I believe that the National Writing Project (NWP) educators can be the leaders you need for accessible, relevant and equitable reform of education in this country. I believe the infrastructure that has been built from your long-term investment can, if it continues to be supported as such, literally change how we approach teaching and learning overall. And I believe that this investment is key for our collective future.
I have spent the bulk of my professional career working within this community of practice, this community of educators, called the National Writing Project. The NWP is a network of sites anchored at colleges and universities and serving teachers across disciplines and at all levels, early childhood through university, inside and outside of school.
The thing about this network is that it is made up of great teachers. And this is not because the writing project goes around and selects or hand picks teachers. Instead the network itself is made up ofteachers who develop their practice and support each other in being great together. Great teachers who stay in the profession, who build collegial communities within their classrooms, schools, and communities, who ask hard questions, who innovate their practice with their students everyday, who take leadership positions, and who move every mountain they can for students they teach because they know that all people, young and old, have the potential to be great too.
As described in an article titled The National Writing Project: Scaling Up and Scaling Down (2004, RAND Corporation), McDonald, Buchanan and Sterling write:
On the face of it, the NWP strategy appears to be directed toward changing teachers one at a time, a strategy that would have limited impact on the teaching of writing and on the profession as a whole. This characterization masks a far more complex strategy …
Teachers come to the invitational as individuals, but most go home as members of a community. They fulfill their responsibilities as community members by becoming [teacher consultants] and facilitating professional development for others in their profession, creating new ties and relationships. Rather than a strategy for changing teachers one by one, the NWP has launched a far more complex undertaking involving both individual and collective learning.
What we know too is that the great teachers in this network represent just the tip, and there are many teachers in the field who are doing essential and innovative work in their classrooms and who are interested in developing their practice in a community of others. And it when they work together they can further develop and share what they do, ultimately reforming what is happening in their classrooms, schools and communities too.
The National Writing Project needs to continue to exist so that all teachers can be working and developing their practice together so that all children succeed.
I believe in the power of this network because I have seen it and I have experienced it. I am not a teacher. But I have been personally and professional transformed just by working with this organization. And the teachers I know in this network share the same story about their experience at their local writing project sites. Writing projects are places where teachers become leaders in their work and this allows them to be better teachers for their students and their colleagues (see How Teachers Become Leaders for interesting vignettes and research about this).
I have also seen the power of this network in the innovative work teachers do and share with their colleagues. The relatively new Digital Is website shows many examples of this work across age levels, disciplines, as well as outside of school. And it is my experience that much of the work shared here often comes as a real exciting surprise to many who are not in regular communication with practicing educators because there is a great deal of misperception that teachers are not using these new tools in meaningful ways and not doing innovative work in their classrooms.
But it’s not true. I have worked with writing project teachers for over seventeen years now – way before any of this was considered “cool” – as they explored the emerging Internet and new digital tools. And they did this not because the tools were new and shiny (although there is always that!), but really because the tools support their students in developing their voice in robust ways for authentic audiences and purposes.
Dave Boardman, a teacher from the University of Maine Writing Project, shares a personal exploration of this topic of student voice and digital media in one Digital Is resource called Amplifying Student Voices. And this is but one example among many.
The mission of the NWP is to focus the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation’s educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners. Over the last 38 years the vision of NWP has established shared social practices while also remaining flexible to support the large changing environment of literacy learning and education. Today the vision of the NWP is that writing in its many forms is the signature means of communication in the 21st century. We therefore envision a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.
Volumes have been written about why the NWP “works” and what the results are in terms of student writing outcomes, teacher retention, and leadership in the field. What is more subtle though, and therefore harder to advocate for, are the reflective social practices and rigorous peer review processes that make the ultimate difference.
“… reform is ultimately personal, rather than merely technical…” the authors of Scaling Up and Scaling Down remind us. In this way too I think the NWP also has a lot to share about the building of communities that support personal, as well as professional change, on a national scale. And in a moment of great potential and need for innovation in all sectors, what NWP has learned from many years of practice and sustained federal investment, are critical ways to engage groups of people in deep conversations about practice on a scale that is required for real change to happen.
Laura Stokes and Mark St. John from Inverness Research, who has studied the NWP for many years, call the NWP an “Improvement Infrastructure.”
The National Writing Project provides a clear and dramatic example of effective investment in a sound improvement infrastructure, and of generation over many years, educational improvement capital. We hope that the NWP can be seen and understood as illustrating a fundamentally different way of investing in the future of our nation and its children.” (Stokes and St. John, 2008)
This continually growing structure, the collective learning of the ever evolving educational community, and the fundamental dedication that these teachers bring to their practice and the students they work with, is what I believe can radical influence and change how we think about teaching and learning and leadership in this country. And what I believe will ultimately impact change in the larger world.
Please support the National Writing Project as an infrastructure by restoring national funding.
