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.

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.

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!

It’s a blue wall.  It is not anything but a blue wall.  It was strange to point to something and describe what it was not, and we all had difficulty trying.  But that was the point: “to make the familiar strange,” as Lil later said.

This improv activity is indicative of our work with Digital Is.  Our site’s mission is to understand/deconstruct/critically investigate our personal histories and interactions with technology and literacies.  We want to bring together our personal experiences and make connections with others based on these experiences.  We also want to question—we always question.  This is a good thing.

After this activity jump-started our thinking, we began thinking about the different events along our literacy journeys.  Specifically, we created timelines of our experiences with digital literacies in our daybooks, taking note of the years and events we felt were significant.  Lacy asked us to transfer these events to sticky notes, and together we created a group timeline of significant events.  Technologies such as the Atari game system, instant messaging, our first cell phones, etc. all made the list.  “Oh yeah, I remember that…” accompanied by a smile or a laugh was a common response for many of these examples.

Our timeline of sticky notes covered our table; there were so many, in fact, that the amount of yellow sticky notes over the table formed a U-shape rather than a straight line.  As we read each sticky note in chronological order, we began to deconstruct why these events were significant to us, making connections to each other’s experiences.  We then challenged these events by asking ourselves what dominant narratives were present or affected these experiences.  Capitalism, competition, authority—these were just some of the ideas that came out of that discussion.  Next month, we will meet again for a writing retreat in which we will delve deeper into these topics and discussions.  If our retreat is anything like our planning meeting (and I know it will be), it’s going to be awesome!

Looking back through the co-created texts and subtexts of the past two weeks, I see many worlds. Digital worlds of online picture book autobiographies and storified politics (hey if it’s going to be a verb it must have tenses, right?)– the “real world” where people subsist on $1 (or less) each day and where “the great democracy” reduces children to test scores– the “green world”: leaves and pages of captive bird ideas– and the “possible worlds” where teachers support and might even L-O-V-E each other (shhhh. keep it on the DL!), where children are nurtured and their personhood is respected, where everyone bubbles the words “shame on you” on their answer sheet and then mass mails their portfolio to the corporate evaluation tycoons.

I hope no one resents me labeling you a summer institutional. It seems appropriate because from here I am forever changed. In a way that one is changed and shaped by any environment. Moving from the assault of unhealthy “real world” seductions into the “possible world” of summer institute was a walk in the ocean, but moving back into the “real world” from here will be significantly more challenging. Like returning from vacation, there will be some transition, but I take comfort in the awareness that you are all one rant, one riff, one digital navigation away, and doing what you do best: being you.

See you at the revolution,
Jen