resource Retreat

     Impressed by the work being done through the UNCC WP Urban Sites group, the NWP folks in charge of Digital Is commissioned us to create and publish a set of resources for their website featuring the intersections of technology and our work as critical urban educators.  We began this work months ago, reading articles on critical teaching, post-colonial theory, and composing technologies; meeting at Amelies’s to begin organizing our thinking; and taking a weekend retreat to Ellerbe, NC to set about the task of creating these resources.
Ellerbe Spring - NC Bed & Breakfast
     It didn’t take long after checking in to the Ellerbe Inn to realize that we were all a little uncomfortable.  This collective feeling, though, had little to do with with Lil contracting a case of the hebejebes from finding a dead bat in her bathtub, or Alicia pointing out over lunch that property on which were staying “felt a lot like the scene from a horror movie where everyone gets murdered.”  No, what we all felt was what writers fear most.  Each of us, it seemed, had spent the month since our first meeting trying to figure out just what our resource would be, and while we all had some ideas, none of us seemed to know how these ideas would translate into a resource suitable to be published on a national site like Digital Is.
     Our anxieties began to fade as we met over lunch and saw that not only were the directions we were considering  perfect for Digital Is resources, but also that each of our paths connected at different points. We discussed how the articles we read shed light on the work we were each doing,  and also how the ideas  of one article in particular by Steven Fraiberg (2010) changed our thinking about the drafts we were creating, the ways in which they intersected, and how we could show this inter-connectivity of our work within the structure of the Digital Is website.
     After finishing our initial conversation over lunch and meeting with our writing partner for the weekend, we set out to begin the task ahead: by Sunday, each of us would have a draft of our resource completed. With pre-retreat jitters long gone, everyone settled into a spot and dug in.  Two days of thinking and writing, flocking and ranting, sharing-out and rewriting.  By Sunday morning, with a final hour and a half writing sprint, we sat huddled together, coffee cups filled, adding what we could to our drafts.
     Some important work took place at the retreat that weekend.  Some, like Cindy, Alicia, and Tony, left the weekend with their completed drafts posted on the Digital Is site, awaiting the feedback of other creators.  Others, like myself, had a little more thinking and writing to do. But regardless of the condition our drafts were in, we were each heading home with not only a sense of accomplishment over our individual work, but with also an awareness we could not have accomplished what we had alone.  The ideas for our resources intersected through the different veins of the critical and digital work we do, but more importantly than that, they were also tied together by the interactions and spaces that we shared over the weekend.
    Over these next weeks, we will each draw upon what was created at the Ellerbe Inn, to leave final bits of feedback for one another, polish our drafts, and publish them to the Digital Is site where others can learn from our collective and interconnected experiences. Individually, our practices will be affected indefinitely, as we take back to our classrooms new ideas about writing, teaching, technology, and learning.  And as a Writing Project site, will forever regard a dead bat in the Site Director’s bath tub as an omen foretelling an incredible retreat.

                                                   References
Fraiberg, Steven. “Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal
     Framework.” College Composition and Communication. The National
     Council of Teachers of English 62:1 (September 2010): 100-126. Print

next page next page close

State Network Meeting


This past weekend while retreating at the Elerbee Inn, we had a State Network Meeting with our pals at the Tar River Writing Project.  We started the meeting with a little ranting and riffing Youth Roots style, tweaked by Lacy and Lil..  What a powerful way to clear the air about the frustrations of the past months with the federal budget and then begin to re-build together through the sharing of ideas and the building of ideas from each other.  We were able to discuss what each site is doing to seek funding from the state and university level and share roadblocks as well as successes.  We also were able to share some vital contact information and get a better understanding for the changes going down at NCDPI.  We have now shared our Sustainability Google Site with the Tar River group so that they can continue thinking with us there.

Before if was over, Lacy and Lil were firing off e-mails right and left and we were starting to think of ways to restructure NCETA and work with NCDPI.  More importantly, we were able to reconnect face to face with another group of teachers, writers and thinkers in the state who share our passion for the Writing Project.  I left the meeting reminded that when we say “In Solidarity” these great people are right there with us!


next page next page close
thumbnail Spring Conference 2012 zoom
next page

UNC Charlotte Writing Project Video

article post

National Writing Project Annual Meeting

“How do we find material (financial and organizational) support for our work that...
article post
thumbnail Mapping article post

NCETA Conference

[View the story "NC English Teachers' Association Conference 2011" on...
article post

Summer Institute Reunion and Professional Development Meeting

On Thusday 9-22-11 two events took place in room 419 of Fretwell Hall at UNCC: a reunion...
article post

The Fall 2011 Digital Is Resource Retreat

     Impressed by the work being done through the UNCC WP Urban Sites group, the NWP...
article post

State Network Meeting

This past weekend while retreating at the Elerbee Inn, we had a State Network Meeting...
article post
thumbnail Spring Conference 2012 article post