Keep Paying it Forward

It’s never a methodology; it’s a life.  --Donald Graves

“You’re a Writing Project person?  So am I!” Another connection, another colleague, another friend.  You know you have met someone who is a reflective, passionate teacher—who believes students learn best by thinking for themselves, by exploring the world, by creating and sharing their voices.  You know you’ve met someone who believes that teachers also learn best by thinking for themselves, by exploring their professional and personal lives, and by creating and sharing their voices. 

If you eavesdrop into one of these conversations about the National Writing Project, there is no doubt that you will hear the phrase, “life-changing” sprinkled into the dialogue.  I had heard it countless times, earlier in my career, and I finally had the opportunity to participate in a Summer Institute at Oakland (MI) Schools in 2004.  Unless you have experienced it, too, it is difficult to verbalize how NWP impacts an individual professionally and personally.  You become a “pay-it-forward” kind of person—even more so, if you were that way already.  You find ways to nudge others, to empower them, to get them to think about the world through different lenses.  And you are constantly writing—because you love it, and you know that it is your voice and you have something to say, something to share—whether it’s personal or professional.  You talk about your writing processes with your students, modeling your thinking for them, sharing your drafts, sharing your published pieces.   With them, you becoming an inquiry community, because you don’t know everything, but together, you can learn so much.  Your students learn to question the world for the right reasons, to notice who or what is included, and who or what is not included, or disinvited.  Because social justice is a pillar of the Writing Project philosophy, our children and teachers know to consider the voices, words, and communities around them with reflective eyes and ears.

The National Writing Project supports the kinds of educators our children need.  It is about growing professionals who inquire about practice, who seek knowledge and desire to share what they know and have experienced in regards to teaching, learning, and assessment—from their very own students.   After all, they are our most powerful teachers. 

NWP empowers educators and builds capacity within our schools so that learning communities grow from within.  In 2005, I was accepted to attend an NWP-sponsored institute in Oakland, CA called “Looking at Student Work.”  A few years later, I attended another near Boston, MA on Teacher Inquiry, and in 2009 I was accepted to a Writing Project Professional Writer’s Retreat, where I worked on an article about my local district’s experience with professional development.  I will never forget one of the retreat leaders telling me, “You have something to share,” which gave me the assurance I needed to finish my article and submit it for publication.  In June 2010, Demonstrating Teaching in a Lab Classroom was published in the online version of Educational Leadership.

Yes, it’s a data-based world, and the research shows that we grow professionally through collaboration, meaningful dialogue, and seeing best practices in action.  The teaching profession is no longer one of isolation; we cannot close our doors, open to the table of contents, and “teach” the static content selected by publishers who develop texts for state adoptions.   We cannot learn to be better teachers by going to a one-day “how-to…” conference and then return to school the next day, closing our doors, ready to be better teachers because we listened to some expert and we took a bunch of notes and we got a big binder to add to sagging shelf of big binders.  No.  Those days are gone.

Each year, I encourage other educators to apply for the summer institute, telling them, “It is life changing,” “It will change your practice,” and, “you have something to say.”  We need teachers with self-efficacy, with powerful voices, and with deliberate approaches to learning that will in turn nurture these qualities in their students. 

In the great scheme of huge budgets, costly programs, and return on investments, the National Writing Project model is truly one of the most cost-effective programs—and it is effective.  It builds capacity within schools, it improves student achievement, and it promotes the qualities of a democratic citizenry that our country claims to value.  We cannot rely solely upon politicians and publishers to direct our profession, to tell us what good teaching is and how test scores illustrate whether or not we are effective.  Without this quality professional development and network of writing project colleagues, we may lose one of the most powerful organizations of learning and teaching.