We here at the UMWP are getting ready to have our 24th Summer Institute, which means we have worked with 385 teachers in that program alone. Those teachers have taught roughly 20,000 students in Mississippi. This number is for SI alone and does not include the YW workshops and the countless professional development workshops since 1987. This year, we are working with six school districts in North Mississippi, with intense work going on at North Panola and Coffeeville School Districts. We also have four Young Writers’ Workshops scheduled for this summer. Amazing teachers who have worked closely with the principles of the National Writing Project make this work possible.
Our site has been made stronger by the National Writing Project support that is outside of the annual site grants. We have received funding for Rural Sites Workshops in which we have discussed the issues of teaching in rural settings; we have received funding for Project Outreach in which we studied the issues of diversity in our site and in our teaching area; and most recently we have received a Local Sites Research Initiative grant in which we are able to study the effectiveness of our site’s work. Even with this funding, we have been receiving invaluable support from the National Writing Project every step of the way. These programs would be much more difficult without the funding from the National Writing Project.
All of the above information is about the site’s work, and as the site director I know these numbers are important. However, the teacher part of me screams to be heard. I stayed in education because of one smart site director who decided that I needed to come to an Invitational Summer Institute. I had been teaching for two years and was the only 9-12 grade teacher in my school. There was no community, no academic support for what I was doing. Honestly, I was ready to go back to Texas and find something else to do, which would have not been in education. Of that I am sure. So sixteen years ago, I found the National Writing Project through the UM Writing Project and realized that I had a voice in education, that I had a place to support my classroom inquiry, and that I had a national network of teachers to guide me. Quite simply, I found a professional home.
So why does the work of the National Writing Project matter? In my own education, like so many students, I was never taught how to really write a paper. I suppose that I was to learn how to write on my own. Most of my teachers assumed that I knew how to write anything because I was a strong reader. Even in my teacher training classes, we were taught how to teach literature but there was no discussion of how to teach writing. The assumption again was that I obviously could teach writing because I could read and had survived college as an English major with decent grades. Those assumptions were incorrect.
Those assumptions are still incorrect when we do not provide training for teachers to teach writing, especially in a culture where writing is at the core of how we communicate. We are a culture that exists primarily on the ability to write: emails, websites, and texts. I always am amused at how much attention is given to the reading of classical literature in required English classrooms when all of our students will be required to communicate through writing in some form of another, and yet we do not give writing instruction the focus or the funding necessary to produce a culture of strong writers. I cringe when I watch teachers assign writing without any instruction on writing strategies and somehow expect the students to become better writers. They themselves do not have the strategies for how to teach their students to become better writers. The National Writing Project bridges that gap between what was not in our teacher education classes and what our students demand from us as we prepare them for their worlds.
Now, more than ever in this age of written communication, we need teachers who can teach writing. More importantly, we need teachers who are empowered to make a difference in the lives of the diverse students in this country. It’s not about the teachers. It’s about the kids. Yeah, it’s that important.
-Ellen Shelton
