NWP Radio: Recent Episodes
National Writing Project
NWP Radio is a program provided by the National Writing Project as an education resource on a broad range of topics for educators in and out of school.
Derrick Barnes is a National Book Award Finalist for his graphic novel Victory. Stand!-Raising My Fist For Justice, which also won the YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award, and a Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers. He is a native of Kansas City, MO, but currently lives in Charlotte, NC with his enchanting wife, Dr. Tinka Barnes, and their four sons, the Mighty Barnes Brothers.
Dr. Chandra Maxwell is a Lead English Language Arts teacher at David Wooster Middle School in Stratford, CT. She became interested in English Literature as a student at Central Magnet High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Through her English teacher, Mrs. Cynthia Fernandes, she learned about the power of intentional writing as found in the works of Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry. As a result, Dr. Maxwell has done extensive research on equitable reading intervention programs for middle school students so that all students can be exposed to intentional reading and writing practices.
NWP Radio visits with Jessica Rubin, author of "Embracing gentle resistance to the slow violence of traditional English curriculum." The article explains how a secondary English teacher, Kristen, maintained a commitment to nonviolence in her teaching through "gentle resistance" to the subtle violences embedded in her school's curriculum and practices. By making purposeful, small-scale changes over time—such as omitting certain texts, reordering content, and elevating student voices—Kristen was able to push back against the slow violence of traditional English instruction without risking her job or professional relationships.
Cosmic Writers provides accessible creative writing education while having fun and building friendships. Cosmic Writers partners with the Philadelphia Writing Project on its Friday Night Writes while also providing regional and online professional support. Listen in to learn more about Cosmic Writers’ commitment and approach to creative writing and why it is so important from a Cosmic Writer herself!
Catherine Con Morse’s debut novel, The Notes, is a 2025 Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Honorable Mention for Young Adult Fiction, a 2026 Panda Book Award nominee, and was shortlisted for the CRAFT First Chapters contest. Her newest book is The Summer I Remembered Everything (April 2025). A Kundiman fellow, Catherine received her MFA from Boston University, where she taught undergraduate creative writing for several years. Her work appears in Joyland, Letters, HOOT, Bostonia, and elsewhere, and has been a finalist for the Beacon Street Prize and the Baltimore Review fiction prize. While writing The Notes, she was one of the inaugural Writers in Residence at Porter Square Books, where she enjoyed writing in the back office and eating croissants with her cafe discount.
In high school, Catherine attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a public arts boarding school, where she was as intrigued with her teacher as Claire is with Dr. Li. Catherine continues to play and teach piano today. Most recently, she taught English at Choate Rosemary Hall, and lives in the Connecticut River Valley with her husband and daughter.
Katherine Shizuko Suyeyasu brings 25 years of experience teaching in Oakland, Berkeley, Union City, and the Philadelphia area at the upper-elementary, middle, and graduate school levels. The majority of her teaching career allowed her to work with and learn from multilingual middle schoolers in the Humanities classroom. She is currently a co-director of the Bay Area Writing Project.
Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and writer. Rob is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founder of Constellations Mentorship for the Octavia Project. He has poetry, stories, and essays in StarLine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, New Modality, Solarpunk Magazine, Apex, Clockwork Phoenix Five, Lightspeed*, and others. Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, is a finalist for the Andre Norton, the Nebula award for middle grade and YA.
Max Limric is a pre-service teacher in elementary education entering a co-teaching year at Greens Farms Academy in Westport, Connecticut. He became interested in the power of children and young-adult texts while taking classes at Fairfield University, and further learned the power of literature when attending and presenting at the annual conference of the National Council of English. He grew up with speculative stories, being brought into the worlds of Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story, and looks forward to unlocking their potential in his future classroom.
About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. View the archive...
Ellen Oh is an award-winning author and editor of middle grade and young adult books such as The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, YOU ARE HERE, Haru Zombie Dog Hero, Finding Junie Kim, The Dragon Egg Princess, The Spirit Hunters series (Books 1, 2, and 3), and the Prophecy trilogy (Prophecy, Warrior; and King). She is also the editor of WNDB's middle grade anthology Flying Lessons and Other Stories, and the YA anthology A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. Ellen is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in children's literature. Originally from New York City, Ellen now lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband, three children, two dogs, and has yet to satisfy her quest for a decent bagel.
Melissa Thom, MA, (she/her) is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in West Hartford, CT. She has been an educator for 22 years and is the immediate past President of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians (CASL). She was a 2019 AASL Social Media Superstar Reader Leader finalist and a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2022. In her free time, she sews #LiteracyInspiredCrafts for her Joyful Making Etsy Shop.
This special episode of NWP Radio features many of the educators behind Empowering Youth to Confront the Climate Crisis in English Language Arts, a co-published book from Teachers College Press and the National Writing Project. Recorded in three parts, you won't want to miss this comprehensive overview of this important book.
00:00 - Introduction/Systems Thinking with Richard Beach and Fawn Canady
Richard Beach and Fawn Canady discuss chapter two of the book, focusing on how to engage students in critiquing and transforming systems impacting the climate crisis. Learn how students can use writing to examine how fossil fuel energy, capitalist economic structures, agriculture, transportation, urban design, and political systems need transformation to address our changing climate.
26:52 - Critical Media Literacy with Jeff Share, Andrea Gambino, Amber Medina, and Noah Asher Golden
This segment explores the intersection of critical media literacy and environmental justice/climate education. Our guests explain why climate change is not merely a scientific problem but an issue of priorities and narratives. Discover how educators can help students understand how dominant cultural stories contribute to our climate crisis and how we can change these narratives to create more sustainable and socially just futures.
50:04 - Writing of All Kinds with Allen Webb and Rich Novack
Allen Webb and Rich Novack share diverse writing approaches that empower students to engage with climate issues through creative expression, persuasive writing, research, and more. Learn practical strategies for incorporating climate-focused writing across the English language arts curriculum.
Related ResourcesBook Resources
- Book Website: Climate Crisis ELA
- Website for Allen's Chapter on climate change and teaching writing: tinyurl.com/y9ebyc5m
- Website for previous book "Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents": climatechangeela.pbworks.com
- Beach, R. (2025). Adopting a languaging approach for teaching about the climate crisis in English language arts. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 24(1)
Critical Media Literacy Resources
- Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2019). The critical media literacy guide: Engaging media and transforming education. Brill/Sense Publishers
- Climate Crisis ELA: Critical Media Literacy and the Climate Crisis
- Climate Crisis ELA: Local Ecologies and Critical Media Production
- Climate Crisis ELA: Engaging Elementary Students in Inner-city LA
- Climate Crisis ELA: Challenging Climate Misinformation and Disinformation
CML Framework Resources
- Free-to-use/share PDFs of the CML Framework:
- English: tinyurl.com/4v5ndatx
- German: tinyurl.com/yckctfp9
- Mandarin: tinyurl.com/mpfveh85
- Portuguese: tinyurl.com/mwrkf9sz
- Spanish: tinyurl.com/2fdaz8up
- Additional CML Framework Digital Downloadable Posters with Illustrations: drive.google.com/file
Additional Websites & Resources
- Ecomedia Literacy
- Subject to Climate
- Critical Media Project
- Bioneers
- Little Justice Leaders
- Jeff Share's Website
- Inquire 2 Transform
- Classroom Caffeine: Antonio Lopez
- John Cabot University Archive
- Our Towns, Our Stories
Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane established her state's first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island's state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2024). Her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) was released in August 2024.
Janelle Bence is a high-school English teacher with 24 years of experience teaching in Texas. Her favorite project is a Spoken Word event where freshmen support a local non-profit of their choosing. She is a longstanding member of the National Writing Project and enjoys collaborating with researchers to deepen her praxis. Currently, two projects she is working on are Transdisciplinary Civic Composing Collective (UT Austin) and Colorado State Sustainable Teaching and Learning (Colorado State University). Her writing is published in Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Mirra & Garcia, 2023) and Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices (Edited By Meghan E. Barnes, Rick Marlatt).
Mahogany L. Browne is a Kennedy Center Next 50 fellow, writer, play-wright, organizer, and educator. Browne received fellowships from ALL ARTS, Arts for Justice, AIR Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, and Wesleyan University. Browne’s books include A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theatre), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. She is the inaugural poet in residence at the Lincoln Center and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D. (she/her), is a Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her poetry collections, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (2020) and The Peace Chronicles (2021), explore themes of love, healing, and growth toward liberation. She is co-author of the multiple award-winning Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces (2021). In 2024, Yolanda was recognized for her scholarship with the Dorothy Height Distinguished Alumni Award from NYU. She has been named to EdWeek’s EduScholar Influencers list four years in a row, placing her among the top 1% of educational scholars in the U.S. At Teachers College, Yolanda founded the Racial Literacy Project @TC, fostering dialogue on race and diversity for over 17 years.
About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/
This episode of NWP Radio features an insightful conversation with Cynthia Ballenger, author of the new book Teaching Is Inquiry. Ballenger shares her teaching journey and the core ideas in her book about the power of inquiry-based learning, which encourages teachers to honor students' unexpected questions and ideas as opportunities for deeper exploration. Ballenger also discusses the challenges teachers face in maintaining time for reflection and collaboration, as well as the importance of fostering democracy and inclusion in the classroom.
Our guests discuss their book, Teaching with Arts-Infused Writing Pedagogies, which features the work of a multigenerational collective of K–12 educators, students, and teaching artists seeking educational justice.
About Our Guests
Kelly Wissman is the director of the Capital District Writing Project and an associate professor in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning within the University at Albany School of Education.
Christina Pepe is a Language Arts teacher at Shenandoah High School in Clifton Park, New York. She is the co-director of the Capital District Writing Project, and for 18 years has served as a public high school, career and technical, and community college educator in New York State. She is currently pursuing a CAS in TESOL.
Matthew Pinchinat is the inaugural Deputy Managing Director of DEI for the New York State Teachers Retirement System. He also served as a co-facilitator of the Freedom Dreaming for Educational Justice Project. At the start of the project, he was a tenured member of the social studies department of Guilderland High School, shortly transitioning into a role as Guilderland’s inaugural Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He passionately believes in the power of dreams and to his core envisions a world where all are seen, valued, and treated with the dignity they deserve.
Amy Salamone was a high-school English teacher for over 35 years and a proud co-director of the Capital District Writing Project.
Leah Werther is the K-12 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Teacher on Special Assignment for the Guilderland Central School District in Guilderland, New York. Prior to this role, she taught English Language Arts for 16 years. Leah serves as a co-director of the Capitalist District Writing Project and is the cochair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s Asian/Asian American caucus.
Keenan Jones is an author who currently resides in Plymouth, Minnesota, who spent his childhood in northwest Indiana (Gary, IN) and south suburban Chicago (University Park, IL). He comes from a family of educators, pastors, athletes, and musicians. After suffering a career-ending injury while playing college basketball, Keenan switched paths to pursue a career in education, serving as an elementary school teacher before returning to his passion of writing.
As an author, Keenan believes that literacy can inspire young people to dream and strive for greatness. He is committed to providing every child with the opportunity to immerse themselves in great books. Keenan writes stories that reflect the beauty of Black culture in America and aims to create representation in children’s literature. Keeanan' latest book is Saturday Morning at the Shop.
Keenan is interviewed by Ali Adan who was born in a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. He arrived in the U.S. in 2004 at age 10. He is the oldest of 14 brothers and sisters and the first generation to attend college. He graduated from Suny Brockport with a bachelor's degree in Physical Education. Before that, he went to Nottingham High School, where he met Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield. Bryan became a mentor and a guide in Ali’s life; he introduced books, poetry, and writing that helped Ali express himself and stay focused on his goals. Currently, Ali is a 5th-grade teacher at Delaware Primary School with a passion for inspiring young learners and a focus on fostering creativity, critical thinking, and a love for learning.
About The Write Time
The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/.
In today’s episode we will talk about the recently published book, Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World. This comprehensive study of teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic has a lot to teach us about creating a healthy, resilient teaching profession able to face future crises.
Our Guests
- Lora Bartlett, Associate Professor of Education, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Jamila Edwards, Teacher, Oakland Unified School District
Join this special Write Out edition of The Write Time! Born in Louisville, Mississippi, Jermaine Thompson learned language from big-armed women who greased their skillets with gossip and from full-bellied men who cursed and prayed with the same fervor. Jermaine earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Missouri Kansas City in 2018, and he currently teaches 9th–12th grade Humanities at Build Up Community School in Birmingham, AL.
Jermaine will be interviewed by Connecticut teacher and Writing Project teacher-leader, Rich Novack.
More about Write Out...
Join The Write Time featuring Kate Messner, Write Out Author Ambassador and author of award-winning picture books like Over and Under the Snow, Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, and The Brilliant Deep as well as books for older readers like Breakout and her forthcoming novel in verse, The Trouble with Heroes.
Kate will be interviewed by San Diego Area Writing Project Director and early elementary educator, Kim Douillard.
NWP Radio visits with Benjamin Ludwig, a teacher, writer, school librarian, and an NWP Writers Council member. Benjamin is the author of Ginny Moon, and his next book, Outside, is coming December 4, 2024, with pre-ordering available today.
This episode of NWP Radio features Tomas Moniz, a member of the NWP Writers Council and the author of All Friends Are Necessary, a tender and open-hearted novel that explores the power of friendship, community, and the families we create for ourselves.
Based on the insight that "places are everywhere," this NWP Radio show explores how educators are using place to support students in having authentic opportunities to learn, grow, and connect. Join this team of teacher-editors and -authors from Place-Based Writing in Action: Opportunities for Authentic Writing in the World Beyond the Classroom to explore what is possible when you tap into this "everywhere resource" to support writing in elementary through preservice classrooms.
Our Guests and Their Chapters
- Amanda Montgomery, Editor and “Making Connections to the Past: Using Place-based Writing to Bring History to Life”
- Robert Montgomery, Editor and “Introduction to Place-Based Writing” (with Amanda) and “Touring the Place You Know Best: Virtual Tours as. Way to Teach Narrative, Argument, and Research Writing”
- Cathie English, “Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks”
- Clarice Moran, “In the Metaverse: Using VR as a Site for Place-based Writing”
- Jeff Hudson, “The Sustainable Resource Project: Writing Towards Agency”
- Rich Novack, “Mapping through Justice, through Padlet, and through the World”
This episode of NWP Radio features a conversation with Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, the author of 5 acclaimed collections of poetry, and the editor of Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them.
Join us for a conversation with NWP Writers Council member Lissa Soep, author of Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss and the Conversation that Never Ends.
"Other People’s Words shows us how we carry within us the language of loved ones who are gone, and how their words can be portals to other times and places. Language—as with love—is boundless, and Other People’s Words is an intimate, original, and profoundly generous look at its power to nurture life amid the wreckage of grief. Dialogues do not end when a friendship or person is gone; instead, they accrue new layers of meaning, showing how the conversations we share with those we love continue after them, and will continue after us."
Join us for a conversation with Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy, authors of Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare.
About the Authors
Dr. Andrea Balis is not only a distinguished faculty member in the history department of John Jay College, City University of New York, specializing in twentieth-century political history, but also a versatile writer and director.
Elizabeth Levy is an award-winning author of over 100 fiction and non-fiction books for young readers. Renowned for her humorous yet meticulously researched approach, Levy brings subjects to life and inspires and entertains audiences worldwide.
Join us for a conversation with Jane Clark, author of the memoir, Story Carrier: a Collection of Tales of the Disappeared. Jane is a retired college teacher of composition, literature, and journalism, who worked for a major northeastern university and a small, private liberal arts college. She was also the director of the Capital Area Writing Project at Penn State Harrisburg.
Additional Links from the Show
- Story Carrier Substack
- @janeclarkauthor
- Story Carrier on Facebook
Join us for a conversation with Stephanie Vanderslice, a professor of creative writing, the co-director of the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, and the author of Teaching Creative Writing: The Essential Guide.
This episode of The Write Time features members of the Furious Flower Syllabus Project, an open-access curriculum for incorporating Black poetry into classrooms of all ages and levels.
About Our Guests
McKinley E. Melton earned his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining the Gettysburg College faculty, Dr. Melton was a visiting assistant professor of literature at Hampshire College from 2007-2012. He is also the recipient of a 2015 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and was a 2015-16 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. Most recently, Dr. Melton was awarded a 2019-20 Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies, in order to support a year as scholar-in-residence at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.
Allia Abdullah-Matta is a poet and Professor of English at CUNY LaGuardia, where she teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses. She writes about the culture and history of Black women and explores the presence of Black bodies and voices in fine art and poetry. She was the co-recipient of the The Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Poetry (2018) from The City College of New York (CCNY). Her poetry has been published in Newtown Literary, Promethean, Marsh Hawk Review, Mom Egg Review Vox, Global City Review, and the Jam Journal Issue of Push/Pull. Her chapbook(s) washed clean & blues politico (2021) were published by harlequin creature (hcx). Abdullah-Matta has published critical and pedagogical articles and serves on the Radical Teacher and WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly) editorial boards. She is working on a collection of poems inspired by archival and field research in South Carolina and Georgia, funded by a CUNY BRESI grant.
Hayes Davis’ first volume, Let Our Eyes Linger, was published by Poetry Mutual Press; he is currently serving as the Howard County (Md) Poetry and Literature Society Writer in Residence, and he won a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. His work has appeared most recently on the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day feature, he has been anthologized in This is What America Looks Like, Deep Beauty, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-justice Poetry Anthology, and others. His poems have also appeared in Mom Egg Review, New England Review, Poet Lore, Auburn Avenue, Gargoyle, Kinfolks, Fledgling Rag, and other journals. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland, and is a member of Cave Canem's (Cah-vay Cah-nem) first cohort of fellows. He has attended or been awarded writing residencies at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Hermitage, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Manhattanville College, and Soul Mountain. He has appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU, 88.5 in Washington, D.C. and at the Hay Festival Kells in Kells, Ireland. He has taught English and directed equity and justice work in Washington, D.C.-area independent schools for 20+ years; he shares his creative and domestic life with his wife, poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, and their children.
Dave Wooley is an English, Journalism and Creative Writing teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, where he has taught since 2001. He has served as a Co-Adviser for the school’s hybrid newspaper The Westword since 2003. He has served as an adjunct Professor at Fairfield University, teaching Philosophy of Hip Hop, and he is a teaching fellow at the Connecticut Writing Project. Dave is one half of the rap group d_Cyphernauts and a hip-hop educator who has presented at the HipHopEd conference, the NCTE annual conference, the CSPA conference, among others. He served as a curriculum and music coordinator for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ “From Harlem to Hip-Hop: African- American History, Literature, and Song” which was hosted at Fairfield University. Dave is a contributing poet on the website Ethical ELA, and he has been involved with the Furious Flower Center for Black Poetry as a participating scholar in its last three Legacy Seminars. He is one of the authors of Furious Flower’s newly created open access syllabus, Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus. He lives in Stratford, Connecticut with his wife and four children.
About The Write Time
NWP Radio, in partnership with the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield and Penguin Random House Books, launched a special series in 2020 called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft.
Novelly is on a mission to publish diverse teenage authors and get their books taught in classrooms, so that every student can feel seen and inspired by what they read. This episode features the founder and managing director Anna Gabriella Casalme, along with two youth authors who have had their work published through Novelly.
Rob Rokicki is an NYC-based artist and educator. He wrote the music, lyrics, and co-orchestrated the Broadway show, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (book by Joe Tracz); nominated for a Lortel, Off-Broadway Alliance, and three Drama Desk Awards. His graphic novel/musical, Monstersongs (National Alliance for Musical Theatre official selection), is played internationally and is being developed as a VR game. He’s a two-time Larson Award finalist, an alum of the BMI Workshop, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. As an actor, Rob has performed in Broadway national tours and at Carnegie Hall.
Rob is interviewed by Kevin Hodgson, a sixth-grade teacher and musician in Southampton, Massachusetts, and a teacher-consultant with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.
About The Write Time
NWP Radio, in partnership with the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield and Penguin Random House Books, launched a special series in 2020 called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft.
View the full archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/
Today we visit with Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, author of Experiments in Reflection. Leticia is a developmental biologist turned design educator, who has been a part of Stanford University’s d.school since 2006. She co-founded and co-directs the University Innovation Fellows program, impacting students and educators worldwide. Leticia’s work integrates emerging technologies in creative methods to foster self-directed and responsible future shapers.
Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She has been featured on KALW and the San Francisco Public Library’s Poem of the Day, and her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin. Her collection Some Days The Bird is a poetry conversation with the Irish-Australian poet Anne Casey (Beltway Editions, 2022). Her latest collection Monarch is a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from the US West she was raised in (Cornerstone Press, 2023).
Related Resource
Teaching guide for Monarch (PDF)
Join us for a conversation with Cindy Urbanski, PhD, author of Getting Schooled on Resistance: An Exploration of Clashing Narratives in Urban School Reform. Urbanski has worked with writing and writers in some capacity for 30 years. Currently her projects consist of making space for stories in the world that have formerly been untold and/or underrepresented.
Through her degree in K-12 Urban Literacy, work with the National Writing Project, her teaching at the 6-12 level as well as the undergraduate and graduate level, Urbanski has witnessed the power shift into the hands of the writer when they are encouraged and trusted to tell their stories with their words.
Related Shows
Untangling Middle School Reform
Jennifer Baker is a publishing professional of 20 years, the creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, a faculty member of the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at Bay Path University, and a writing consultant at Baruch College. Formerly a contributing editor to Electric Literature, she received a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship and a Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant for Nonfiction Literature. Her essay "What We Aren't (or the Ongoing Divide)" was listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2018. In 2019, she was named Publishers Weekly Superstar for her contributions to inclusion and representation in publishing. Jennifer is also the editor of the all PoC-short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life(Atria Books, 2018) and the author of the YA novel Forgive Me Not(Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023). She has volunteered with organizations such as We Need Diverse Books and I, Too Arts Collective, and spoken widely on topics of inclusion, the craft of writing/editing, podcasting, and the inner-workings of the publishing industry. Her fiction, nonfiction, and criticism has appeared in various print and online publications.
Lauren Donovan is a teacher in Kansas City, Missouri, and has taught secondary English in both the middle and high school settings for nine years. She is also a student at the University of Kansas in an educational leadership doctorate program. She loves sharing her passion for reading and writing with her students. She enjoys to read and talk about realistic fiction as well as education reform nonfiction.
Patricia Park is a tenured professor of creative writing at American University, a Fulbright Scholar in Creative Arts, an Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, and a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. She is the author of the YA novel, Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim, and the adult novel, Re Jane, a retelling of Jane Eyre named New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, winner of an American Library Association Award, an NPR Fresh Air pick, and others. She’s written for the New York Times, New Yorker, The Guardian, and others. Her new YA novel, What’s Eating Jackie Oh? is forthcoming in April 2024.
Joanna Dalton is in her senior year at Fairfield University, where she is passionately pursuing her studies as an English major, accompanied with minors in elementary and special education. Her academic journey will culminate with a master's degree in Elementary Education. Joanna is also a dedicated substitute teacher at an elementary school.
About The Write Time
NWP Radio, in partnership with the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield and Penguin Random House Books, launched a special series in 2020 called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft.
View the full archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/
Join us for an engaging discussion featuring David and Susan Schwartz, authors of The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A-Z. We'll be diving into their writing process and exploring why Costco holds a special place in their hearts. It's a great opportunity to learn more about the book and gain insights into their unique perspective on Costco and their creative journey.
Civics for the World to Come is a call to action, encouraging us all to reimagine our roles as educators and shift the purpose of schooling together. Providing a framework with suggestions for dialogue along with case studies from the classroom, this book is offered as a resource for teachers to start this journey, pragmatically but urgently. Listen to this NWP Radio interview with Drs. Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia about their new book, Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom.
Dr. Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she has previously served as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, school district administrator, curriculum director, and school board president. She studies Black historical excellence in education, intending to reframe curriculum and instruction today. Dr. Muhammad’s scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and books. She has also received numerous national awards and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. She also co-authored Black girls’ literacies: An Edited Volume. Her newest book, Unearthing Joy, is the sequel to Cultivating Genius and provides a practical guide for putting culturally and historically responsive education into curricular practice.
Dr. Muhammad is interviewed by Stacey Joy, a National Board Certified Teacher, Google Certified Educator, and 2013 L.A. County Teacher of the Year. Stacey has taught elementary school for 38 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Currently, she teaches 5th grade at Baldwin Hills Pilot and Gifted Magnet School. In addition to cultivating the genius and joy in her Joyteam scholars, she also mentors novice teachers and is a teacher-leader in her school district. Stacey is a UCLA Writing Project fellow and a dedicated writer with Dr. Sarah Donovan’s community of teacher-poets at Ethical ELA. Stacey is a self-published poet and she has poems published in various anthologies: Out of Anonymity, Savant Poetry Anthologies, Teacher Poets: Writing to Bridge the Distance, and Rhythm and Rhyme: Poems for Student Athletes. Stacey is a proud mom of two adults, Kenneth and Noelle.
This episode of The Write Time features Don P. Hooper, a writer and filmmaker of Jamaican heritage (and a programmer in a former life). His short story “Got Me a Jet Pack” is part of the New York Times bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy. His directing work has been featured in the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, the NY TV Film Festival (award winner), the New York City Horror Film Festival, the New Jersey Horror Con and Film Festival (award winner), and more. He does voice-over in video games and documentaries. True True is his debut novel.
Don is interviewed by Abimbola Cole Kai-Lewis who is an Ethnomusicologist and educator with the New York City Department of Education and an adjunct assistant professor at York College–City University of New York.
NWP’s The Write Time will “Write Out” this month by welcoming poet and author Nikki Grimes discussing her new children’s book, A Walk in the Woods. She is interviewed by elementary school teacher and poet Willeena Booker and Park Ranger Maryann Zujewski.
New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes is the recipient of the 2022 CSK Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, the ALAN Award for significantcontributions to young adult literature, the Children's Literature Legacy Medal, and the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. The author of Coretta Scott King Award-winner Bronx Masquerade, and five Coretta Scott King Author Honors, her most recent titles include the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title Between the Lines, companion to Bronx Masquerade, NCTE Notable Words With Wings, the much acclaimed Garvey's Choice, One Last Word, Printz Honor and Sibert Honor Ordinary Hazards, ALA Notables Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissanceand Southwest Sunrise, Kirkus Best Books Bedtime for Sweet Creatures and Playtime for Restless Rascals, and Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice. Ms. Grimes lives in Corona, California.
Willeena Booker is an inspiring educator, powerful poet, and passionate advocate of social justice. Willeena's poetry celebrates Black Identity, diversity, and equality. Willeena writes poetry for adults as well as young readers and loves using her poetry as a catalyst for change.
Maryann Zujewski has worked for the National Park Service for over 30 years. She is currently the Education Program Manager for the Northeast Region of the National Park Service providing support and assistance to the 83 parks in states from Maine to Virginia in their efforts to provide equitable and inclusive place-based learning experiences.
Write Out, a program of the National Writing Project and the National Park Service, welcomes the poet-Ranger team of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument: Alabama State Poet Laureate Ashley Jones, Magic City Festival Earth Poet Nabila Lovelace, and Park Ranger Kat Gardiner. They share their work with youth and other community members exploring the intersections of poetry, prose, and place.
Related links/resources:
- Podcast - Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
- The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 - Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
- Magic City Poetry Festival
- “One-Way Ticket” by Langston Hughes (PDF)
- Junior Ranger Booklet (PDF)
For more information, inspirations, and prompts for writing outside, visit http://writeout.nwp.org/.
Don’t miss this episode of The Write Time featuring Kate Dickerson, executive director of the Maine Discovery Museum, interviewing Meghan Wilson Duff, about their children’s book, How Are You, Verity? in which Verity, a neurodivergent child with a love for sea creatures, interacts with neighbors to discover the true meaning behind greetings and salutations. Like many authors interviewed on The Write Time, Duff says they wanted to make the book they wish they’d had when they were a child. The show contains references to many more books with neurodivergent characters written by neurodivergent writers.
Luma Mufleh is an activist, twice-published author, entrepreneur, coach, and thought leader in refugee and English Language Learner Education. As an asylee, as well as daughter and granddaughter of Syrian refugees, Luma continues to draw on her personal experiences to fuel her passion for empowering refugees and immigrant children through education. In 2006, she founded Fugees Family, the only network of schools in the U.S. dedicated to refugee and immigrant education. Luma’s work is not only changing the lives of children and families, but also shifting the narrative around refugees from one of fear to one of courage and resilience. Her TED Talk on educational justice has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and she is the author of two books, 2022's Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children and the recently released memoir From Here. Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield teacher-consultants William King and Jessica Baldizon conduct the interview.
In this NWP Radio episode we are joined by Troy Hicks and Jill Runstrom of the Chippewa River Writing Project as they discuss their new book Literacies Before Technologies: Making Digital Tools Matter for Middle Grades Learners. In this book, recently published by NCTE as part of their Principles in Practice series, Jill and Troy—alongside several other colleagues—share their classroom practices as they inquiry into the Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom. Their stories start during the 2020-21 school year and extend into the ways they continue to consider literacies alongside (but always before) technologies.
Related Links
- Beliefs Statement (BIT-ELA)
- https://hickstro.org/ncte-middle-grades-tech/
Join us for a fascinating conversation with Aaron Pyne, creator of Inner Realms Journey, a fantasy-themed adventure game in which participants embark on a series of audio-guided meditative experiences. If you can imagine the place where role-playing games, meditation, and mindfulness meet for fun and learning, you might be close to Inner Realms Journey. Come hear all about it.
Janae Marks is the New York Times bestselling author of middle-grade novels, From the Desk of Zoe Washington, A Soft Place to Land, and On Air with Zoe Washington. She has an MFA in Writing for Children from The New School, and lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughter, and miniature schnauzer named Cookie.
Terri Fredrick is a Professor of English and Writing Center Director at Eastern Illinois University. She is also the director of the Eastern Illinois Writing Project. She and her daughter have read three of Janae Marks's novels together.
Tesla, Terri’s daughter, is a 7th-grade student in Champaign Illinois. She enjoys theater, basketball, dance, and track. She loves Janae Marks's books.
New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes is the recipient of the 2022 CSK Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, the ALAN Award for significant contributions to young adult literature, the Children's Literature Legacy Medal, and the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. The author of Coretta Scott King Award-winner Bronx Masquerade, her most recent titles include the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title Between the Lines, companion to Bronx Masquerade. Ms. Grimes lives in Corona, California.
After over a decade of facilitating student, teacher, and adult learning as a literacy teacher, adjunct professor, teacher coach, and diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist, Barrett Rosser is currently a full-time doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is in the Reading, Writing, and Literacy program and has been the Philadelphia Writing Project Scholar for the last three years. Barrett leads communities of teachers, principals, parents, and out-of-school-time leaders to explore literacy, writing, teaching, and learning across all grade levels and disciplines. Further, Barrett is the founder of the Black Girls' Literacies Project, an out-of-school inquiry group for high-school-aged Black girls to use their literacies to build knowledge about and practice self-love. Barrett is also a dreamer, lover, and poet. She loves reading and giving back to the Philadelphia community.
In this episode, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, talks about his experiences advocating for Black, brown, and LGBTQ students in often hostile education environments. Carver talks about the difficulties minoritized students and teachers are facing as well as some of the ways teachers and students can resist and attempt to protect their students in this atmosphere, drawing on his own experiences and those of other teachers. He will also share some works from his book of narrative poems about the experience of growing up queer and Appalachian, Gay Poems for Red States.
How can we remix writing instruction to invite students to write across a range of genres? How might a genre framework for teaching writing support students in writing for specific audiences and purpose? Listen to this NWP Radio interview to hear Dr. Jessica Singer Early talk about her new book Next Generation Genres: Teaching Writing for Civic and Academic Engagement.
Join us for a conversation about our educational WHY and how we can support students to become their best selves. We’ll be talking with portrait artist Robert Shetterly, and educators Connie Carter and Richard Koch.
Related Links from the Show
Americans Who Tell the Truth
The Mindful Writing Workshop
NWP Radio host Tanya Baker visits with author, educator, and NWP Writers Council member Amanda Parrish Morgan. Amanda shares about her writing/teaching life and how her book Strollers came to be.
Sonya Huber is the author of seven books, including the new guide, Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto, and the award-winning essay collection on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Her other books include Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir in a Day, Opa Nobody, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir, and The Backwards Research Guide for Writers. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and other outlets. She teaches at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield low-residency MFA program.
Michelle Caruso Walker has been working in education for the last 20 years. She’s taught middle school and high school in both CT and NY. Michelle has a PhD from Fordham University and currently works in Westport Public Schools as the middle school instructional coach. She’s also the mom to three boys!
Rose Brock, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Library Science at Sam Houston State University, is a veteran educator and advocate for using audiobooks as a tool for literacy and is the cofounder of the national literacy initiative Guys Listen, a part of the Guys Read literacy national program. Dr. Brock was awarded the Siddie Joe Johnson Award for Outstanding Service to Youth by the Texas Library Association and is cofounder of NTTBF, the North Texas Teen Book Festival. She is the editor of Hope Wins, Hope Nation: Young Adult Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration, and author of Young Adult Literature in Action: A Librarian's Guide.
James Ponti is the New York Times bestselling author of three middle grade book series: City Spies, about an unlikely squad of five kids from around the world who form an elite MI6 spy team; the Edgar Award-winning FRAMED! Series, about a pair of tweens who solve mysteries in Washington, DC; and the Dead City trilogy, about a secret society that polices the undead living beneath Manhattan. He lives with his family in Orlando, Florida.
Jill Stedronsky is a teacher, professionally, and personally. She teaches 8th graders at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, NJ for the past sixteen years. She is a teacher-consultant for the Drew Writing Project, an adjunct for Drew University, and a researcher. Her focus is intrinsic motivation. She strives to create an authentic environment for her students, and hopefully all students around the world, by motivating her students to read and write for real purposes! She co-authored a chapter with Dr. Kristen Hawley Turner, for the publication of her practice in “Inquiry Ignites! Pushing Back Against Traditional Literacy Instruction.” She hopes to help change curriculum world wide.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra Cuevas is the author of the teen novels Does My Body Offend You? and Salty, Bitter, Sweet. Her short story Resilient was published as part of the anthology FORESHADOW. Mayra is an award-winning producer for CNN and co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival. She keeps her sanity by practicing Buddhist meditation. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, her two stepsons, their fluffy cat and a very loud Chihuahua.
Marie Marquardt is author of YA novels Does My Body Offend You? (with Mayra Cuevas), Dream Things True, The Radius of Us, and Flight Season. Her books have earned many awards and commendations, including BEA Buzz Books, Books all Young Georgians Should Read, and the CLASP Américas Commendation, and they have been shortlisted for several state book awards, including the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award and the Missouri Gateway Readers Award. Marie also has published articles and co-authored two non-fiction books about Latin American immigration to the U.S. South, and has been interviewed about her research, writing, and advocacy on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and BBC America, among many other media outlets. She lives in a busy household in Decatur, Georgia with her spouse, four kids, several chickens, a dog, and a bearded dragon.
Bryn Orum is the co-director of the Greater Madison Writing Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her current role she coordinates programs for youth and educators including Rise Up & Write, Youth Press Corps, and the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP). Previously, Bryn co-founded and taught high school English at Clark Street Community School, a public charter dedicated to deep engagement through personalized, democratic, and place-based education, in Middleton, WI. Bryn studied Literacy and English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she earned her BA and MS. Much of her work in education has focused on equitable and innovative environments.
Gordon Korman introduces himself as a regular guy who just happened to write 100 books for kids and adolescent readers. Born in Montreal in October of 1963, his writing career began in the seventh grade when he took English with his track coach. Then, he was challenged to write every day for more than four months and he finished his first novel, This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! With his mother as his typist, he sent it to Scholastic and just like that, Korman was published as a freshman in high school. That was just the beginning. He has sold well over 30 million copies of his books, many translated in over 30 languages.
Currently, Gordon lives in Long Island outside of NYC where he continues to love visiting school, teachers, and driving his own children to wherever they need to be. His new book, The Fort, about a group of kids who stumble on an abandoned Cold-War-era bomb shelter, was released in summer 2022.
Allison Fallon is a eighth-grade teacher and Department Head at Central Middle School in Greenwich, CT. She has been teaching for 14 years, is an NWP teacher-consultant, and CWP graduate and teacher. In 2021 Allison was awarded the Distinguished Teacher Award for Greenwich Public Schools. When she’s not teaching or crafting curriculum, she is busy with her two daughters, husband, and guinea pigs exploring the outdoors, eating ice cream, and seeking new reading and writing adventures.
Join NWP Radio for a visit with author and NWP Writers Council member Pornsak Pichetshote. Pichetshote was a Thai-American rising star editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint where he worked on such comics perennials as The Sandman and Swamp Thing. His books have been nominated for dozens of Eisner awards—be it the award-winning Daytripper, the New York Times bestseller The Unwritten, or critical darlings like Sweet Tooth and Unknown Soldier. He left Vertigo to become an executive in DC Entertainment’s media team, where he started and oversaw DC TV’s department. He is the author of Infidel, his first major comics work as a writer, and his newest series The Good Asian which features police detective Edison Hark.
Join us for this episode of NWP Radio in which we will talk to Peter Docker, former member of the Royal Air Force, about his new book Leading from the Jumpseat.
Join us for this episode of NWP Radio in which we talk to Susie Wise about her new book Design for Belonging, a Stanford d.school guide. In her book, Susie talks about what it means to belong and some of the contexts, or moments, that can be designed using particular levers like space, role, ritual, and groupings. The Design for Belonging website also includes toolkits and resources to get started, wherever you are.
This summer, teachers are invited to join together with scholars, artists, and authors to strengthen writing and multimodal composing practices in a virtual, open institute co-sponsored by three MIchigan Writing Project sites. This NWP Radio show invited facilitators to describe how they will support participants in coming together to create brave spaces in writing instruction that centers writing and composing models at the intersections of queer, BIPOC, and feminist voices; that center intersectionality; and develop a community of folx to support these efforts and to stay committed with and alongside each other. Join us for this interview to learn more and find out how to get involved; registration is open until June 15, 2022.
Related Resources
- Institute flyer
About Our Guests
Rae Oviatt, Ph.D., has nearly two decades of experience in education, community organizing, and research. She was a middle and high school English teacher and teacher of multilingual and bilingual English language learners across urban contexts in Atlanta, Bangkok, Indianapolis, and Lansing. She is the incoming Vice Chair for NCTE's Genders and Sexualities Equity Alliance, and the 2018 recipient of NCTE’s ELATE Graduate Research Award. Her work with the National Writing Project dates back nearly a decade, and she is a teacher-consultant for the Red Cedar Writing Project. She is currently Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University. Dr. Oviatt’s current inquiry examines the liberatory potential for centering Queer of Color literacies and epistemologies in writing and multimodal composing with youth and educators across school and community organizations.
Ileana Jiménez is a leader in the feminism-in-schools movement and is the founder of feministteacher.com and creator of the #HSfeminism and #K12feminism hashtags. An English teacher-activist for 25 years, she has taught high school and graduate students, as well as emerging and established teachers critical feminist pedagogies, curricula, and activism. In 2011, she received a Distinguished Fulbright to interview queer youth in Mexico City. Globally, she has presented workshops for teachers in Argentina, Australia, Greece, India, Mexico, and the UK. She has published in Gender in an era of post-truth populism: Pedagogies, challenges and strategies (2022); Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism (volume 1, 2016); Radical Teacher (vol. 106, 2016); One Teacher in Ten in the New Millennium: LGBT Educators Speak Out About What's Gotten Better... and What Hasn't (Beacon, 2015); SLUT: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence (2015); The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future (2015); and Youth Sexualities: Public Feelings and Contemporary Cultural Politics (2018). She received her B.A. in English Literature at Smith College, and an M.A. in English Literature at Middlebury College. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram @feministteacher.
Interested in what writing looks and feels like outside of school in those professions that depend on writing like marketing or public relations? Join us for this conversation about writing in the work-a-day worlds marketing and business with Jim Rowe, author of Get Your Ducks in a Rowe. Rowe, who has worked, coached, and supported writers in these fields talks about what kind of support writers need when their goals are clarity and brevity.
Natasha Bowen is a writer, a teacher, and a mother of three children. She is of Nigerian and Welsh descent and lives in Cambridge, England, where she grew up. Natasha studied English and creative writing at Bath Spa University before moving to East London, where she taught for nearly ten years. Her debut book Skin of the Sea was inspired by her passion for mermaids and African history. She is obsessed with Japanese and German stationery and spends stupid amounts on notebooks, which she then features on her secret Instagram. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, watched over carefully by Milk and Honey, her cat and dog.
Stephanie Renee Toliver is an assistant professor of Literacy and Secondary Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder whose scholarship centers the freedom dreams of Black youth and honors the historical legacy that Black imaginations have had and will have on activism and social change. She is the author of Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research: Endarkened Storywork.
Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, educator, and community activist. Her young adult novel, Piecing Me Together (Bloomsbury, 2017) received a Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Honor. Her children's picture books and novels for teens have received several awards and international recognition. Her poetry and fiction centers around the experiences of Black girls and women, and explores themes of home, identity, and the intersections of race, class, and gender.
One of Renée’s passions is using the arts to help youth cope with trauma and discuss social issues. Her picture book, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen is based on poetry workshops she facilitated with children in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Fredeisha Harper Darrington is an educator with the Fairfield City School System in Fairfield, Alabama and works as a teacher-consultant with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Red Mountain Writing Project. She is passionate about social justice as it relates to the education and literacy of all students. She works as an advocate for students with dyslexia and promotes the use of culturally responsive practices in all content areas.
Fredeisha has worked in the field of early literacy and language development as a classroom teacher and school library media specialist for over 24 years. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her work is centered around dyslexia, early literacy and language development, social justice, and equity in education.
Fredeisha considers writing, traveling, crocheting, and volunteering in her community some of her many interests and passions.
For over twenty years, Peter Kahn has been fortunate to employ the power of poetry to help give voice to those previously unheard. He has been a high school teacher at Oak Park/River Forest High School in Chicago since 1994 and has recently also taught at Roosevelt University. Peter was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2009 and 2017. He is a founding member of Malika’s Kitchen and co-founder of the London Teenage Poetry Slam. Peter holds an MA in English Education from The Ohio State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. His 2020 book, Little Kings, is a book with interconnected poems and recurring characters that feels more like a book of poetic short stories that speak to one another. His new book, Respect The Mic, is an expansive, moving poetry anthology representing 20 years of poetry from students and alumni of Chicago’s Oak Park River Forest High School Spoken Word Club.
Natalie Rose Richardson was born in New York City to a long line of border-crossers and proud people of blended heritage. Natalie is a graduate of the University of Chicago (BA), and the Litowitz Creative Writing Program (in poetry) at Northwestern University. She is a current non-fiction MFA candidate at NYU. Her poetry and prose has appeared, or is forthcoming in: Poetry Magazine, Narrative, Orion Magazine, North American Review, The Adroit Journal, Brevity, The Cincinnati Review, Arts & Letters, Emergence Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and others, along with numerous anthologies, including The Golden Shovel Anthology. She has received awards, residencies or fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Foundation, Tin House, The Newberry Library, The Luminarts Foundation, Crab Orchard Review, Davis Projects for Peace, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the National Student Poets Program. Natalie's work has featured at BBC Radio London, Tedx, WBEZ Chicago, The British Royal Library, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Poetry Foundation. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee.
Rich Robbins is a rapper, songwriter, producer, and educator. But more than anything, the Oak Park-born, Chicago-based artist is a world-builder. Rich’s early years as a college student in Madison, Wisconsin’s First Wave hip-hop scholarship program jumpstarted his artistry. He recorded wide-reaching tracks like “Dreams” feat. Mick Jenkins, along with records with Saba, Mother Nature, and more. He has performed at historic venues like the Apollo Theater in New York, and has done everything from music festivals, to working at Hot 97 as an intern, to teaching classrooms of high school students how to read and write poetry/songs. His work is an inward look at society’s ills and creates spaces for listeners to explore. In short, Rich’s work critiques the old while envisioning and manifesting the new. His latest releases are available on all streaming platforms.
Poet t.l. sanders is a modern-day renaissance man who lives to build minds and loves to body build. He speaks French. He plays bass. He is a cage-fighting martial artist. He educates. Give him a stage, he articulates. Lend him an ear, he motivates. As a performance professional based in Kansas City, MO, Poet has performed at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (in the 2019 Lyric Opera of Kansas City production of Bizet's Pearl Fishers), at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, and—serendipitously—he has performed at several venues located in Kansas City's Historic Jazz District, 18th and Vine: the American Jazz Museum, at the Gem Theater, and in the Blue Room (which is the setting of his book, kNew: The POETICscreenPLAY). As Paper Birch Landing Art Gallery’s 2019 Poet in Residence Recipient, the Winner of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts’ 2021 Artful Poetry contest, a 2021 Missouri Arts Council Featured Artist, Prairie Lands Writing Project Teacher-Consultant, a Missouri Writing Project Network Teacher-Consultant, a current curriculum director, and former elementary, middle, and high school English teacher turned filmmaker, Poet embraces the value of our shared stories. In 2021, Poet delivered The kNew-Born, an art house film that explores the human side of drug addiction.
In this conversation with Rebecca Harper, director of the Augusta University Writing Project and author of Write Now & Write On: 37 Strategies for Authentic Daily Writing in Every Content Area, we will discuss writing instruction, daily writing, writing across the curriculum, and her upcoming Deeper Dive in the Write Now Teacher Studio.
Former teacher Laura Purdie Salas believes reading small picture books and poems can have a huge impact on your life. She has written more than 130 books for kids, including Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons (Kirkus Best Books and Parents Magazine Best Books of the Year), the Can Be… series (Bank Street Best Books, IRA Teachers’ Choice), and Bookspeak!: Poems About Books (Minnesota Book Award, NCTE Notable). Laura shares inspiration and practical tips with educators about poetry, nonfiction, and more.
Lisa Lapina is currently teaching first grade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Bloomsburg University where she earned a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood and Elementary Education in 2011. Following BU, Lisa attended the University of Pennsylvania graduating in 2013 with a master's degree in Reading, Writing, and Literacy. She moved to Maryland in 2013 and taught first grade for five years. She moved back to Pennsylvania in 2018 and taught first grade in Upper Darby, PA before moving to The School District of Philadelphia in 2020. She taught kindergarten in 2020 and looped with her students to first grade in 2021. It's been a joy for her to spend a second year with this class. Lisa is grateful for all of the ways that the National Writing Project has positively influenced her career as an educator!
Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times Bestselling author of YA novels including the Coretta Scott King— John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning Monday’s Not Coming, the NAACP Image Award-nominated Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, and her latest titles Blackout, White Smoke, and Santa in the City. She received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University, her master of arts in media studies from the New School, and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is a lover of naps, cookie dough, and beaches, currently residing in the borough she loves, most likely multitasking.
Dr. Delicia Greene is an assistant professor in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning in the School of Education at the University at Albany, SUNY. She also holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her work enhances teaching and learning in the urban secondary literacy contexts. Dr. Greene's research is at the intersection of digital literacies, Black girlhood studies, rhetorical studies, urban literacies, young-adult literature, and teacher education, where she examines (1) Black girls' literacy and language practices in out-of-school digital spaces and (2) teaching strategies designed to bridge Black girls' out-of-school and in-school literacy and language practices.
Join colleagues from the Bay Area Writing Project as they learn alongside youth through a partnership with YRMedia called Teach YR. Through this partnership, teachers dig into the ways that youth media informs, mentors, and pairs with curricular design and the teaching of writing in their context and classrooms. This NWP Radio show will share inspirational media created by youth for public broadcast, explore the connected curriculum that has been created by teachers, and invite participation of students and teachers to be a part of an ongoing community of practice dedicated to bringing youth media beyond the margins.
K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She wrote and illustrated A Normal Pig and her latest book is All Eyes on Ozzy! She was a James Marshall Fellow at the University of Connecticut, a Brown Handler Writer in Residence at the San Francisco Public Library, and an Ezra Jack Keats/Kerlan Memorial Fellow at the University of Minnesota. Born in Charlton, Massachusetts, K-Fai now lives in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Heather Locke was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has been teaching for six years and currently teaches a fantastic group of second graders. As a kid, Heather had an amazing fifth-grade teacher who recognized her strengths and helped her grow. In high school, her volleyball coach and history teacher supported her through a difficult time. It is because of them that she achieved her childhood dream of supporting children through education.
Join us for a creative Write Out broadcast led by leaders of Outdoor Afro, the nation’s leading cutting edge network that celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature. Outdoor Afro leader Leandra Taylor and National Park Ranger Alanna Smith will lead us in creating and customizing journals to use for nature and historic writing. Don’t miss this event, just in time for Write Out and the National Day of Writing.
Write Out (#writeout) is a free two-week event, led by the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. The event is organized as a series of online activities where educators, students, and the public are invited to explore national parks and other public spaces to connect and learn through place-based writing and sharing.
The theme of this year’s event is "Palettes, Storyboards, and Cadences" and will run from October 10-24, 2021 (which includes the National Day on Writing on October 20). Sign up now to receive links and information to support your planning and participation.
Learn more and sign up: https://writeout.nwp.org
Join us for a “behind the scenes” exclusive as we engage in the power of stories, storytelling, and writing with partners from the Park For Every Classroom project. Park for Every Classroom (PEC) is a National Park Service partnership program that includes a network of educators, partners, and Park Rangers that collaborate to engage communities in place-based learning. In this special Write Out broadcast, we will learn about the work of PEC while we are also taken behind the scenes with Park Rangers who participate in both PEC and Write Out. We will get the inside scoop on how these Park Rangers selected their writing prompts for this year’s Ranger Sparks videos, and how they tie the prompts to the diverse stories of their parks.
Learn more about Write Out at: https://writeout.nwp.org
Carmen Oliver grew up in Manitoba, Canada, surrounded by lakes and prairie grass where she built tree forts, caught tadpoles, and sailed on homemade rafts. She is the author of the picture book series Bears Make the Best Buddies (Reading, Math, Writing, and Science) as well as the nonfiction picture book biography A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal, a Junior Library Guild spring 2019 pick. She’s also the author of the forthcoming picture books The Twilight Library and The Favio Chavez Story. Carmen’s work has been shortlisted for the Rainforest of Reading Award, The Writers’ League of Texas Awards and the CLEL Bell Picture Book Awards for Early Literacy. In 2014, she founded the Booking Biz, a boutique style agency that brings award-winning children’s authors and illustrators to schools, libraries, and special events. When she’s not writing, she loves gardening, cheering on her kids from the sidelines and blue-sky days. Carmen lives in Round Rock, TX with her family.
Kristin Lessard has worked for the National Park Service since 2008, serving in varied professional roles across multiple disciplines. In her current position, Kristin oversees the park’s visitor service operations and engagement initiatives, which include history and fine art education programming for approximately 40,000 visitors a year, as well as dynamic youth and volunteer programs. Kristin graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and has extensive training in public programming and 21st-century visitor engagement techniques.
Write Out (#writeout) is a free two-week event, led by the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. The event is organized as a series of online activities where educators, students, and the public are invited to explore national parks and other public spaces to connect and learn through place-based writing and sharing.
The theme of this year’s event is "Palettes, Storyboards, and Cadences" and will run from October 10-24, 2021 (which includes the National Day on Writing on October 20).
Varian Johnson is the author of several novels for children and young adults, including The Parker Inheritance, which won both Coretta Scott King Author Honor and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awards; The Great Greene Heist, an ALA Notable Children’s book and Kirkus Reviews Best Book; and the graphic novel Twins, illustrated by Shannon Wright, an NPR Best Book. Varian was born in Florence, South Carolina, and attended the University of Oklahoma, where he received a BS in Civil Engineering. He later received an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is honored to now be a member of the faculty. Varian lives outside of Austin, TX with his family.
Kim Tate is a fifth-grade dual language teacher at International Prep Academy in Champaign, Illinois, where she is a member of her school improvement leadership team, as well as co-chair of her school’s equity committee. In addition to being a children’s fiction enthusiast, Kim is a 2021-2022 Teach Plus Illinois Policy Fellow and an NWP Panda Fellow. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Millikin University, where she received her B.S. in Elementary Education. She is currently completing her MEd in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Often the story of teaching, of teachers, and of literacy is told by outsiders to education—media, social media, TV, and movies. These stories contribute to a public narrative that is too often dismissive and demeaning of teachers and of research-based practices. Teacher voices/teacher stories—the stories of those who are actually in school—matter and can help shift that narrative into one that speaks to the realities of teaching and learning.
In this episode, NWP Radio talks with Cathy Fleischer and Sarah Hochstetler about Everyday Advocacy, the kind of advocacy that teachers can do as part of their regular teaching lives. Our guests will also discuss resources from the book, and the launch of a new website that was made possible by a National Writing Project seed grant and the collective efforts of colleagues who share this commitment to advocacy.
Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT with Willie Perdomo and Jose Olivarez. Felicia’s teaching career began in Chicago, where she served as Program Director to Young Chicago Authors and founded GirlSpeak, a feminist webzine for high school students.
Dr. Tonya Perry is a Professor and Director of the Red Mountain Writing Project. In 2000-2001, she was named Alabama Teacher of the Year and further awarded National Teacher of the Year Finalist. In 2012, she was named by colleagues and students the recipient of the UAB Teaching Excellence Award. On a national level, she serves as a member of the Research on Women in Education executive board affiliated with AERA, director of the NCTE Cultivating New Voices program, a member of the Beloved Community in the National Writing Project's Write Now Teacher Studio, and a former National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Executive Board Member.
What is "rhetorical problem-solving" and what does it mean to "write rhetorically"? Listen to our interview with Jennifer Fletcher, a professor of English at CSU Monterey Bay and the author of Writing Rhetorically: Fostering Responsive Thinkers and Communicators.
The original Declaration of Sentiments, the document outlining the rights that American women should be entitled to as citizens, emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848. Then in 2020, a group of women and girls in the Western, Central and the Finger Lakes regions of New York got together “to use pens and voices” to write a new declaration for the 21st century, which they shared for the first time at the 2021 Convention Days in Seneca Falls, NY in mid-July.
Join us for this NWP Radio show where we hear from the young authors of the now complete 2020 Youth Declaration of Sentiments, understand their journeys as writers and collaborators, and listen to their hopes and dreams for their 21st century document.
Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with Kwame Mbalia, editor of Black Boy Joy, two additional contributors Varian Johnson and Julian Randall, and Washington, DC area teacher, Cosby Hunt.
Black Boy Joy, released on August 3, is a book that celebrates the excellence of young Black males, their happiness, their voices, and their stories. We are excited to discuss the project with them on this episode.
Join NWP Radio for an interview with Poet t.l. sanders, a poet and performance professional based in Kansas City, MO.
As a Prairie Lands Writing Project Teacher-Consultant, a Missouri Writing Project Network Teacher-Consultant, a member of the National Writing Project Writers Council, a current curriculum director, and former elementary, middle, and high school English teacher (with 16 years of teaching experience), Poet embraces the value of our shared stories. Whether he is public speaking, teaching, writing, or breathing, he has a passion for empowering people.
This episode of NWP Radio includes a conversation of his upcoming film The kNew-Born, which premieres July 18 through August 1 during the #kcfringe2021 Virtual Festival. To learn more and find tickets for the film premiere please visit: https://www.poettlsanders.com/
And, save the date for special Q&A with Poet for those who see the film, hosted in NWP’s Write Now Teacher Studio on July 29 at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.
Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with New York Times Best Selling author and illustrator Rachel Ignotofsky. Rachel will be interviewed by Soñia Galaviz a 5th-grade teacher and leader with the Boise State Writing Project.
Equal access to quality writing education has been a longstanding challenge in the United States and not enough has been done to move the field forward in recent years. In this episode, we visit with 826 National about their report that aims to bring writing education to the forefront of public, policy, and funding conversations by examining its current state and issuing a call to action to the field. In the summer and fall of 2020, 826 National interviewed 19 writing education experts, including authors, researchers, and educators, about the current state of writing education in the United States. They distill their reflections on the benefits, challenges, and inequities of writing education, and then draw on those reflections to outline recommendations for the field.
- Learn more about the research
- 826 Digital
- Take the National Teacher Survey
- Next Steps and Take Home Google folder
Abdi Nor Iftin has been featured on various radio and TV stations sharing his life story of growing up in a country torn by civial war and immigrating to the United States in 2014. His new book Call Me American was released in 2018 and is a finalist for New England's Bookseller's Association book awards.
Abdi is interviewed by author and educator Kate Kennedy. Kate taught writing at Portland High School, was the director of the Southern Maine Writing Project, and is the author of Skin, A Memoir and End Over End.
In this CoLab, co-author/editor Christopher R. Rogers will be joined by members of the Marginal Syllabus team for a conversation that starts with the editor’s introduction to the February 2021 edition of the journal Research in the Teaching of English. Written in the days prior to the 2020 presidential election, amidst dual public health and racial justice pandemics, the article’s brevity belies its provocative power. Reading the article now also offered the team a chance to reconnect with Christopher, himself a long-time Marginal Syllabus partner, for a conversation in which he reflected on social activism, art and poetry, his passion for literacy, and his formative experiences as a student and teacher.
This article is the featured article for June 2021 in the LEARN: Marginal Syllabus and will be available throughout the month alongside a curated set of online annotations using Hypothes.is. Viewers are invited to watch the CoLab discussion, socially read the article alongside colleagues, and if interested, join the discussion.
LEARN is a collaborative project of the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Marginal Syllabus team, with the support of Hypothesis.
Joseph Bruchac is a Nulhegan Abenaki citizen and a leader among his people. He is the author of more than 120 books for children and adults, including his best-selling series, Keepers of Earth: Native American Stories and Environment Activities for Children.
Joseph is interviewed by Dr. Caitlin Johnson, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Dr. Johnson is an English teacher at Dakota High School in Fargo, North Dakota.
Do you love historical fiction? Teach American Literature? Are you a teacher-writer? Any of these would be a great reason to tune in to NWP Radio as we talk to Don Zancanella about the writing life, teaching and writing, and about his magnificent new novel Concord.
Chris Crutcher’s years as a teacher, then director, of a K-12 alternative school in Oakland, California through the nineteen-seventies, and his subsequent twenty-odd years as a therapist specializing in child abuse and neglect, inform his thirteen novels and two collections of short stories. Chris has received a number of coveted awards, from his high school designation as “Most Likely to Plagiarize” to the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award. His favorites are his two Intellectual Freedom awards, one from the National Council for Teachers of English and the other from the National Coalition Against Censorship. Five of Crutcher’s books appeared on an American Library Association list of the 100 Best Books for Teens of the Twentieth Century (1999 to 2000).Chris is interviewed by Stephenie Eriksson, a National Board Certified Teacher, a teacher-consultant with the Ohio Writing Project, and a past-president of the Ohio Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts. For over 22 years, Stephenie has taught readers and writers in Blanchester, Ohio. She started her career teaching seventh and eighth grade and currently teaches sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
In this CoLab, author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is joined by colleagues Christina Cantrill, Joe Dillon, and Remi Kalir to discuss her article "‘We Always Talk About Race’: Navigating Race Talk Dilemmas in the Teaching of Literature" which was published in Research in the Teaching of English in May 2015.
This article is the featured article for May 2021 in the LEARN: Marginal Syllabus and will be available throughout the month alongside a curated set of online annotations using Hypothes.is. Viewers are invited to listen to or watch the CoLab discussion, socially read the article alongside colleagues, and if interested, join the discussion.
LEARN is a collaborative project of the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Marginal Syllabus team, with the support of Hypothesis.
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio has launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features poet and educator George Ella Lyon.
English teachers took note when Penguin Young Readers invited #DisruptTexts to create a discussion guide for Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, "The Hill We Climb." But it was not surprising. Teachers who want to expand the range and diversity of literature in their classrooms have looked to the #DisruptTexts movement for inspiration and guidance. Now a widespread movement with discussions, activities, and local affiliates, #DisruptTexts was founded by four educators: Tricia Ebarvia, Lorena Germán, Kimberly Parker, and Julia Torres.
In this segment from the network, Julia Torres talks with Noah Waspe of the Ohio Writing Project podcast Write Answers about the first steps that teachers might take when introducing literature by BIPOC authors into their teaching.
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features Dan Zev Levinson.
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features Shirley McPhillips .
Matt de la Peña is the first author to make his second appearance on The Write Time! Matt is a #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author. He has penned six critically acclaimed YA novels, including Mexican WhiteBoy and The Living, which was a Pura Belpré Author Honor Book. Matt’s picture book Love was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and Last Stop on Market Street was awarded a Newbery Medal. Matt lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Aeriale Johnson is a Reggio-inspired, abolitionist teacher of third graders at Washington Elementary School, a school bursting with the energy of multiculturalism and multilingualism in downtown San Jose, CA. Aeriale is dedicated to antiracism and works every day of her life to disrupt oppressive systems and promote a more just and equitable world wherein all folx can thrive.
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features H.K. Hummel.
Ann E. Burg worked as an English teacher for many years before becoming a full-time writer. Flooded, Requiem for Johnstown is her fourth verse novel published by Scholastic Press. Her books have received numerous awards and commendations, including most recently, the Bank Street College Claudia Lewis Award.
Ann is interviewed by Amy Bouch, a reading-obsessed 8th grade English teacher at Chartiers Valley Middle School near Pittsburgh. Amy is a Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (WPWP) teacher-leader and the Vice President of the Western Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English (WPCTE).
See the complete set of The Write Time authors...
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio has launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features performance professional and poet, t.l. sanders.
In this CoLab, author Latrise P. Johnson is joined by colleagues Joe Dillon, Remi Kalir, and Hillary Walker to discuss her award-winning article "Revealing the Human and the Writer: The Promise of a Humanizing Writing Pedagogy for Black Students" co-written with Hannah Sullivan and published in Research in the Teaching of English in May 2020.
This article is the featured article for April 2021 in the LEARN: Marginal Syllabus and will be available throughout the month alongside a curated set of online annotations using Hypothes.is. Viewers are invited to watch the CoLab discussion, socially read the article alongside colleagues, and if interested, join the discussion.
LEARN is a collaborative project of the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Marginal Syllabus team, with the support of Hypothesis.
For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio has launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features author, poet, artist, and teacher, Patrice Vecchione.
Have you scoured the web for writing contests for your students? Have you worried over which publishing opportunities have students’ best interests at heart? Tune in to this show to hear about the resource you’ve been looking for.
Guest
Denise Hill, Editor-in-Chief, NewPages
After a full year of COVID, and the overlapping pandemics of violence against Black lives and attacks on Democracy, a group of educators and writers come back together at Beyond Storytime CoLab to share and consider what we have made, why we have made it, and the stories these objects carry for ourselves and others. See what we have learned, what we chose to carry forward, and how these objects and decisions inform our vision of teaching writing as well as our collective storytelling and history-making.
See the slideshow from the show...
This NWP Radio CoLab features the authors of our March reading for LEARN: Marginal Syllabus. Jennifer Turner and Autumn Griffin, two Black woman literacy scholars, discuss their article and their work learning alongside two adolescents, Tamika and Malia, over a six-year period.
This is the first month’s reading from the LEARN Marginal Syllabus, Spring 2021 co-developed with the National Writing Project (NWP) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) with support from Hypothesis. Each month, March through June, we will invite educators to collaboratively read and discuss an article published by NCTE that investigates the intersection of literacy and equity. Each reading with related author discussion will go “live” on the first Monday of the month.
Related Links
- About the 2021 LEARN Marginal Syllabus
- Read and Annotate the article
- Watch the video/learn more
Kwame Alexander’s newest novel Becoming Muhammad Ali, co-authored with the best-selling novelist, James Patterson, is about the childhood of Cassius Clay, and therefore set in Louisville, Kentucky.
This episode of The Write Time features Tyler Jones, a teacher-consultant with the Louisville Writing Project, interviewing Kwame about this knockout novel.
Join NWP Radio for a conversation with artist Rob Shetterly and educator Connie Carter. For more than ten years, Rob has been painting the series of portraits: Americans Who Tell the Truth. Connie works on education initiatives connected to the work. In this episode of NWP Radio, Rob and Connie talk about the role of art in truth-telling, the resources Americans Who Tell the Truth have amassed for educators, and how teachers can get involved in the Samantha Smith Challenge.
What does it look like, sound like, feel like to teach for a “living democracy”? This episode of NWP Radio features Philadelphia educator Joshua Block talking about his book Teaching for a Living Democracy: Project-Based Learning in the English and History Classroom. In this book Joshua unpacks the ways he works to make school a place where students can reconfigure understandings of themselves, their capabilities, and their roles in the world.
Our discussion features student work, classroom resources, and prompts teachers to consider ways to create living democracies in their own contexts. Joshua has provided his slideshow as a resource for teachers; also see the first two pages of the book, courtesy of Teacher College Press.
Our Adapting Instruction series continues with four NWP teachers, working in different contexts and with different designs for virtual and hybrid learning. They share the tools and strategies they have found most useful in adapting their instruction for young writers.
Join teacher, author, and NWP Writers Council member Kim Culbertson, along with fellow educators, for a dive into 100-word stories. Kim will share how she has found short-form work a great test for herself as a writer and its applications for her work with students. (Also, check out her post about 100-word stories and the related handout.)
This episode of The Write Time features educator and author Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad. Dr. Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. She works with teachers and young people across the United States and South Africa supporting best practices in culturally responsive instruction.
Dr. Muhammad is interviewed by Christopher Rogers, a Ph.D student within the Reading/Writing/Literacy program at PennGSE. Chris also serves as Public Programs Director for the Paul Robeson House and Museum and serves as Curriculum Co-Chair for National Black Lives Matter at School.
In this episode of The Write Time we visit with award-winning author Lamar Giles and middle-school educator Kearstin Jacobs. Lamar writes for teens and adults across multiple genres, with work appearing on many "Best Of" lists every year. He is the author of the acclaimed novels Fake ID, Endangered, Overturned, Spin, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, and The Last Mirror on the Left as well as numerous pieces of short fiction. He is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books and resides in Virginia with his wife.
In the second of two NWP CoLabs with Katherine Schulten of the New York Times Learning Network, four fabulous National Writing Project teachers discuss how their students responded to the editorial contest-winning argument essays. The arguments are from Student Voice, a new collection of student writing published by Norton and edited by Schulten. This show is a treasure chest of compelling and relevant student writing and discussion from inspiring teachers.
Guests
- Katherine Schulten
- TaSharra Hilson, Red Mountain Writing Project
- Shawni McBride, Northern California Writing Project
- Dylan Williams, South Mississippi Writing Project
- Dawn Viles, Louisville Writing Project
Celebrate powerful student argument writing in this NWP Radio CoLab featuring contest-winning student arguments. Katherine Schulten—a former a high school English teacher, New York City Writing Project teacher-leader, and the editor of the New York Times Learning Network— collected one hundred essays that were winners or runners up in the New York Times Learning Network’s argument writing contest. They are published in Student Voice. Katherine talks with Tom Fox about her work at the New York Times Learning Network, the origins of the essays, and how they were selected for the book. Best of all, she reads selections that show students’ passion, reason, and style.This CoLab is the first of a two-part series. The second CoLab features Katherine talking with four NWP teachers.
Candace Fleming awarded herself the Newbery Medal in fifth grade after scraping the gold sticker off the class copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond and pasting it onto her first novel—a ten-page, ten-chapter mystery called Who Done It? She’s been collecting awards (her own, not Elizabeth George Speare’s) ever since.
Today, Candace is the versatile and acclaimed author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize honored The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of the Russian Empire; Boston Globe/Horn Book Award-winning biography, The Lincolns; the bestselling picture book, Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!; the Sibert-Award-winning Giant Squid; and the beloved Boxes for Katje. She contributed the chapter on Katharine of Aragon to Fatal Throne.
Candace is interviewed by Ohio Writing Project (OWP) teacher-leader Megan Rodney. Megan is a former second- and third-grade teacher, and is currently the Elementary PD Lead with OWP.
NWP leader Michael Thompson and his wife Tina Deschenie join us on NWP Radio to share two new anthologies they’ve contributed to this year. Join us for an intimate conversation and powerful poetry.
Related Links
- The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo
- Wet (available in November through the Montezuma Food Coalition and Sharehouse Press)
On this episode we will talk about why and how working educators should take a more active role in thinking about retirement funding. Listen in to a conversation about the relationship between underfunded pensions and school quality and climate. And learn about resources available if you want to learn more or get involved in the conversation in your school or district.
Related Links
- Equable.org
- Teacher Retirement U
About Equable
Equable is a bipartisan nonprofit organization that works to facilitate retirement plan sustainability and income security throughout the country. Through rigorous research and analysis, Equable unlocks creative solutions to tough retirement plan problems.
Join Writing Project colleagues and educators associated with the National Geographic Educator Network to learn about the Geo-Inquiry process developed to support students in developing the skills, knowledge, and tools of a geographer and provide pathways for investigating, understanding, and taking action through a geographic lens. We will hear from teachers who have explored geo-inquiry with their students, feature resources available to support this process in classrooms, online, as well as outside, and explore the potential for connecting across disciplines through writing and geography.
Guests
- Jeff Dierking, Greater Kansas City Writing Project; English teacher and Curriculum Coordinator, Raytown School District
- Elaine Larson, Regional Director, Midwest; National Geographic Education
- Carrie Nobis, Red Cedar Writing Project, science teacher, Groves High School
- Rich Novack, Connecticut-Fairfield Writing Project, English teacher, Fairfield Warde High School
Mike Caulfield and NWP teacher-leaders using the SIFT curriculum approach have had their eyes out for electoral misinformation. See this wrap-up of Mike’s October look at electoral misinformation and find resources for better information for your students.
Check out this NWP CoLab with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Program Director Marya Brennan and high-school teacher Sean Krazit for an orientation to NaNoWriMo, tips and strategies for making it work in the classroom or online, and pointers to resource collections covering everything from curriculum ideas to approaches to assessment.
About the Guests in this Show
Jacob Kramer grew up in Providence, RI and studied film-making and writing at Harvard. Like Noodlephant, he loves hunting for mushrooms, eating noodles, and organizing with friends in pursuit of justice.
K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She illustrated Okapi Tale and Noodlephant, and wrote and illustrated A Normal Pig.
Sheryl Block was a 4th grade and special education teacher, and currently serves as the Coordinator of Professional Learning with the Louisville Writing Project in Kentucky.
About The Write Time
NWP Radio has launched a special series called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors and illustrators about their books, their composing processes, and craft.
Engage students in not only their imaginations, but also in research, in visual literacy, in their community and its history, and in oral story traditions. This rich genre has been around for as long as people have been telling stories and is a great way to explore just what it means to be human.
We're thrilled to feature four outstanding youth from KC Storytellers, a project led by the Greater Kansas City Writing Project that unites communities through student stories—part of Write Out 2020.
A writing marathon is an opportunity for writers to gather, write, walk, talk, explore, and grow through shared experience. It is a beloved practice of many Writing Project teachers, whether face-to-face or online, and has spread to classrooms and national parks across the country. Join Morehead Writing Project teachers and National Park Service colleagues for this discussion about the possibilities and details on how to design your own. This event was part of Write Out 2020, a partnership with the National Park Service. More info along with writing marathon resources can be found at https://writeout.nwp.org/writeout-writing-marathon/.
Guests
- Deanna Mascle, Professor, Morehead State University; Director, Morehead Writing Project
- Stacie May, Teacher, Rowan County Middle School
- Abigail Thomas, Teacher, Montgomery County High School
- Dorothy Luongo, Librarian, Hudson Valley
- Susan Cook, Chief Ranger, Niobrara National Scenic River
In this episode of The Write Time, we visit with author/illustrator Jerry Craft and eighth-grade student, Dereje Tarrant.
Dereje's favorite subjects include creative writing, Latin, art, and biology. He is also a professional actor and enjoys playing soccer, doing hip-hop dance, practicing piano, spray-painting murals, or working at his latest craft—DJ-ing.
Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal winning author of the graphic novel, New Kid. His second graphic novel, Class Act, was published on October 6, 2020. Craft is also the creator of Mama’s Boyz, an award-winning comic strip which won the African American Literary Award five times. He is a cofounder of the Schomburg Center’s Annual Black Comic Book Festival. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts.
As schools work through reopening plans and teachers reframe curricula for hybrid learning and policy-makers talk of "learning loss," it might be easy to forget the impact of the pandemic on children's opportunity to play and to learn through play.
Playworks, a national non-profit that helps schools maximize the potential of recess and play for children's social and emotional growth, immediately saw the challenge the pandemic would pose for schools, parks, playgrounds, and families, working over the summer to prepare reopening guides and to redo their games and challenges for online and distanced formats. In this CoLab we discuss the resulting resource bank that teachers and families can use to return play to the school day - even when that school day is on Zoom.
Guests
- Elizabeth Cushing, CEO, Playworks
- Danyel Crutcher, Senior Manager of Special Projects, Playworks
Learn more and access resources at Write Now, our publication at Medium.
For years, award-winning National Geographic photographer Andrea Bruce traveled the world, documenting life in international conflict zones. Wherever she went, people asked her “what is democracy?” When she returned home, she wanted to make it possible for all of us to explore the question through the Our Democracy Project. Created by Bruce, with the support of the National Geographic Society and PhotoWings, Our Democracy invites everyone in the U.S. to document their experience of local democracy in word, image, and video using NWP’s Writing Our Future platform.
Guests
- Andrea Bruce, Photojournalist
- Lorraine Ustaris, Educator, Multimedia Storyteller
Martin Brandt is a high-school English teacher in San Jose, CA and a teacher-consultant with the San Jose Area Writing Project, as well as the author of Between the Commas: Sentence Instruction That Builds Confident Writers (and Writing Teachers). In this episode we'll discuss Martin's book, instructional strategies from the book, his development as a teacher over the last 30 years, and teaching writing in general.
The educator-founders of Equity Unbound, Maha Bali, of the American University in Cairo, Egypt; Catherine Cronin of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education in Ireland; and Mia Zamora, director of the Kean University Writing Project; saw the need to assist their fellow faculty in practices for equity-focused open learning. Working with another colleague, Autumm Caines of the University of Michigan, Dearborn, Maha and Mia began curating and adapting a rich collection of activities and models for creating community and fostering learning in open online environments. Autumm's concept of "intentionally equitable hospitality," a concept developed in an effort called Virtually Connecting, seemed to nicely frame their collection of activities. With support from OneHE, they have published the initial (and growing) collection at OneHE: Community Building Activities.
In this CoLab, they introduce us to the collection and provide advice for creating strong learning communities in online settings.
Read more and see related resources...
Our guests Sadaf Kahn, English Supervisor and IB Teacher at TNS Beaconhouse in Pakistan, and Bryn Orum, co-director of the Greater Madison Writing Project (GMWP), discuss how they have used GMWP’s Rise Up and Write curriculum in schools and summer camps from Madison, Wisconsin, to Lahore, Pakistan. Hear stories of young people around the world using writing to effect change in the places they live in and care about.
For many teachers working to figure out remote or socially distanced teaching, two of the biggest challenges this school year are creating trusting, mutual connections with their students and forming productive classroom student/peer communities, especially supportive writing communities. Those twin challenges are at the heart of this CoLab with educators Anna Smith, Matthew Johnson, and Kim Jaxon. Read more at get resources at Write Now, our publication at Medium.
We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our third and final episode of this mini-series, we will visit with author Kim Johnson and educator Synthia Shelby will be leading the discussion.
Kim Johnson held leadership positions in social justice organizations as a teen. She's now a college administrator who maintains civic engagement throughout the community while also mentoring Black student activists and leaders. This Is My America is her debut novel. It explores racial injustice against innocent Black men who are criminally sentenced and the families left behind to pick up the pieces. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Maryland, College Park. Kim lives her best life in Oregon with her husband and two kids.
Visit The Write Time archive for past episodes with other amazing authors.
As part of a special back-to-school series of The Write Time, we visited with three debut Penguin Random House authors. For our second episode we visit with author Ger Duany and educator William King leads the discussion.
Ger Duany is a survivor of the tragic exodus of an estimated 20,000 Sudanese children, the "Lost boys of Sudan," and has been appointed as UN Goodwill Ambassador. Born in the town of Akobo, Ger was caught up in Sudan's north-south civil war and was forcefully recruited as a child soldier. At the age of 14, he managed to escape to neighbouring Ethiopia and was eventually resettled to the United States from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In 2014, UNHCR helped Ger reunite with his mother and other family members in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp. He is also a model and actor.
Writing Can Change Everything: Middle Level Kids Writing Themselves Into the World, edited by Shelbie Witte, is the latest from NCTE’s Principles In Practice series. Offering concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based on NCTE research briefs and policy statements, books in this series demonstrate how principles come alive in practice. Listen to this episode of NWP Radio with Shelbie, Sarah Bonner, Tracei Willis, and Joe Pizzo as they talk about their classrooms and the power of writing to build community, support inquiry, and convey sympathy.
In this 20-minute interview Jessyca Mathews, recent Michigan Region 5 Teacher of the Year and a teacher-leader with the Red Cedar Writing Project, reflects on working with her students this past spring to surface "what really is necessary" to support their writing and learning.
Robert Rivera-Amezola is a Digital Literacy Teacher at Francis Scott Key Elementary and a teacher-leader with the Philadelphia Writing Project. In this 19-minute interview, Robert discusses insights that came from watching students chat with each other online during non-teacher directed time.
Beth Rimer is an Instructor of Composition at Miami Univeristy in Oxford, OH, and codirector of the Ohio Writing Project. Over the course of this interview, Beth describes the ways to build community and give students choices while also helping them learn to make choices. She also talks about the distinction between teaching writing and assigning writing, a particular challenge in remote and online environments that can focus on "making assignments."
We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our first episode we will visit with author Candice Iloh and educator Sharonica Nelson will be leading the discussion. Candice Iloh is a first generation Nigerian-American author and dancer based in Philadelphia, PA. Iloh has performed poetry and spoken word around the country and has served as a program director and workshop facilitator with Voices UnBroken, and as a teaching artist with Split This Rock, poetryN.O.W., and The American Poetry Museum. Throughout her work, Iloh has remained engaged with the communities she works and lives in by mentoring young people creatively within public school classrooms, athletic programs, and writing workshops.
For past episodes of other author visits, visit The Write Time archive.
This CoLab features Writing Project colleagues—author-educator Ruth Devlin, artist-illustrator-educator Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez, and editor Amy Bauman—sharing their story of collaborating from a distance in the creation of a picture book: Ants: Across, Around, and Through. In this episode they share their process, the challenges and possibilities of collaborative work, and consider implications for teaching writing.
Join us for another NWP CoLab where we'll further explore online instruction, specifically how to make it manageable for both students and teachers. Our featured guest is Deanna Mascle, an Instructor of English at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and the director of the Morehead Writing Project. Also joining the discussion are middle/high-school educators David Lopez (CA), Katherine Williams (MS), and Ben Woodcock (MI).
Related Resources
Blogs that discuss particular practices referenced in the video:
- "Building A HyFlex Community"
- "Conference Grading 3.0"
- "Classroom Badges"
Deanna's Google Slideshow
It's a document—likely, but not necessarily, a Google Doc—that has hyperlinks. Simple, right? But that simple definition doesn't explain why there is so much buzz about them. Perhaps there's more to it.
In this 29-minute episode, Jeremy Hyler, middle school teacher, member of the Chippewa River Writing Project, and Hyperdoc fan, explains why he finds the Hyperdoc a useful tool for online, remote, and hyper-flexible teaching.
Related Resources
- Hyperdocs (core website)
- Cult of Pedagogy Interview: How Hyperdocs Can Transform Your Teaching
- In Covid Teaching Limbo? Check Out Hyperdocs, Jeremy's Middleweb article
About Beyond Storytime
In April 2020, with school buildings closed for shelter-in-place, NWP Writers Council members, teachers, and children’s book authors and illustrators came together to rethink the stand-alone storytime and the traditional “author visit.” The Beyond Storytime CoLab was launched from this initial conversation and in each episode we dig into one of aspect of the work and spend time co-designing together.
Our Guests
- Sandra Hogue
- Aram Kim
- Kyle Lukoff
- K-Fai Steele
- Gordon C. James
How can middle and high school English Language Arts (ELA) teachers work towards becoming anti-racist educators? Michelle Falter, Chandra Alston, and Crystal Chen Lee, former English teachers and current ELA teacher educators at North Carolina State University, share actionable steps and curated resources that work particularly well for middle and high school ELA teachers.
About Our Guests
- Michelle Falter is a former middle and high school English teacher and a Red Clay Writing Project (Athens, GA) teacher-consultant. Michelle co-edited the book Teaching Outside the Box but Inside the Standards with Bob Fecho, Xiaoli Hong, and fellow RCWP teacher-consultants, which was published with NWP and Teachers College Press. Currently, she is an assistant professor of English education at North Carolina State University.
- Chandra Alston is a former high school English teacher. Currently, she is an assistant professor of Literacy, Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation focusing specifically on writing instruction at North Carolina State University.
- Crystal Chen Lee is a former high school English teacher. Currently, she is an assistant professor of English education and director of The Literacy and Community Initiative at North Carolina State University.
In this short NWP Radio episode, CSUWP Teacher-Consultant Bud Hunt, now a library administrator, describes how libraries can assist (and want to assist) teachers in the school year ahead.
Can making and tinkering help us manage an uncertain return to school? We talk with Steve Fulton and Cindy Urbanski, both of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project, about their new book, Making Middle School: Cultivating Critical Literacy and Interdisciplinary Learning in Maker Spaces. The book grew out of the National Writing Project's Intersections project, which supported local Writing Project sites in partnering with local science and tech museums to co-develop programming.
For this episode of The Write Time, we visit with author Erin Stewart. Erin uses her background in journalism to research and write fiction based on real life and her debut novel is Scars Like Wings.
Leading the conversation is Esther Theodore, an English Language Teacher at Stamford High in Connecticut and a teacher-leader with CWP-Fairfield. Esther is originally from Haiti and believes that every individual carries with them a story that enriches the educational journey, stretching it beyond the classroom.
The final episode of our seven-part series, The Nebraska Experience, explores an approach to teaching argument writing that involves students in researching local issues and presenting advocacy writing live to legislators at the state capitol. The project detailed here involved a semester-long collaboration between college and high-school students as part of the Husker Writers program, which sponsors secondary-university writing partnerships. High-school teacher Jessica Meyer and college professor Rachael Shah describe how they designed their collaborative unit and explain how the National Writing Project's College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) and place-based writing principles informed their pedagogy. The podcast highlights student voices by featuring excerpts of the students’ collaborative advocacy presentations on the cost of college and mental health resources, and it includes interviews with students about their experience writing for state senators. Jess Meyer and Rachael Shah reflect on what they have learned about facilitating local issue writing for audiences beyond the classroom.
Guests
- Jessica Meyer, English Teacher, Lincoln North Star High School
- Dr. Rachael Shah, Assistant Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Adam Morfeld, Nebraska State Senator for UNL/North Star District
- Students in Meyer’s composition class and Shah’s preservice education class
Hear about a new partnership between the National Park Service and the Nebraska Writing Project that is under development and moving toward a planned river float for area high school students to allow them to experience the Niobrara River in a way they may not have done in the past. The Nebraska Writing Project is planning writing experiences in the areas of the significant river ecology, paleontology, Native American history and use, the historical Fort Niobrara cavalry including buffalo soldiers, railroaders, homesteaders, and ranchers.
More About Niobrara
The Niobrara Scenic River lies in Cherry County, Nebraska, the largest county in Nebraska comprising an area of 6,009 square miles of which 49 square miles is water. Cherry County which abuts South Dakota on its northern border is Nebraska's largest county in land area and larger than the state of Connecticut, or the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Running through Cherry County is the Niobrara River, 568 miles long, from its head in Wyoming to its mouth on the Missouri in the state of Nebraska. Seventy-six miles of the Niobrara have been designated a National Scenic River. The Niobrara National Scenic River will be the third jewel in the crown of National Park Service/Nebraska Writing Project Partnerships.
Guests
- Susan Cook, Chief of Interpretation and Resource Management; Program Manager for Interpretation, Education and Volunteers, Niobrara National Scenic River
- Bobbie Roshone, Niobrara National Scenic River
- Jan Knispel, Adjunct Professor, Midplains Community College
For this episode of The Write Time, we have the pleasure of visiting with award-winning author Adib Khorram. Adib is the author of Darius The Great is Not Okay and his next book, Darius The Great Deserves Better, will be released August 25, 2020.
Leading the discussion will be Aram Kabodian, a longtime educator, the 2016 MCTE Middle School Teacher of the Year, and a Red Cedar Writing Project teacher-leader.
Part five of The Nebraska Experience gives an outline of the initial work between the Nebraska Writing Project and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument and examines the rich place-based teaching that occurred in this partnership. Our guests describe how they developed the paleontological, geological, and early history of the plains stories from this park into a series of workshops designed for teachers.
The goal of this partnership was to create place-based workshops which:
- immersed teachers directly in the experience of the park,
- provided writing experiences that both enriched the park experience and were recreatable in the classroom,
- and met the teacher as a writer and an educator.
Teacher-participants join the podcast to share how the workshop series evolved and impacted them as place-based writers and educators.
Guests
- Diana Weis, 5th Grade Teacher, Millard Cather Elementary School
- Alvis Mar, Lead Park Ranger, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument
- Jan Knispel, Teacher, Midplains Community College
- Tess Sykes, Henry Doorly Zoo School, Papillon
- Brenda Larabee, 10-12 Teacher, Stuart High School
This podcast—part four of a seven-part series—focuses on how the Prairie Visions Writing Workshop for students and teachers came about due to the wish of the Homestead National Monument of America’s National Park Service to bring a focused writing workshop to the monument location that would take advantage of the history and process of the Homestead Act of 1862. The workshop developed writing sessions that brought students to experience the physical environment and ecology of the TallGrass Prairie, to see the artifacts and historical documents of the Homestead Visitors center, to feel the centeredness of earthing (being in contact with the earth), and mindfulness (being conscious of place, being in the moment). The emphasis on place-based writing engendered a greater appreciation in students of the history of the Homestead Act. The place of Homestead Monument allowed students to focus their writing experiences on the concept of home of the past, present, and future.
Guests
- Susan Cook, Chief of Interpretation; Program Manager for Interpretation, Education, and Volunteers, Niobrara National Scenic River
- Jan Knispel, Retired Valentine High School, Current Midplains Community College
- Ramon Mangual PhD, Supervisory National Park Service Ranger, Manhattan Sites
- Diana Weis, 5th Grade Teacher, Millard Cather Elementary School
This podcast focuses on Nebraska Writing Project co-director Melissa Legate’s pedagogical work to blend a place-based study of rural population decline with the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) focus on writing from multiple perspectives and nuanced claims. This project is offered as an example of the place-conscious principle of creating active citizens in the local community. Legate explains a “text set” developed from local newspapers on rural decline in her area and her 9th grade students’ response to the writing from that study. She goes on to describe the class follow-up final research project to investigate multiple points of view in a local issue, focusing on one student’s project on Willow Lake Recreation Area outside of town, and the many reasons for seasonal algae blooms there.
Guests
- Dr. Robert Brooke, Director, Nebraska Writing Project
- Melissa Legate, Secondary English Teacher, Pierce Public Schools; Co-Director, Nebraska Writing Project
This podcast describes an 8-week joint class project between Nebraska Writing Project teacher-leader Cara Morgenson’s Thematic Issues course for level three English Language Learners at Lincoln High School, Dr. Robert Brooke’s college junior Uses of Literacy students, and Homestead National Monument of America. The project focused on immigration issues in Lincoln, Nebraska, grounded in the historical study of the Homestead Act as a “first wave” of immigration in Nebraska, Morgenson’s students’ first-person accounts of recent immigration to Lincoln, and cooperative work with four local agencies providing support for refugees: Center for People in Need, El Centro de las Americas, Asian Community and Cultural Center, and the Yazidi Cultural Center. The project is an example of the place-conscious educational principle of “spiraling out” from local to regional/national/international issues.
Guests
- Dr. Robert Brooke, Director, Nebraska Writing Project
- Cara Morgenson, Doctoral Candidate, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education; former Lincoln North Star High School English Language Learners Teacher
This podcast is the first of a seven-part series that introduces the big concepts of place-conscious education as used by Nebraska Writing Project teachers. Special guest Dr. Robert Brooke, director of the Nebraska Writing Project, situates listeners to place-conscious work in Nebraska in three stages: the Rural Institute program developed 1995-2007; the online Place-Conscious Institute and the suburban inquiry team 2008-2015; and the current community engagement/literacy programs of Husker Writers and the National Parks Service partnership. Then, four main concepts of place-conscious education are explained:
- Active citizens as opposed to migratory education
- The 3-legged stool of education, community vitality, and environmental quality
- Spiraling out from local community to regional, national, international knowledge
- Watershed and commonwealth as the crucial web of interrelationships
We finish with examples of two exemplar projects: the Henderson/Bradshaw school consolidation project; and the Greater Omaha schools Urban Justice Project.
Torrey Maldonado is the author of the critically acclaimed books What Lane?, Tight, and Secret Saturdays. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he still lives and teaches today.
Rosanne Orta lives in Arizona and has taught high school English for 12 years and is an NWP teacher-leader.
Each episode of The Write Time includes prompts and time to write. You can view the full archive with all of our author-educator talks here.
In this episode of The Write Time we are honored to have Laurie Halse Anderson join us to discuss writing, learning, and life. She is the author of Speak, Prom, Twisted, Catalyst, Wintergirls, The Impossible Knife of Memory, and more.
Laurie is interviewed by NWP teacher-leader Rebecca Marsick who has taught elementary, middle, and high school, and is currently a Secondary Literacy Coach for Westport Public Schools.
In this episode of The Write Time, Jarred Amato the co-founder of Project LIT is interviewed by Connecticut English teacher Sean Astle. Jarred himself is a high school English teacher in Nashville, TN and Sean Astle is an English teacher in Connecticut where he is studying how young adult literature can be used to improve the literacy practices of all readers and writers.
Each episode of The Write Time provides writing prompts along with a little time to write to engage listeners.
Listen to this conversation between children's book authors and illustrators Shanda McCloskey, K-Fai Steele, Mika Song, and Ana Aranda along with Texas educator and NWP teacher-leader Katie McKay. Together, our guests will examine works-in-progress and talk about how they can support young writers in understanding authors’ craft.
About Our Guests
Marie Lu is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Young Elites series as well as the blockbuster Legend series. She has also been an artist in the video game industry, but is now a full-time author living in Los Angeles.
Rose Brock is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University and a co-founder of the national literacy initiative, Guys Listen. She is also the editor of Hope Nation: Young Adult Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration and the author of Young Adult Literature in Action: A Librarian's Guide.
Amanda Haugen is a high school ELA teacher in Pensacola, Florida and a teacher-consultant with the Emerald Coast Writing Project.
In this episode of The Write Time we visit with Jeff Zentner, author of The Serpent King, Goodbye Days, and Rayne and Delilah's Midnite Matinee. Jeff is the recipient of the William C. Morris Award and his work has been selected as an ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults.Jeff is interviewed by Dr. Susan Densmore-James, an Associate Professor at the University of West Florida, the director of the Emerald Coast Writing Project at UWF, and is known as The Book Dealer for her work with literacy and Young Adult Literature.
National Writing Project teacher-leader Janelle Q. Bence interviews New York Times Best-selling author Erika Sánchez in our special NWP Radio series, The Write Time. Sánchez is the author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and a recent recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Each episode of The Write Time includes writing prompts and time to write to engage listeners.
We are pleased to have Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith join us for this episode of NWP Radio. They are the authors of a new book just in time for summer professional development, Writing to Make an Impact: Expanding the Vision of Writing in the Secondary Classroom.
Joining Sandy and Mary Ann are two teachers who are featured in Writing to Make an Impact, Brooke Ann McWilliams, who teaches middle school in Purvis, Mississippi and Laury Fischer, a long-time high school teacher now teaching community college at Diablo Valley College in Contra Costa County in California.
NWP Radio, in partnership with the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield and Penguin Random House Books, has launched a special series called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. In this episode, we're pleased to host a discussion with author Matt de la Peña and NWP teacher-leader Tracey Flores.
Matt de la Peña is a #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author. He has penned six critically acclaimed YA novels, including Mexican WhiteBoy and The Living, which was a Pura Belpré Author Honor Book. Matt’s picture book Love was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and Last Stop on Market Street was awarded a Newbery Medal. Matt lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Tracey T. Flores is an assistant professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Flores is a former classroom teacher, working for eight years alongside culturally and linguistically diverse students, families, and communities in K-8 schools throughout Glendale and Phoenix, Arizona. Her research focuses on Latina mothers’ and daughters’ language and literacy practices, the teaching of young writers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, and family and community literacies.
You can also watch the video of the discussion on YouTube and see past episodes of The Write Time via NWP's Educator Innovator.
NWP Radio, in partnership with the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield and Penguin Random House Books, has launched a special series called “The Write Time” where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft.
For this episode, our guests include Nic Stone, an Atlanta native and Spelman College graduate, and Connecticut educator Kim Herzog, a member of CWP-Fairfield. Nic Stone’s debut novel for young adults, Dear Martin, and her debut middle-grade novel, Clean Getaway, were both New York Times bestsellers. In this episode, Nic Stone and Kim Herzog are joined by Kristin Shultz, Penguin Random House, and hosts Tanya Baker from the National Writing Project and Bryan Ripley Crandall from CWP-Fairfield.
You can watch the interview with Nic and Kim on the NWP YouTube channel.
We were so fortunate to have the one and only Gene Luen Yang with us to discuss his new graphic novel, Dragon Hoops. He was joined by Bryan Ripley Crandall, Director of CWP-Fairfield; Mark Crandall, Founder of Hoops4Hope; and teachers Abu Bility and William King.
Kids are home. Teachers are home. Parents are home. We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to #StepForward with an incredible new young adult novel.
What is possible when youth are asked to engage in the discourse about what is meant by “adolescence”? Our May reading for Marginal Syllabus describes what happens when educators and youth partner together to explore historically situated views of adolescence. This article by Sophia Sarigianides details the ways in which one educator helped familiarize students with the genealogy of adolescence, understand the ways that discourses around adolescents/adolescence function in the world, question the implications of these discourses for themselves and their peers, and explore the possibilities for performance and taking action. Guests
- Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, Professor & Coordinator of Secondary English, Westfield State University
- Cherise McBride, Ph.D. Student, University of California, Berkeley
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
- Remi Kalir, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado at Denver; Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus
Related Links
- "Performative Youth: The Literacy Possibilities of De-essentializing Adolescence"
Join us for an interview with Liz Prather, teacher-consultant at the Morehead State Writing Project, and author of Story Matters. We’ll talk about why narrative matters, how it works in informational and argumentative writing, and how to support students to write it better.
Join us for a conversation with Richard Koch and Elizabethe Dutro, to discuss their recent publications, The Mindful Writing Workshop and The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy. We will discuss literacy teaching that is informed by and mindful of the stress and trauma in all of our lives.
Guests
- Elizabeth Dutro, Professor and Chair of Literacy Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder
- Richard Koch, Professor of English Emeritus, Adrian College, Michigan
Related Links
- The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma
- The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy
This author discussion features Sakeena Everett, Andrea Zellner, Anna Smith, Sam Reed, Joe Dillon, and Remi Kalir. The piece being discussed, "'Untold Stories': Cultivating Consequential Writing with a Black Male Student through a Critical Approach to Metaphor," shares Sakeena Everett’s work learning alongside a student in a summer program called “We Choose to Learn.” This university-based program was designed to prepare high school students of color—like her student Shawn—for college, and to engage them in learning opportunities that also drew upon their career interests in education. This rich ethnographic account calls attention to the way in which Everett supported Shawn to develop writing that lead him toward action against inequity.
Read more at NWP's Educator Innovator.
Join NWP Radio to learn about NCTE’s Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL) and their annual conference. Our guests include Bruce Novak, the conference organizer; Mary Rose O’Reilley, this year’s keynote speaker; and Jeff Wilhem, director of the Boise State Writing Project. This year’s conference, “The Art of Encounter in Teaching and Learning,” will take place in Colorado, June 25-28, and there is a discount for NWP teacher-leaders.
Guests
- Bruce Novak, Conference Organizer and Education Task Force Coordinator, Foundation for Ethics and Meaning
- Mary Rose O'Reilley, Professor Emerita of English, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
- Jeff Wilhelm, Director, Boise State Writing Project
- Tanya Baker (Host), Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Related Links
- Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning
- The Peaceable Classroom
- Radical Presence
- Planning Powerful Instruction
- Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom
Our February reading for the 2019-20 Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN Marginal Syllabus explores the multiliteracies among youth of color who constructed tributes to the city of Detroit and envisioned strengths in their communities. Researchers Vaughn W. M. Watson and Alecia Beymer write about the after-school Verses Project at Detroit’s Community Music School. This article describes the multimodal processes of young writers as they compose in a genre the authors describe as “praisesongs of place.”
Guests
- Vaughn W. M. Watson, Assistant Professor; Michigan State University
- Alecia Beymer, Doctoral Candidate; Michigan State University
- Charise McBride, Doctoral Candidate; University of California, Berkeley
- Nobuko Fujita, Learning Specialist; University of Windsor
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director, Programs; National Writing Project
- Remi Kalir, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado; Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus
Our January reading for LEARN Marginal Syllabus recounts how Alex Corbitt, the author and former middle school educator, employed “radically student-centered” pedagogy as part of a teen activism course. In his Voices from the Middle article, Corbitt describes how he reimagined an elective course in order to situate and support students as activists. Assigned to teach a documentary film class, he proposed to his students that they focus on teen activism, and invited them to co-design the class with him as the year unfolded. This inspirational article describes the ways in which Corbitt helped students design their own learning, study issues of critical importance like racism, and engage in activism.
Guests
- Joe Dillon (Host), Humanities Teacher; Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus
- Alex Corbitt, Educator; Writer; PhD Candidate, Boston College
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director, National Writing Project
- Remi Kalir, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado; Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus
Related Links
- "Revising Resistance: A Step Toward Student-Centered Activism"
- 2019-20 Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN Marginal Syllabus
Planning Powerful Instruction is a guide for transforming student outcomes through instructional planning. Its a seven-step framework that gives teachers techniques proven to help students develop insight and understanding. Join host Tanya Baker for a conversation with authors Jeff Wilhelm, Rachel Bear, and Adam Fachler.
Guests
- Jeff Wilhelm, Professor of English Education, Boise State University
- Rachel Bear, Senior Program Associate, National Writing Project
- Adam Fachler, Education Consultant
Related Links
- Planning Powerful Instruction
- Planning Powerful Instruction, Grades 6-12 companion website
- Master Planning & Instruction to Be the Teacher They Always Remember
- “What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew”, Kyle Schwartz, TEDxKyoto
Join host Christina Cantrill for a discussion with participants of Science in the Park, a project that brought NWP teachers and NPS park rangers together to plan and implement programming that welcomes young people and their families into national parks to play with and learn science together. Science in the Park was funded through one-year spark grant from the Joan Ganz Cooney Foundation and is part of their Families Learning Across Boundaries work.
Guests
- Cris Constantine, Education Program Manager with the National Park Service, Interior Region 1, North Atlantic - Appalachian
- Jan Gebert, Teacher-Consultant, Pocono Writing Project
- Darshna Katwala, Director, Long Island Writing Project
- Stephanie West-Puckett, Assistant Professor at the University of Rhode Island; Teacher-Consultant, Tar River Writing Project
Related Resources
- "From Lines to Networks: Connecting with National Parks for Place-based Science Learning" by Stephanie West-Puckett, University of Rhode Island
- "Science Sundays in the Park: People are the Best" by Jan Gebert, Pocono Writing Project
- "Kicking Off Science in the Park" by Christina Cantrill, National Writing Project
Playlists for Parents
Designed to support parents and/or youth to lead their own learning experience, these playlists were created from Science in the Park work and will be tested at National Park Service sites this fall.
- Become a Junior Ranger at the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park Playlist, created by BLRV rangers for use at the park.
- Science Sundays Think Like a Scientist Playlist, created by Pocono Writing Project teachers and DEWA Rangers for use at the park and in regional parks.
As part of our close study of "Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Reimagining the Canon for Racial Justice," guest readers Latrice Ferguson and Christopher Rogers joined the Marginal Syllabus team to talk about the article with this month’s partner authors, Mario Worlds and Henry “Cody” Miller. Worlds’ and Millers’ writing surfaces the importance of rethinking text selection as a means of critiquing racial hierarchy in the curricular canon and dismantling white supremacy.
This discussion is part of LEARN 2019-20, a Marginal Syllabus co-developed with the National Writing Project (NWP) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Each month of the 2019-2020 academic year, we’ll collaboratively read and discuss an article, published in four different NCTE journals, that investigates the intersection of literacy and equity.
Author Samuel Jaye Tanner joins us to talk about his article, "Whiteness is a White Problem: Whiteness in English Education." Our guests discuss how white people in an American context have problems with race that are distinct from the racism people of color experience, and how white English educators can rethink their roles in dismantling white supremacy.
This discussion launches the second iteration of LEARN, a Marginal Syllabus co-developed with the National Writing Project (NWP) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). During each month, from November to June during the 2019-20 academic year, we will collaboratively read and discuss an article, published in four different NCTE journals, that investigates the intersection of literacy and equity. Refer to the 2019-20 syllabus for information on all the annotatable readings; these will go “live” on the first Monday of each month, along with related events hosted by the National Writing Project.
Guests
- Sam Tanner, Assistant Professor, PennState
- Andrea Zellner, Literacy Consultant, Oakland Schools (MI)
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
- Joe Dillon, Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus; Teacher, Rangeview High School in Aurora Public Schools in Colorado; Denver Writing Project Teacher-Consultant
- Remi Kalir, Co-Founder, Marginal Syllabus; Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver School of Education and Human Development
Related Links
- "Whiteness is a White Problem: Whiteness in English Education"
- 2019-20 Marginal Syllabus
Listen to this episode of NWP Radio for a discussion with Vicki Collet, co-director of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project and author of Collaborative Lesson Study: ReVisioning Teacher Professional Development.
For those that will be at NCTE in Baltimore in November, Vicki will have a book-signing at the Teachers College Press table in the exhibit hall on Friday, November 22, from 12:00p–12:30p.
Guest
- Vicki Collet, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Arkansas; Co-Director, Northwest Arkansas Writing Project
Other Related Links
- vickicollet.com
- Request to join Collaborative Lesson Study Book Club on Facebook
- Vicki’s blog: mycoachescouch.blogspot.com
- Vicki on Facebook: facebook.com/mycoachescouch/
- Vicki on Twitter: @vscollet
Action Research for English Language Arts Teachers by Mary Buckelew and Janice Ewing was inspired by colleagues and students, and began with their local Writing Project site's blog. Join NWP Radio for a discussion with the authors about how they view inquiry as a key element in their mission as educators, and share some protocols and models for teacher inquiry. Mary and Janice will also be the keynote speakers for the NWP brunch at NCTE in November.
Guests
- Mary Buckelew, Professor of English, West Chester University; former Director, Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project
- Janice Ewing, Adjunct Professor of Graduate Education, Cabrini University; Co-Director, Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project
Our guests introduce us to Write Out 2019—what it is, where it takes place, what to expect, and how you can participate throughout this unique two-week experience that runs October 13-27.
Guests
- Chris Constatine, National Park Service, Northeast Regional Office
- Bethany Silva, Director, Community Literacy Center; University of New Hampshire
- Amber Kirkendall, Park Ranger, Homestead National Monument of America; Beatrice, NE
- Susan Cook, Chief of Interpretation and Education, Niobrara National Scenic River; Valentine, NE
Related Links
- Write Out website
- Follow @WriteOutConnect on Twitter
-
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Listen to our interview with the authors of A Students Guide to Academic and Professional Writing in Education, a handbook that helps educators write for the rhetorical situations they will face as students of education. Their book provides clear and helpful advice for responding to the varying contexts, audiences, and purposes that arise in many educational settings.
Guests
- Katie Arosteguy, Lecturer in the University Writing Program, UC Davis
- Brenda Rinard, Lecturer in the University Writing Program, UC Davis
- Alison Bright, Lecturer in the University Writing Program, UC Davis
In this episode of NWP Radio, we interview Kelly Chandler-Olcott author of A Good Fit for All Kids: Collaborating to Teach Writing in Diverse, Inclusive Settings, a book born from summer learning experiences for students combined with professional learning experiences for adults. Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield, also joins us for the discussion.
Related Links from the Show
- Kelly Chandler-Olcott
- A Good Fit For All Kids: Collaborating to Teach Writing in Diverse, Inclusive Settings
- "Yes, Parents Are Capable of Choosing How Their Children Should Be Educated"
Join us for a discussion of a new report by Common Sense Media, The Common Sense Census: Inside the 21st-Century Classroom, which explores how K–12 educators have adapted to critical shifts in technology in schools and society. Our guests discuss the benefits of teaching lifelong digital citizenship skills along with the challenges of preparing students to critically evaluate online information and how educators across the country are adapting in today's fast-changing digital world.
Guests
- Kim Douillard, Director, San Diego Area Writing Project
- Tanner Higgin, Director of Education Editorial Strategy, Common Sense Education
- Kaili Hwang, Foundations Manager, Common Sense Education
- Erin Wilkey Oh, Executive Editor of Education Content & Distribution, Common Sense Media
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Related Links
- Common Sense Census: Inside the 21st Century Classroom
- "Which digital citizenship skills do students need most"
- "4 ways to improve digital equity in your classroom"
- "Smart Tech Use for Equity"
Listen to our visit with Anne Whitney, Colleen McCracken, and Deana Washell who discuss their work with elementary-school writers and their new book Teaching Writers to Reflect: Strategies for a More Thoughtful Writing Workshop.
Join in for a conversation about creating the writing life, with Stephanie Vanderslice, professor of creative writing and Director of the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, and author of The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life. We talk about her book, discuss the role formal education plays in creative writing, and more.
Guests
- Stephanie Vanderslice, Professor of Creative Writing and Director, Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop, University of Central Arkansas
- Tanya Baker (Host), Director, National Programs, National Writing Project
Learn how two teachers from the Philadelphia Writing Project paired primary sources with traditional fictional texts in their classrooms to provide opportunities for students to “read the world and the word.”
Guests
- Latricia Whitfield (co-host), Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Graduate School of Education
- Beth Patten, Teacher, Kutztown Middle School
- Jen Freed, Teacher, Springfield High School
- Christina Cantrill (co-host), Associate Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Links from the Show
- Penn Graduate School of Education
- Philadelphia Writing Project on Twitter and Facebook
- Teaching with Primary Sources Network
- Project Zero Visual Thinking Strategies
- Pulitzer Center Ed Resources
Learn how two teachers from the Philadelphia Writing Project paired primary sources with traditional fictional texts in their classrooms to provide opportunities for students to “read the world and the word.”
Guests
- Latricia Whitfield (co-host), Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Graduate School of Education
- Beth Patten, Teacher, Kutztown Middle School
- Jen Freed, Teacher, Springfield High School
- Christina Cantrill (co-host), Associate Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Links from the Show
- Penn Graduate School of Education
- Philadelphia Writing Project on Twitter and Facebook
- Teaching with Primary Sources Network
- Project Zero Visual Thinking Strategies
- Pulitzer Center Ed Resources
We kick-off National Poetry Month by visiting with poet and teacher Jack Powers, celebrating the publication of his new book, Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar. We'll also discuss his successful career in teaching writing as a National Writing Project fellow and ways to celebrate National Poetry Month throughout April.
Guests
- Jack Powers, Poet; Teacher at Joel Barlow High School
- Tanya Baker (Host), Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
- Bryan Ripley Crandall (Co-Host), Director, Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield
Related Links
- Everybody's Vaguely Familiar
- "Fairfield Author Publishes First Poetry Collection"
- National Poetry Month
- Poem in Your Pocket Day
- Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield
With NCTE's Advocacy and Leadership Summit coming up in April, we wanted to revisit our NWP Radio episode from March, 2017 on everyday advocacy. Advocacy is one of six social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership, and in this episode, we examined three case studies of what teacher leadership through advocacy could look like, and how teachers can take up the practice of advocacy more generally.
Related Resources
- Advocate for NWP
- NWP Teacher-Consultant Badge Framework
- Writing to Transform: Teacher-Consultants Lead Change in Their Schools
- Teacher as Community Member/Teacher as Connector
Join us for a discussion with the authors of Better Together to hear about learning networks and how they can be leveraged for smarter personalized and project-based learning.
Guests
- Lydia Dobyns, President/CEO, NewTech Network
- Tom Vander Ark, CEO, Getting Smart
We visit with Writing Project leaders in Connecticut, Georgia, and Oklahoma about their work with teachers to connect young adult literature and the digital world.
Guests
- Jennifer Dail, Director, Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project
- Shelbie Witte, Director, Oklahoma State University Writing Project
- Bryan Ripley Crandall, Director, Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield
Related Links
- Young Adult Literature and the Digital World
- YA Wednesday’s Review of Young Adult Literature and the Digital World
- LRNG: We Too Are Connecticut
- No Bells, No Walls: Learning Alongside 2014 LRNG Innovators Challenge Grant Awardees
- Matt de la Peña
- Central High School Radio Plays
- TedXTeen
- Writing Our Lives: Digital Ubuntu Shared at National Conference
- Special Report: Education, Diversity and Change in Fairfield County
This episode of NWP Radio features a discussion with Pam Moran and Ira Socol about their new book Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools. The conversation takes imaginative leaps into what schools could be and shares practical advice for how to make the imagined possibilities reality.
Guests
- Pam Moran, Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools, Virginia
- Ira Socol, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Albemarle County Public Schools
- Tanya Baker (Host), Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Links from the Show
- Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools
- "Insufficiently Transformative" by Ira Socol
- "Why Zero-Based Thinking is MissionCritical in Reimagining Education" by Ira Socol
- Hacking Schools: Getting Ourselves to Yes, Pam Moran, TEDx El Cajon
- "The Phygitals World: Speaking the Language of Creativity" by Pam Moran
- "What does it mean to build a school? What are our responsibilities now?" by Ira Socol
- "Habitable Worlds of Learning" by Pam Moran
- "Why do we read? Why do we write?" by Ira Socol
In this broadcast, Writing Project colleagues Janelle Bence, Dawn Reed and Suzanne Sutton share student work created as part of the Writing Our Future: American Creed project and prepare for a workshop at the NCTE 2018 Conference in Houston. Join us to hear from the teachers, and students, and think with us about the possibilities of supporting youth in exploring their American identities and communities.
NOTE: Student work was shared via screenshare in this episode, which you can view at Educator Innovator.
Guests
- Janelle Bence, New Tech High @ Coppell, Coppell, Texas
- Dawn Reed, Okemos High School, Okemos, Michigan
- Suzanne Sutton, Classen School, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Links from the Show
- American Creed
- Writing Our Future: American Creed Youth Publishing Site
- Digital Stories: What does it mean to be American?
- The Patriot by Isabella Zeff
- See the full lesson:
- Featured as part of Preparing Youth for Civics and Politics in the Digital Age
- “This I Believe” essay
- “I Believe in Acceptance” by Jahaan S. (audio)
- Lesson resources are on the Writing Our Future’s website under “Visit Our Classrooms”
- Youth Cast
- Visit Our Classrooms
At NCTE 2018Writing Our Futures: Youth Public Writing and American CreedFriday, November 16, 2018 3:30-4:45 p.m.Location: 381 B
Writing Project sites have been launching a wide range of professional development opportunities and have been planning for future professional development opportunities. Join us as we chat with Writing Project site leaders about planning for, designing, and marketing professional development with a focus on site sustainability.
Guests
- Janie Baer-Leighton taught English and Argumentation and Debate at Amherst High School, Amherst, MA. She is the WMWP Professional Development Coordinator.
- Diana Roy taught high school and middle school ELA and was the Curriculum Director for the Ludlow Public Schools, Ludlow, MA. She is the WMWP Project Manager for two C3WP grants.
- Harriet Kulig teaches 7th grade geography at Birchland Middle School in East Longmeadow, MA. She is a co-facilitator of the professional development program "Exploring with a Lens on Local History".
- Cecilia Pattee taught middle school bilingual social studies and science and high school ESL in Nampa, ID, instructional coach for the Idaho Department of Education, and is currently a Thinking Partner for four NWP sites as they facilitate C3WP grants in their area.
- Kelly Sassi taught English at West Valley High School in Fairbanks, AK and now prepares future ELA teachers at North Dakota State University in Fargo. She also serves as Director of the Red River Valley Writing Project and is on the C3WP Leadership Team.
Links from the Show
- "WMWP Launches New Pathways to Teacher Leadership"
- WMWP Workshop Descriptions and Timeline
- Exploring with a Lens on Local History: Historical Artifacts and Innovative Practice
- NWP Network Leaders Yammer Group
- WMWP on Facebook
- WMWP on Twitter
- RRVWP Blog
Listen in as we discuss the Digital Civics Toolkit, a collection of resources for educators to support youth in exploring, recognizing, and taking seriously the civic potentials of digital life.
Guests * Erica Hodgin, Associate Director, Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) at University of California, Riverside; Research Director, Educating for Participatory Politics Project * Carrie James, Research Associate and a Principal Investigator, Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education * Sangita Shresthova, Director of Research, Civic Imagination Project, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California
Related Links * Digital Civics Toolkit * Deep Dive: Educating for Democracy * Youth & Participatory Politics (YPP) Research Network * Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) * Project Zero * The Civic Imagination Project
Listen in as we discuss the Digital Civics Toolkit, a collection of resources for educators to support youth in exploring, recognizing, and taking seriously the civic potentials of digital life.
Guests * Erica Hodgin, Associate Director, Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) at University of California, Riverside; Research Director, Educating for Participatory Politics Project * Carrie James, Research Associate and a Principal Investigator, Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education * Sangita Shresthova, Director of Research, Civic Imagination Project, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California
Related Links * Digital Civics Toolkit * Deep Dive: Educating for Democracy * Youth & Participatory Politics (YPP) Research Network * Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) * Project Zero * The Civic Imagination Project
What is empathy and how is it different than sympathy? What role does literature play in developing critical civic empathy? For this episode of NWP Radio, we'll be interviewing Nicole Mirra about her recently released book Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement.
Guests
- Nicole Mirra, Assistant Professor of Urban Teacher Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Graduate School of Education
- Tanya Baker, Director of National Programs, National Writing Project
Links from the Show
- Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement
- "From Connected Learning to Connected Teaching: A Necssary Step Forward"
- Nicole on Twitter
- October's #NCTEchat: Teaching toward Empathy in Today’s English Classrooms
- Wakelet summary of the Twitter chat about empathy from 10/14/18
For the National Day on Writing, we celebrate the success of the Saugatuck StoryFest, a 4-day literacy event in southern Connecticut that brought together teachers, writers, students, and members of the community to discuss the power of stories in our lives. Event organizers—including CWP-Fairfield teacher leaders, Westport Public Library, and the Saugatuck StoryFest Youth Board—highlight the history behind the festival, the writers who came, and the wisdom that resulted from the event.
Guests
- Kim Herzog, English Teacher, Staples High School
- Rebecca Marsick, Literacy Coach, Staples High School
- Alex Giannini, Westport Public Library
- Chunjang Bruynder, Central High School
- Kemoy Blair, Central High School
Links from the Show
- Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield
- The Saugatuck StoryFest website
- The Saugatuck StoryFest Official Lineup and Program (PDF)
- Westport Public Library
- Hoops Africa: Ubuntu Matters
In honor of the National Day on Writing (October 20), we’ll talk with Writing Project leaders in St. Louis and Chicago about projects that have people writing about, and all across, these cities.
Guests
- Steve Zemelman, Co-Director, Illinois Writing Project
- Cathy Griner, Gateway Writing Project
- Diana Hammond, Gateway Writing Project
Links from the Show
- Write Across Chicago
- Write Across Chicago on Twitter
- OneCity Stories
- 2018 National Day on Writing
Our guests for this episode discuss the Writing/Making Massive Open Online Collaboration (wmMOOC), an online professional learning experience for teachers that tackled digital composing last summer, specifically the idea that writing is a form of making.
Guests
- Vicki McQuitty, Director, Maryland Writing Project; Elementary Ed Dept., Towson University
- Sarah Lohnes Watulak, Middlebury, Director of Digital Pedagogy and Media
- Joe Runciman, Doctoral Student, Instructional Technology, Towson University
- Stacey Scheper, Volunteer, Youth Theater
- Christina Cantrill (host), National Writing Project
Related Links
- wmMOOC on Twitter
- Maryland Writing Project
Join us on NWP radio for a conversation in which we will discuss professional learning for urban teachers. Learn about six generative principles for designing and implementing professional learning that promotes equity-oriented educational practices and stances.
Guests
- Amber Warrington, Assistant Professor, Boise State University
- Thea Williamson, Graduate Student, The University of Texas at Austin
Related Links
- "Generative Principles for Professional Learning for Equity-Oriented Urban English Teachers"
Zev (Dan) Levinson visits with us to discuss his poetry, outreach, and connection to education through the Redwood Writing Project and California Poets in the Schools. In addition to being a poet and author, Levinson has also recently joined the NWP Writers Council.Links from the Show
- Song of Six Rivers
- NWP Writers Council
- Redwood Writing Project
- California Poets in the Schools
- Lost Coast Writers Retreat
A lively and wide-ranging discussion with teacher-leaders and Writing Project staff, recorded live at the NWP Resource Development Retreat in Albuquerque, NM.
Books from the Conversation
- Pure Drivel by Steve Martin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Drivel
- Bearstone by Will Hobbs: https://www.willhobbsauthor.com/books/bk_bearstone.html
- Shifting the Monkey by Todd Whitaker: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13265535-shifting-the-monkey
- Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover: https://tarawestover.com/book/
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo: https://www.sealpress.com/titles/ijeoma-oluo/so-you-want-to-talk-about-race/9781580056779/
- Ayiti by Roxane Gay: https://groveatlantic.com/book/ayiti/
- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Bullshit_Night_in_Suck_City
- Doc Savage Novels/Comics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Savage
- Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_the_Lobster
- Poetry from: Avery Guess, Brett Gafney, Bianca Spriggs, Frank X. Walker, Crystal Wilkensen, Jeremy Paden
- Money to Burn by James Zagel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/916313.Money_to_Burn
- Dragonfly Dance by Denise Lajimodiere: https://tribalcollegejournal.org/dragonfly-dance/
- Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum of Archaic Media by Heid E. Erdrich: http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3FCC#.W1EhGNhKjxs
- We Are Growing by Laurie Keller and Mo Willems: http://pigeonpresents.com/books/we-are-growing/
- The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monster_at_the_End_of_This_Book:_Starring_Lovable,_Furry_Old_Grover
- Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: http://www.tomiadeyemi.com/books/
- Chemistry by Weike Wang: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549723/chemistry-by-weike-wang/9780525432227/
- The Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062694058/future-home-of-the-living-god/
- Room by Emma Donoghue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(novel)
- Bear Town by Fredrik Backman: http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Beartown/Fredrik-Backman/9781501160769
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseinis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Splendid_Suns
Join writing project director Richard Louth, and teacher-writers from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project, to celebrate the rich, deep history of the writing marathon, and the most recent issue of the literary journal Louisiana Literature, which celebrates the New Orleans Writing Marathon.
Guests:
- Richard Louth
- Tracy Cunningham
- Kimberly Stuart
- Susan Martens
- Michelle Russo
- Ellen Steigman
- Jack Bedell
- Tanya Baker, Host
The third in a six-part series discussing a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership, this episode examines the practice of writing. NWP teacher leaders know that when teachers write for others in their profession they are taking on a form of leadership and embracing a means for advocating for the value of teacher classroom inquiry and reflective practice. In this episode we will talk to teacher-writers and look at various ways that Writing Project sites can support writing teachers in becoming teachers who write.
Guests
- Shelbie Witte, Director, Oklahoma State University Writing Project
- Anne Whitney, Professor of Education, Penn State
- Jason Griffith, Teacher/Author
- Jennie Brown, Teacher/Author
- Shelly Durham, Teacher
- Christina Cantrill, Associate Director, NWP
Links from the Show
- NWP's Knowledge Base: Write/Learn/Lead
- Open Publishing Platform for Educators: The Current
- Voices from the Middle, December 2017
- Related Shows: Part 1: Advocacy; Part 2: Going Public with Our Practice
Meet colleagues and partners involved in engaging youth and community conversations emerging from the documentary American Creed. Educators from Facing History and Ourselves and #shareyourlearning join us to talk through resources and support materials they have created to support dialogue and youth publishing in diverse classrooms and communities across the country.
Guests:
- Michelle Clark, Share Your Learning
- KC Kourtz, Facing History and Ourselves
Links from the Show:
- Writing Our Future: American Creed (youth publishing site)
- American Creed (documentary)
- Share Your Learning Resources for American Creed
- Facing History and Ourselves Resources for American Creed
- Facing History and Ourselves Student Writing
How can we rethink writing instruction to support students in writing authentic pieces about real world issues that matter to them? How can we move beyond the "old school essay" and invite students to write compositions that reflect what we see in real world writing? These are the questions the authors address in the book Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay. Join NWP Radio to hear about this book and the practical strategies the coauthors have used to engage their students in civically engaged writing.
Guests Include:
- Rachel Bear (Host)
- Mitchell Nobis
- Carrie Nobis
- Dawn Reed
- Dirk Schulze
Writers reside inside internal landscapes. They traverse the contours of stories and poems, learning and understanding. They turn pen on paper and characters on screens into art. They write for themselves as much as for the world. This summer, we hope to encourage you to take your writing and teaching self outside, into the natural wonders of the open and historical spaces, and explore through the eyes of connected teachers and connected learners. Join us for this episode of NWP Radio to learn more about Write Out and imagine with us ways we can connect.
Guests:
- Christina Cantrill, Host, National Writing Project
- Cris Constantine, Education Program Manager with the National Park Service, Northeast Region
- Susan Cook, Chief of Interpretation and Resource Management, Homestead National Monument of America in Nebraska
- Dorothy Luongo, Hudson Valley Writing Project Teacher-Consultant, 5th Grade Teacher at the Poughkeepsie Day School
- Bethany Silva, Philadelphia Writing Project Teacher-Consultant, director of the Community Literacy Center at the University of New Hampshire.
Links from the Show:
- Write Out website
- More about Write Out at Educator Innovator
The most important writing assessment that happens in any school is the assessment that goes on in students' heads when analyzing the quality of their own writing. The College, Career and Community Writers Program's Student Using Sources Tool (UST) empowers students to own their learning of argument writing. Join site leaders, teachers, and students as they share their experiences using the Student UST to advance student learning.
Links from the Show
- Student Using Sources Tool
- Teachers Using Sources Tool
- College, Career, Community Writers Program (C3WP)
- Assessment for Learning Project
Guests
- Lynette Herring-Harris, Host, Senior Program Associate with the National Writing Project
- Heather Payne, Ozarks Writing Project, Thinking Partner for NWP’s Assessment for Learning Project
- Susan King, Ozarks Writing Project, Practicing Teacher at Lebanon County Middle School in Missouri
- Maddie (8th Grade), Missouri
- Jana Moore, Upstate Writing Project Teacher Leader, Practicing Teacher at Union County High School in South Carolina
- Madeline (9th Grade), South Carolina
Join Writing Project colleagues who have been working at the intersections of the Writing Our Futures: American Creed project and the development of the Civically Engaged Writing Analysis Continuum (CEWAC). They have been exploring how we might use CEWAC to support youth in preparing their writing for public audience and dissemination. This episode also includes video with screen-sharing to show student work.
Guests for this show include: * Paul Allison, New York City Writing Project * Janelle Bence, North Star of Texas Writing Project * Stan Pesick, Bay Area Writing Project
Join us for another installment of our poetry mini-series as part of the 2018 National Poetry Month with interviews of NWP Writers Council members who will talk with us about their poetry, their writing, their process, and more.
This episode features Cyrus Armajani, author of Benefits of Doubt.
Join us for the final installment of this poetry mini-series as we close out the 2018 National Poetry Month with interviews of NWP Writers Council members who will talk with us about their poetry, their writing, their process, and more.
Part three features Shirley McPhillips, acclaimed poet, author, and educator.
Join us for two of three NWP Radio episodes, as we close out the 2018 National Poetry Month with interviews of NWP Writers Council members who will talk with us about their poetry, their writing, their process, and more.
Part two features Jimmy Santiago Baca, an award-winning American poet and educator of Chicano descent.
Join us for one of three NWP Radio episodes, as we close out the 2018 National Poetry Month with interviews of NWP Writers Council members who will talk with us about their poetry, their writing, their process, and more.
Part one features George Ella Lyon, a poet, teacher, and the 2015-2016 Kentucky Poet Laureate.
Each year, five National Student Poets are chosen from a pool of outstanding writers, grades 10-11, who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. Help us celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation and some poetry reading with this year's National Student Poets.
Guests * Camila SanMiguel * Annie Castillo * Kinsale Hueston * Juliet Lubwama * Ben Lee
For this episode of NWP Radio we speak with organizers and participants of the upcoming NCTE Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning Annual Summer Conference, this year focusing on Learning to Go High: Re-Awakening Hope through Education. We discuss what to expect at the conference, and talk about what Writing Project teachers and teams can do to deliberately generate hope in their own schools and communities.
How can we create "relevant, engaging, and affirming literacy instruction" to "assist adolescent English learners in developing their literacy skills in ways that honor and leverage their native languages and cultures?" Join us as we discuss the book Keep It R.E.A.L: Relevant, Engaging, and Affirming Literacy for Adolescent English Learners. We will be talking with the author of the book, Mary Amanda Stewart, along with her teaching colleagues Seth Ross and Kim Garcia, and two of Seth's students.
In preparation for this year's Spring Meeting, we're revisiting this discussion on a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership. Guests examine the practice of advocacy, analyze three case studies to explore what teacher leadership through advocacy can look like, and how teachers can take up the practice of advocacy.
Join us for a discussion of the twists and turns of doing intensive professional development in high-need schools with facilitators from sites participating in NWP's College, Career, and Community Writers Program Professional Development in a High-Need School grant.
This is the second in a six-part series discussing a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership. This episode, which examines the practice of going public with our practice, looks at various ways that teachers can share their teaching practices with one another for purposes of learning, growing and leading in the profession.
Through its many stories—set in a range of big cities, small towns, and rural areas around the country—the documentary American Creed wrestles with key issues in America today, including opportunity for all, the meaning of citizenship, and the challenge of meaningful civic participation and dialogue. American Creed will air on PBS February 27, 9/8c, at which time your students can join the conversation and add their stories via a national youth publishing website designed and supported by the National Writing Project. Join NWP Radio to hear about this film, learn more about the youth publishing opportunity, and listen to the ways other educators have already been weaving this film and related discussions and writing opportunities into their lesson plans.
The National Writing Project's successful i3 College Readiness Writers Program is expanding. With a new name—College, Community, and Career Writers Program (C3WP)—the program now includes upper elementary teachers in advanced institutes for SEED and High-Need Schools grants. Over the next year, C3WP elementary teachers in advanced institutes will explore on-ramps to argument writing for 4th-6th-grade students. Join us for a conversation with elementary educators and site leaders as they share their thoughts on including argument writing skills in upper elementary curricula and their experiences with the new C3WP Upper Elementary resources.
This year, as sites are preparing for the 2017 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, we invite you to tune in to hear some of the highlights of this upcoming annual meeting. Join us as we talk with guests from Gateway Writing project who will share an overview of the meeting and highlight some specific events, including Friday’s writing marathons. We will also hear from a few session presenters to give you a taste of the many great sessions for you to choose from at this year’s annual meeting.
Shhhh.... We are going to tell you a secret, a top secret secret. Come listen in to hear about the Top Secret YA Story Box Project. We will talk to authors, teachers, and others who are excited to give you a peek inside the top secret story box.
Join us for a celebration of the National Day on Writing as we talk with Grant Faulkner, executive director of National Novel Writing Month and Vicki Meigs-Kahlenberg, teacher and author of The Author's Apprentice about why they write, and why you should too.
Listen as teacher-consultants from around the network discuss the relationship between the quality of writing assignments and the quality of writing that students produce, and share the impacts of their own work collaborating with the Literacy Design Collaborative and NWP's Assignments Matter initiative to design creative, engaging writing tasks.
Get ready for this year's 4T Virtual Conference on Digital Writing, an online "teachers teaching teachers about technology" event that focuses on the research, pedagogy, and tools of writing in digital spaces in the K-12 classroom, hosted by the University of Michigan Schools of Education and Information and Oakland Schools, and engaging many Writing Project sites and teachers. This NWP Radio episode will look back at some of the conversations and resources that resulted from last year's conference, and get a preview of what to expect this coming October. We will also hear about the origins of this virtual conference, the ways it's inspired and supported Writing Project leadership and work, and think about the implications for the teaching and learning of digital writing at large.
The Marginal Syllabus was created during the 2016-17 school year to convene and sustain conversations with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The Marginal Syllabus embraces an intentional double entendre; partnering with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary to—dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation.
A collaborative and emergent attempt to create a new sociotechnical genre of educator professional development, the Marginal Syllabus leverages the web annotation platform Hypothesis, adding multiple voices to critical conversations about equity and education.
Join us to hear from Marginal Syllabus organizers, including educators from Colorado working in the Aurora Public School District, about what we learned during this first year of annotation and learning in the margins. We will also discuss plans for a collaborative syllabus with the NWP for the 2017-18 school year.
How can looking at the movement of people, language, and things enrich our understandings of students and schools? Join us for an intriguing conversation with host Tom Fox and guest Brice Nordquist, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University and author of Literacy and Mobility: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Agency at the Nexus of High School and College.
Join us on NWP Radio for a fun and lively discussion with teacher leaders and Writing Project staff, live from the NWP Resource Development Retreat, in Denver, CO.
Guests * Tanya Baker, National Writing Project (Host) * Tom Fox, National Writing Project * Jessica Early, Central Arizona Writing Project * Bud Hunt, Colorado State University Writing Project * Aram Kabodian, Red Cedar Writing Project * Andrea Katz, San Jose Area Writing Project * Luke Hokama, National Writing Project * Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, National Writing Project
Join us for a conversation with George Ella Lyon and Julie Landsman, hosts of the I Am From Project, about countering divisions of race, culture, and equity through poetry, artwork, videos, music and dance around where we are from as a nation.
The NASM Fellowship engages professionals in the out-of-school time field in a process of leadership development where they learn to reflect on, study, improve, and assess their work with a view toward improving its quality and impact. Join us for a conversation with fellows about their self-selected research topics.
Join us for a conversation with Fred Hamel, author of Choice and Agency in the Writing Workshop: Developing Engaged Writers, Grades 4-6, about why upper elementary children need ways to become literate as kids, not merely as prototypes of adults or teenagers.
Join NWP radio for a discussion about the importance of teacher-writers, just in time for this summer's invitational institutes. Our guests are the authors of two co-published books on teacher-writers, Christine Dawson (The Teacher-Writer), and Troy Hicks and Leah Zuidema (Coaching Teacher-Writers).
Teaching is a challenging profession. It is also incredibly rewarding. What brings teachers to teaching? What makes them stay, despite all the challenges? What I Didn't Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher brings together 20 teaching stories explore the range of possible answers to these questions. As we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, join us as we talk with the editor of the book and several contributing teacher-writers about their stories
How can your Writing Project site make money? Two experienced teacher leaders share their stories creating profitable relationships with administrators, creating flyers and materials, and learning to talk the talk of stakeholders who contract professional development for teachers.
In 2014, in partnership with The Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley, we launched the NWP Archives Project to ensure preservation and accessibility of NWP organizational records, publications, and resources, including more than 100 oral history interviews from founding Writing Project site directors, scholars, teacher-leaders, and funders. Hear about the archives' grand opening and learn a little NWP history from NWP leaders past and present.
Each year, five National Student Poets are chosen from a pool of outstanding writers, grades 9-11, who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. Listen as we celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation and some poetry reading with this year's National Student Poets.
This is the first in a six-part series discussing a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership. This episode, which examines the practice of advocacy, analyzes three case studies to explore what teacher leadership through advocacy can look like, and how teachers can take up the practice of advocacy.
How can teachers use the Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC) to assess student writing in a way that informs their instruction and provides meaningful feedback to students? This is the question that Mary Ann Smith and Sherry Swain explore in their 2017 book, Assessing Writing, Teaching Writers: Putting the Analytic Writing Continuum to Work in Your Classroom. We talk with the authors and members of various teacher action research groups about how the Analytic Writing Continuum can be used to focus instruction and feedback.
Given the multitude of information flowing through social media, news websites, television, radio, and print media, young people (and adults!) benefit from tools and strategies to situate stories. All information comes from sources; all information has perspectives. Arguments, to be generous, fair, and truly persuasive, need to characterize the uses of their sources, and understand them deeply. Listen as Tom Fox, Casey Olsen, and Linda Denstaedt from the College-Ready Writers Program discuss these issues.
The Graide Network connects K-12 teachers with remote, on-demand teaching assistants to grade and provide thorough feedback on student work online. "Graiders" are highly qualified, vetted undergraduate and graduate students from colleges across the country who are aspiring teachers. We discuss the importance of effective feedback and how teachers are using The Graide Network as a powerful instructional tool. We also discuss best practices for feedback and what effective feedback really looks like. And finally, with the increased focus on enhancing teacher preparation programs, we explore the value of experiential learning for pre-service teachers and virtual fieldwork opportunities.
Since coining the term "techquity" and related hashtag, Joe Dillon from the Denver Writing Project, along with a number of other colleagues, has been using it to imagine ways to overcome issues of inequity in rapidly changing environments. As he wrote in a 2014 blog post, "We need to dig deeper into ways of leveraging technology's potential for learning, while remaining critical and mindful of #techquity issues." We discuss this important and ongoing conversation; find out how colleagues have been engaging around issues of #techquity, in and across a range of spaces and communities; and learn about the resources they have created along the way.
Networked Narratives (#netnarr) is an open connected course of digital storytelling, world building, civic imagination, and a bit of digital alchemy hosted online and as a course at Kean University during the Spring 2017. The course is led and conceived by Kean University Writing Project Director Mia Zamora with DS106 founder Alan Levine, and explores the ways our learning and storytelling intertwine.
Listen as we talk with Bronwyn LaMay, author of the recently published book Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom. LaMay, a high school English teacher, is interested in transforming classrooms and schools into places where youth can explore the intersection between literacy and their lives. The conversation focuses on young people and their relationship to school, literacy, and learning.
Since 2009, youth in central New York have had opportunities to participate in Writing Our Lives conferences and afterschool programs in support of the writing they do. Dr. Marcelle Haddix, originator of Writing Our Lives, and Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield, have collaborated to provide locations and opportunities for young people to 'speak their truth' during community events in a celebration of writing.
We discuss teaching writing, teaching science, and how to create classrooms in which students use writing to learn and think scientifically with Kim Jaxon and Leslie Atkins Elliott, authors of the new book Composing Science. Kim and Leslie talk about concrete approaches for engaging students in practices that mirror the work that writing plays in the development and dissemination of scientific ideas, rather than replicating the polished academic writing of research scientists. They also address a range of genres that can help students deepen their scientific reasoning and inquiry.
Historically and in recent years, the National Writing Project has focused its efforts on supporting the teaching of writing in low-income and underserved schools, districts, and communities. NWP's i3 College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) grant supported 12 writing project sites in providing professional development in 22 rural school districts. Specifically, this work focused on improving the teaching of source-based argument writing and engaging young people in writing high-quality, source-based arguments in school. This work continues through the CRWP SEED Advanced Institutes and the CRWP in High-Need Schools grants. These grant programs continue NWP's commitment to equity and social justice by supporting teachers and students in economically poor communities. Join three NWP leaders as we discuss the value and importance of NWP work in high-need schools, and how the CRWP resources can support that work.
NWP director of national programs, Tanya Baker, talks with NWP Writers Council member Kip Zegers about his new poetry collection The Pond in Room 318, as well as the role that poetry plays in his life and his teaching.
Leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election, youth from across the country published their opinions at Letters to the Next President 2.0, sharing their thoughts on the issues and topics that matter to them most. Listen as we talk with teacher-leaders from several Writing Project sites about the ways they engaged with this project and what they learned about supporting this kind of civic participation and connected learning in their contexts.
In celebration of the National Day on Writing, we visited with award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca; family activist and co-director of the Family Story Project Mia Birdsong; and writer/educator Brian Mooney, along with some of Brian's students.
This episode of NWP Radio highlights a special collaboration between artist Rick Shaefer, the Fairfield University Art Museum, teachers who attended CWP-Fairfield's 2016 Invitational Leadership Institute, and Ubuntu Academy, a young adult literacy lab for immigrant and refugee youth.
NWP staff discuss what's in the air this fall, covering topics like writing in response to this year's presidential campaign, writing arguments in school and out, writing in times of violence, and the power and promise of the poetic voice, and discussing what to expect at the 2016 NWP Annual Meeting.
Student civic-action projects facilitate project-based learning, while illuminating and supporting the incredible capacity of young people to work together to tackle problems and improve their community. Listen to our conversation with Steve Zemelman, author of From Inquiry to Action and director of the Illinois Writing Project, and Liz Robbins, the Chicago teacher whose work inspired the book.
How can art and creative expression help us cope with and heal from trauma? NWP Radio talked with Roy Fox, author of Facing the Sky: Composing Through Trauma in Word and Image, who argues that personal writing is valuable both because of it helps students build critical thinking and composition skills, and because it helps them come to terms with trauma.
Cynthia Urbanski, author of Untangling Urban Middle School Reform, discusses her work with Writing Project professional development at Rosa Parks Middle School, focusing on the clash between competing narratives of student success.
Amidst policy calls for increasing a focus on argument in standards and assessment, it's easy to forget that teaching and learning argument is a complex, social, fascinating, and multifaceted proposition. In this episode of NWP Radio, the authors and educators behind the book Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing in High School English Language Arts Classroomsdiscuss what they learned by diving into that complexity through long-term case studies of effective teaching of argument in diverse school settings.
Two hundred years after Mary Shelley came up with the vision for the story that would become Frankenstein, Arizona State University (ASU), National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Chabot Space and Science Center and Creative Nonfiction magazine launched a series of writing 'dares' to inspire the public to imagine new stories about science, technology, and the impact of creations. Listen to our conversation with leaders of this project.
Writing Project directors, classroom teachers, and museum educators talk about the power of partnering formal and informal educators to think together about teaching and learning at the intersections of science and literacy.
Facing History and Ourselves sponsors Facing History Together contests to offer educators, students, and Facing History alumni the opportunity to tell stories, bring ideas to life, and build conversations about the issues that matter most - and share them across districts, states, and countries. We spoke to Laura Tavares, from Facing History and Ourselves, about this year's contest, and heard from a number of winning student essayists. The contests challenge participants to share experiences from inside and outside of the classroom, make connections between history and the moral choices we confront in today's world, and think about the world in a new way. Winning entries come in a variety of styles and media but all inspire us to envision a society free of racism, antisemitism, bullying, and hatred of all kinds.
How can teachers integrate inquiry-based research approaches with digital reading and writing in the classroom? This is the question that Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks explore in their 2016 book, Research Writing Rewired: Lessons that Ground Students' Digital Learning. We talked with the authors about strategies, lessons, tools, and principles for supporting connected learning in the English Language Arts classroom.
Hear from educators who are designing ways to connect to Letters to the Next President 2.0 over the summer through local institutes, youth writing camps, and online events. The conversation touches on how we might design now in support of youth participation via Letters to the Next President 2.0 in our classrooms this coming Fall.
Educators from NWP's College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP), who participated in an online version of a lesson study of two CRWP mini-units, talk about how the structure of the lesson study has impacted their practice, their experience with teaching the mini-units in their classrooms, and their experience with participating in the online community.
We celebrated National Poetry Month (April) by inviting the 2015 class of National Student Poets to talk about poetry and their year of service as literary ambassadors, as well as read some of their original work.
We introduce listeners to ARNA, the Action Research Network of the Americas, and learn about their history and current work, including their upcoming 2016 conference in Knoxville, TN that NWP teachers and researchers are invited to attend.
We were joined by three teacher-leaders from NWP's College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) for a discussion about Extended Research Argument and its role in empowering students to be positive, active, solution-oriented citizens. Our guests also talked about the CRWP resources developed to teach argument writing.
The leaders from Red Clay Writing Project and Deep Center—recipient of the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award—joined us for a conversation about their ongoing relationship and how we all might work together in order to create the richest learning ecosystems for all young people by joining forces inside and outside of schools, across organizations and learning institutions.
Sixteen-year-old Katie Eder, founder of Kids Tales—and one of the International Literacy Association's inaugural 30 Under 30 Literacy Champions—shared her organization's origin story with NWP Radio and her goals for expansion until "every kid is a published writer."
We interview the authors and editors of Teaching Outside the Box But Inside the Standards: Making Room for Dialogue about feeling caught between mandates to teach to standards, and the needs and interests of the students right in front of them, and how they teachers manage those tensions with deliberative practice, writing, and a professional community.
Three site leaders talk to Tanya Baker, NWP Director of National Programs, about what leadership looks like in our network and how the creation of new pathways in would serve more teachers and expand leadership opportunities.
YOUmedia Learning Labs Network's K-Fai Steele hosts this episode of NWP Radio which focuses on its Mentor Model. She is joined by three guests who discuss how the model has affected delivery of services and changed staffing at their institutions.
English teacher Diane Williams and the students behind Nyumbani visit with NWP Radio to discuss this collaborative writing project that raises awareness of the challenges refugee teens face in their Boise community.
In this episode, we talked about the Pose, Wobble, Flow framework and how it could be used to address educational challenges in order to meet the needs of all students. We were joined by Cindy O'Donnell-Allen and Antero Garcia, authors of Pose, Wobble, Flow: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Instruction, as well as some of Cindy's graduate students.
In this episode, we joined our Writing Project colleagues who led projects that were awarded 2014 LRNG Innovators Challenge grants to build interest-driven and learner-centered opportunities in schools. Our guests spoke about the connections they made, key questions raised in this work, and what all educators can learn working alongside youth as they produce, tinker, experiment, make, perform, and create.
In this episode, we set the mood for the 2015 National Day on Writing (NDOW) by talking to members of our Writers Council about their current projects, their writing process, and what inspires them to keep writing.
A broad panel of teacher-leaders from NWP's College-Ready Writers Program talked about how they integrate regular—often informal—opportunities for their middle and high school students to practice reading and writing skills that build capacity and stamina for writing arguments.
We talked with Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith, authors of the book, Uncommonly Good Ideas: Teaching Writing in the Common Core Era (a co-publication of NWP and Teachers College Press), and high school English teacher Brendan Nelson about research-based best practices, including practices that ease students from one kind of writing (narrative) to another (argument).
We spoke to authors who contributed essays to Jane Addams in the Classroom about how Addam's life, work, and philosophy provide ongoing relevance in today's classrooms and Writing Project sites. Listen to the recording and view resources from the show.
On this show, we spoke to guests from the St. Paul Public Library, the Science Museum of Virginia, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston about the YOUmedia Network and how it has changed staff and teen learning in their spaces.
The National Writing Project's College-Ready Writers Program Leadership Team gathered in St. Louis for the group's Summer Partnership Institute. Live from the institute, they share resources for teaching argument writing from non-fiction texts that have engaged secondary students across the country in considering multiple perspectives as they craft thoughtful arguments.
The National Writing Project is joined by educators who engaged in previous CLMOOCs to discuss and reflect on their journeys in making, remaking, remixing, hacking, and playing and how they've used these tools as resources in their teaching practice and in their personal lives.
Directors from NWP and the Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield, lead a conversation with Kwame Alexander, the 2015 Newbery Medal winner, about how his work inspired teachers and students at a high-needs partner school to write across disciplines.
In this episode, hear the story of the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project's new design for an advanced summer institute. Guests Richard Louth, Kim Stafford, Susan Martens, and Tracy Cunningham discuss what to expect at the writing retreat in July (2015), "Writing in Good Company in New Orleans."
Each year, five National Student Poets are chosen from a pool of outstanding writers, grades 9-11, who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. In this episode we celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation and some poetry reading with the 2015 National Student Poets.
Co-directors and teacher-consultants from the Columbus Area Writing Project discuss their work with the Children's Poetry StoryBox Project. Working alongside former children's poet laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, Kevin Cordi, a co-director for the Columbus Area Writing Project, shares what happened when primarily elementary-age students and their teachers were provided a collection of unfinished poems by famous children poets and asked to finish writing them.
Hear from writing project leaders about their family academic literacy projects as part of the Writing Our Future Initiative. This work has been taking place in high-needs schools around the country, providing welcome support and interactive programming for English Language Learners, grades K-3, and their families.
This show will introduce you to the 21st Annual Summer Conference of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, a consortium for attuning to service to better humankind, by reviewing the pedagogy and theory of James Moffett, the education prophet of global dialogue.
Join organizers and participants in "The Writing Thief" book study group, a MOOC hosted by the San Diego Area Writing Project. Hear why participants and organizers believe MOOCs work, why they are interested in making, and how online learning promotes learning, near and far.
NWP is a coalition partner of Future Ready, an initiative by the US Department of Education and the Alliance for Excellent Education. But what does it mean to be "Future Ready" for your site and school communities? This NWP Radio episode is meant to support sites in understanding the goals of Future Ready for districts and to hear from NWP educators across the country who are working on local, state, and national levels to craft system-wide approaches to professional learning as schools adopt new technology.
On this episode of NWP Radio, we previewed plans for the 2015 NWP Spring Meeting in Washington, DC, March 25–27, which included a focus on how teachers in the NWP network embody leadership in their classrooms and schools, and through their professional learning collaborations and partnerships.
Teacher, Columbus Area Writing Project co-director, and storyteller, Kevin Cordi, talks to NWP Radio about the value of play in creating stories, and shares ideas from his book, Playing With Stories: Story Crafting for Storytellers, Writers, Teachers and Other Imaginative Thinkers.
Join Gabrielle Glancy, author of The Art of the College Essay and editor of Best College Admissions Essays 2014, as well as three student college essay writers in this episode of NWP Radio. Hear some award winning college essays, interviews with their authors, and a conversation with Glancy about her work with young people in the college admissions process.
This show is focused on the narrative inquiry process and findings from a year-long Teacher Inquiry Community supported by the National Writing Project. Specifically, the guests focus on what readers can find in their published book, Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting with our Most Vulnerable Students.
This episode of NWP Radio celebrates the launch of a curriculum series called, Interconnections: Understanding Systems Through Digital Design, developed collaboratively by designers and educators from the National Writing Project alongside colleagues from Indiana University's Creativity Labs, the Institute of Play, and the Digital Youth Network.
An interview with Elisabeth Tova Bailey, author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, and Timothy Pearce, assistant curator of mollusks and head of the mollusk section at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Learn more about the NWP Archives Project, which will construct a living and usable history of our NWP. In addition to explaining the project, this show includes a segment featuring the voices of Writing Project teacher-consultants and directors sharing reflections on their own Writing Project experience and what the Writing Project means to them. NWP leaders who have donated to support the Archives Project also talk about what compelled them to give.
In this interview with Shirley McPhillips, author of Poem Central: Word Journeys with Readers and Writers, McPhillips discusses her life with poetry and her work with youth as readers and makers of poems.
When teacher-leaders at a National Writing Project site and like-minded park rangers from a nearby National Park collaborate to develop youth programs, deep learning happens. Listen to an engaging conversation with four teams who have partnered to develop meaningful opportunities for young people as they reshape their relationship to place through writing in historic sites.
This interview with Amy Clark, director of the Appalachian Writing Project and co-editor of Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community, is a conversation about language, identity, and learning. With contributions from well-known authors such as George Ella Lyon and Silas House, Talking Appalachian has been called the most comprehensive, accessible study of Appalachian language available today.
Recorded live from the Family Academic Literacy Project Design Institute in Memphis, Tennessee, listen to Writing Project colleagues discuss ideas and plans for improving young English Learners' academic literacy learning through the development of family academic literacy projects.
Jeff Wilhelm, Michael Smith, and Deborah Appleman discuss Uncommon Core, their book about the misunderstandings surrounding "standards-aligned" instruction, and strategies for avoiding them in service of meeting the intent of the Common Core.
A conversation with Terri McAvoy, Prairie Lands Writing Project, and Beth Rimer, Ohio Writing Project, who explore formative assessment as a way to guide professional development, drawing on their new eBook, Formative Assessment as a Compass. They were joined by Kim Douillard, director of the San Diego Writing Project.
An in-depth look at one preservice teacher program and its use of teacher research as a way of inducting new teachers into the profession.
In this episode, teacher-consultants at several Writing Project sites discuss their experiences as leaders of site programs, leadership teams, and professional development. We explore their contributions and why they are passionate about the work they do.
Summer means vacation for some, but for many others, it marks a time of making, playing, and connecting. Beginning this June, educators around the country and the world will be taking part in a Summer to Make, Play & Connect, powered by Educator Innovator and the Mozilla Foundation's Maker Party 2014. Listen to this episode to learn more about this summer campaign and the many opportunities being offered to all educators.
The inaugural NWP Radio show in 2010 focused on this question. Four years later, we again asked NWP sites to talk about what their sites are going to be reading together in Summer Institutes around the country. We also took up questions about what has changed and stayed the same as the Common Core Standards have come online and ever more content is available digitally.
This episode explores Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom, an exciting, new eBook edited and curated by a group of National Writing Project educators, published in March 2014 by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. The book is sourced from examples of classroom practice originally shared at the NWP Digital Is website, and is unique in its focus on in-school work and the Connected Learning principles. Listen as Writing Project educators and leaders share potential implications for site work and practices.
This broadcast featured site-leaders from the Illinois Writing Project, hosts of the Urban Sites Network Conference in Chicago. They provided an outline of events and a preview of opportunities for learning and connecting at the conference, scheduled to take place April 25-26, 2014.
In this episode we discussed the possibilities and potential, as well as the challenges, of bringing STEM education into out-of-school settings. Out-of-school practitioners, who are part of the National After School Matters Fellowship hosted at the Puget Sound Writing Project, shared their practitioner research projects.
Making Learning Connected (#clmooc) was a Massive Open Online Collaboration that drew more than a thousand participants last summer. What, though, happened after the summer? How was the CLMOOC experience translated into classrooms and Writing Project sites? Listen to this conversation with participants from CLMOOC who will provide insight into what Making Learning Connected looks like at the local level.
In this episode we interview Meenoo Rami—Philadelphia Writing Project teacher-consultant, high school teacher, founder and host of #engchat, and the author of Thrive: Five Ways to (Re)Invigorate Your Teaching.
A number of National Writing Project sites are currently engaged in long-term professional development in schools around the country. In this discussion we hear from sites on lessons learned about how to provide relevant professional development, as well as a look at a new ebook on the topic, Intentional Honor, by Tonya Perry, director of the Red Mountain Writing Project.
It's never too early to start filling your summer professional calendar. On this NWP Radio episode, we hear about summer learning institutes for teachers—offered at the Library of Congress—from Writing Project teacher-consultants who attended last year. We also learn about the fantastic local Writing Project work that stemmed from that experience.
In this episode we interviewed Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project. A discussion followed with Writing Project directors and teacher-consultants who have been collaborating to focus on students struggling in the bottom quartile. We also discussed what we have been learning about acceleration versus remediation, the development of identity and agency, and the power of focusing together on learners least well-served by current systems.
Writing Project site leaders around the country are looking for ways to join forces with like-minded collaborators to provide learning opportunities for teachers and students. In this episode of NWP Radio, we heard from Writing Project site leaders about some innovative approaches to educational partnerships that are working locally.
This show brought together authors of Reading in a Participatory Culture (2012) and the complementary digital book Flows of Reading to discuss what it means to be a reader and writer in an increasingly participatory culture. Both books exemplify an expanded concept of the term "text" and model a new type of reader—one who reads across different media and understands reading as an act of sharing, deconstructing, and making meaning. We hope this helps open a conversation about what "counts" as reading and all the kinds of reading we perform in our everyday lives.
How does writing today facilitate connections among ideas? People? Disciplines? The response to these questions were the focus of this year's National Day on Writing, celebrated on October 21 with a Tweetup utilizing the hashtag #write2connect. We talked with Millie Davis of the National Council of Teachers of English, Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month, and leaders from local writing project sites and discussed the genesis of #write2connect.
"Take it from an educator—or thousands" is the call of this year's Connected Educator Month set for October 2013. A partner of the NWP through our Educator Innovator initiative, Connected Educator Month (CEM) seeks to broaden and deepen educator participation in online communities of practice and move towards a more fully connected and collaborative profession. This NWP Radio show explores what it means to be a connected educator in the 21st century, what the implications are for Writing Project sites today, and how to get involved in CEM in October and connect with the larger Educator Innovator network throughout the year.
In this episode, we talk with directors and teacher-consultants from the San Jose Area Writing Project about their recently released book, Teaching Writing Grades 7-12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice. The authors discuss the book and their answers to two questions posed in the opening chapter: "Why might my students wish to engage in the performative activity of writing?" and "Why might they wish to engage in this practice with not just dogged persistence, but with genuine passion?"
We know that summer typically means face-to-face institutes occurring around the country. This summer we also saw an explosion of NWP-related activity in two online spaces: the E-Anthology and the Making Learning Connected Massive Open Online Collaboration (#clmooc). In this episode, site leaders explain the work at the center of these two spaces and describe their participation, and the participation of their site colleagues in these robust communities.
Three Writing Project sites were fortunate this summer to be hosts to educators from South Africa in their invitational summer institutes. Listen in for an opportunity to hear from our South African colleagues about their institute experience and how they expect to share what they are learning and doing with teachers in South Africa.
It is a truism that supportive school administrators are critical to successful professional development. But what does "supportive" mean on a daily basis at the school? On this show, we hosted three pairs of Writing Project sites and their school administrators and talked about the variety of ways that school administrators help make professional development effective.
Listeners to this show will hear great examples of writing from The Best Teen Writing, a collection of stories, essays, and poems written by teen authors awarded medals in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. We also feature teachers discussing a new online community, Vision and Voice , where teachers in grades 7–12 can share inspiration an ideas from The Best Teen Writing.
Summer is almost here and that means that the Summer of Making and Connecting is heating up! Listen to this episode of NWP Radio to hear about the summer's line-up and the various ways that educators around the country are writing, making, and sharing while putting Connected Learning principles into practice. Guests include Paul Allison (NYCWP), Karen Fasimpaur (P2PU), Cindy O'Donnell-Allen (CSUWP), Paul Oh (NWP), and Stephanie West-Puckett (Tar River WP).
Join National Writing Project site leaders in part two of this two-part, special edition of NWP Radio. Our guests reflect on lessons learned from a year of offering professional development in high-need schools. This show—and its partner show which aired on May 30, Creating a Culture for Learning in High-Needs Schools—provide food for thought for site teams planning professional development in 2013-14.
Join National Writing Project site leaders on a two-part, special edition of NWP Radio as they reflect on lessons learned from a year of offering professional development in high-need schools. This show—and its partner show which aired on June 6, SEED 3 Professional Development Program Designs—provide food for thought for site teams planning professional development in 2013-14.
The month of May marks the first-ever Digital Citizenship Month in the state of California. Join guests from Common Sense Media and the California Writing Project as they discuss the genesis of Digital Citizenship Month and an array of associated resources that help educators and parents guide youth and their families to make informed choices—choices that enable them to act responsibly, safely, and ethically online.
Join Matthew Green and Matt Williams of KQED, along with Chris Sloan of the Wasatch Range Writing Project and Kirsten Spall of the Area 3 Writing Project, as they discuss the various dimensions of Newsroom to Classroom, a pilot project in which pairs of NWP teachers from around the country develop resources and curriculum packages that focus on news topics. You can also hear a student perspective on this opportunity to use digital tools to weigh in on the issues of our times.
What happens when an NWP site teams up with a nearby National Park to create a learning experience for young people? Guests on this episode of NWP Radio talk about engaging summer youth programs for elementary and secondary students inspired by the rich treasures available inside a National Park.
In this episode, listeners are introduced to the book, A Critical Inquiry Framework for K-12 Teachers, edited by JoBeth Allen and Lois Alexander. The book is a set of portraits from K-12 classrooms that illustrate how teachers used the U.N. Rights of the Child as a framework to engage students in critical inquiry of relevant social issues.
In this episode we discuss with our guests the many ways mentor texts support writers and inspire writing of all genres in the classroom and beyond. We also explore direct connections to learning across the disciplines and resources for identifying and finding mentor texts.
This broadcast features leaders from the Red Mountain Writing Project, hosts of the USN Conference in Birmingham, Alabama, April 25–27. They provide an outline of events and a preview of opportunities for learning and connections promised by the conference.
In this episode we talk to Writing Project site leaders, teachers, administrators, and students about student-run writing centers as centers of leadership development for administrators, teachers, and students. Learn how the Northern Virginia Writing Project is taking up support of writing centers as part of their core work in their service area.
The Memorial Library brings teachers to New York City for a seminar, every summer, dedicated to exploring creative and collaborative methods for teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides. This broadcast features a conversation with Dr. Sondra Perl, Director of the Holocaust Educators Network and a co-founder of the New York City Writing Project, and Jennifer Lemberg, Assistant Director of the Holocaust Educators Network. Also joining in are three recent graduates of the seminar—Tai Basurto, Carol Revelle, and Melissa Flanagan—teachers whose work with the group has deepened over time.
Special guests Kim Doulliard, Janet Ilko, Jeremy Hyler, and Joe Dillon share what they have planned in their classrooms and at their Writing Project sites for the 2013 Digital Learning Day. Our guests also talk about their varied approaches with technology in their own instructional practice year-round.
How do principals go about learning enough about literacy to support content-area teachers' professional development? How can writing projects provide occasions for learning for administrators? What effect does administrator's learning have on the success of professional development beyond "being supportive"? Join NWP Radio for a discussion of how writing projects can involve administrators in professional development and how their knowledge can help increase the effectiveness of our work.
In this episode, we spend an hour with Mike Rose, a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the author of many books. We invited Mike to talk with us about his newest work: Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education.
This Thanksgiving evening special includes "thank you" messages from Writing Project colleagues, recorded live at the 2012 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. Hear their thoughtful words for those that have had a significant impact in their professional lives.
In this episode we celebrated National Novel Writing Month by talking to our friends at the Office of Letters and Light who administer NaNoWriMo, about the program in general, and about NaNoWriMo in the classroom. We also talked with California middle school teacher Laura Bradley about her students' participation in this exciting project.
In this episode we talk with Michael Smith, Jeff Wilhelm, and Jim Fredricksen, authors of three recently released books about teaching writing in ways that help students exceed the Common Core State Standards. Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen, who are also slated to keynote the 2012 NWP Annual Meeting, will talk about their work and the role of the standards in educational policy and practice.
Ever wonder what a writing class of 90 students would look like? Chris Fosen and Kim Jaxon, professors in the writing program at CSU, Chico, talk designing and teaching a "jumbo" comp class and the use of mentors and social media to create a vibrant learning space for all students.
Join Ellen Middaugh of the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG), Stan Pesick of the Bay Area Writing Project, and Oakland (CA) Unified School District teachers Patrick Friedman and Jah-Yee Woo as they discuss their work with a multi-year project—the largest of its kind in the nation—aimed at infusing a civic engagement focus into the OUSD high school experience.
The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE), of which NWP is a founding stakeholder organization, aims to provide support to and compile evidence about how educators working in cross-disciplinary teams design and implement plans to support literacy learners in every classroom. Listen to this episode to learn how you can get involved through the Literacy in Learning Exchange.
In this episode, join Laura Hilliger and Doug Belshaw from the Mozilla Foundation—the folks behind the Firefox web browser—and Troy Hicks (Chippewa River Writing Project) and Janelle Q. Bence (North Star of Texas Writing Project) as they explore what it means to be "web literate" and the tools and opportunities that have been created to support web making practices in schools and communities today.
Listen in on this conversation with Kimberly Hill Campbell and Kristi Latimer, authors of Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay. These authors claim, "If we want our students to be more engaged, skilled writers, we need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay." We talk with them about why and how middle school and high school teachers can do just that.
This NWP Radio show focuses on teacher leadership. Listen in as teacher-leaders from several Writing Project sites reflect on their work as leaders of other teachers in their schools, districts, and beyond, and why they are passionate about what they have chosen to do.
Hear what's happening with writing on our nation's campuses with three faculty guests. This show focuses on writing in the major, in upper division courses, and in general education content area courses. Our guests for this show have extensive experience working with faculty who teach writing in their disciplines and have insight into the wide variety of genres.
In this episode of NWP Radio, we spend the hour talking about the relationship of writing to athletic performance and learning. We are joined by Rich Kent—director of the University of Maine Writing Project and author of Writing on the Bus: Using Athletic Team Notebooks and Journals to Advance Learning and Performance in Sports—as well as several teachers, coaches, and athletes.
This show introduces Youth Voices, a customized school-based social network started by a group of National Writing Project teachers. We visit with Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Carla Cherry, and Jim Nordlinger who use Youth Voices with their own students and focus on both the possibilities of and resources for supporting interest-driven writing in connected ways.
In this episode of NWP Radio, join the editors of What Teaching Means: Stories from America's Classrooms, as well as several teacher-consultants/authors whose essays are featured in the text. We discuss the book, hear some essays from it, and talk about its audiences and uses in writing project work.
This special edition of NWP Radio features site directors Jessica Early, Central Arizona Writing Project, and Matt Luskey, Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, who talk about recent fundraising successes. They are joined by Susan Freundlich, NWP's Director of Advancement, who shares how to craft a persuasive presentation about Writing Project site work, and tools and resources available online.
Listen to a conversation with several site leaders who are building NWP Connect spaces that support, enhance, and develop communities of practice, both online and face-to-face.
This episode features Bob Fecho, director of the Red Clay Writing Project, and Ian Altman, Paige Cole, Angela Dean, and Lisa Hall—all Red Clay Writing Project teacher-consultants. We talk with them about dialogic teaching—what it is and how teachers can move toward more reflective teaching practices—as well as about the role of writing projects in this work.
In celebration of Poem in Your Pocket Day, this NWP Radio episode featured Joshua Mitchell, a youth poet at Figment.com and Katie Robbins, Director of Educational Programming at Figment; Bud Hunt, teacher-consultant with the Colorado State University Writing Project; Chris Tsang and students from his Boston middle school; and Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of the Office of Letters and Light.
Join Ralph Cordova of the Piasa Bluffs Writing Project and other colleagues of the Cultural Landscapes Collaboratory (The CoLab)—a creative collaboration across National Writing Project sites, museums, and informal community-based institutions—as they share the "roots and routes" of their 3RD Space work. You'll also hear about how you can get involved in the 5-day Advanced Leadership Institute they'll be hosting this summer.
We spent an hour with Stephanie Vanderslice, director of the Great Bear Writing Project in Arkansas, and author of Rethinking Creative Writing. Stephanie talks with us about her book and her thinking about how and why we should reform undergraduate and postgraduate creative writing programs.
The 2012 Review of NWP Site Reports captured promising practices and thinking from sites to produce The Model at Work, a resource of ideas from across the network. In this episode of NWP Radio, we hear from site leaders who are exploring this new resource and considering its implications for the work of their sites and for the NWP network.
Listen to an interview with Kira J. Baker-Doyle about her book The Networked Teacher, to learn about research and theory behind social networks and gain practical advice about how new teachers can create networks of peers and mentors for support. Also hear writing project leaders Kevin Thienes and Lanette Jimerson talk about their writing project-based work with new teachers.
This special edition of NWP Radio invited site leaders to join a conversation about the Review of NWP Site Reports set for March 2–5, 2012. Hear about the process for collecting good ideas that work and great thinking about site sustainability from the NWP Site Reports.
This NWP Radio broadcast features leaders from the Oklahoma State University Writing Project, conference hosts, and keynote speaker Julie Landsman, who provide a preview of opportunities for learning and connections promised by the conference.
How can sites best support teachers in working with the Common Core State Standards? Listen to the discussion with Tonya Perry, Site Director at Red Mountain Writing Project, and author of Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards: English Language Arts, Grades 6–8, and other guests.
In the lead-up to Digital Learning Day on February 1, NWP educators from around the country—including Troy Hicks of the Chippewa River Writing Project and Janelle Quintans Bence from the North Star of Texas Writing Project—discussed why digital writing matters for themselves as professionals and for the students they teach.
Hear from several site leaders about their plans for raising visibility and advocating for their sites in the coming year. The show includes news about the FY12 federal budget and an update on plans for the Spring Meeting.
NWP sites across the country offer a wide range of programs for youth authors. This broadcast of NWP Radio features a look at youth programs at three Writing Project sites, including a discussion of how sites can think about expanding youth programs to increase visibility, build partnerships, and raise funds.
In this episode of NWP Radio, hear from the staff of National Novel Writing Month, who will talk about how to write a novel "by the seat of your pants in 30 days"—this November. Also, NWP teacher-consultant Donalyn Miller will discuss how her students wrote a novel last year and how her class is gearing up for more novel writing this year.
To celebrate the National Day on Writing, the National Writing Project aired a live radio show to celebrate the National Day on Writing with interviews with New York Times education reporter Fernanda Santos, New York Times Learning Network editor Katherine Schulten, Figment founder and New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear, Figment teen writers, and NWP teacher and author Ashley Hope Pérez.
This episode features Virginia McEnerney, executive director of the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, who talks about the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the nation's oldest and most prestigious teen-writing competition. Joining Virginia is Harris Durrani, a 2011 Portfolio Gold Award Recipient for his General Writing Portfolio. Learn how site directors and teachers use participation in the program in their classrooms and as part of their continuity programs.
This year, the NWP has shifted its narrative reporting from the previous Continued Funding Application (CFA) to a new Writing Project Site Report. In this NWP Radio program, colleagues from the network talk about the new reporting structure and how their sites are thinking about responding.
September 11, 2011, marks the 10th anniversary of the devastating attack on the World Trade Center. How is this subject being surfaced, taught, and talked about in classrooms? What critical literacy practices support students in finding a voice as they navigate the complexities of challenging topics, such as 9/11? This episode features an array of perspectives from NWP teachers and colleagues such as Holly Epstein Ojalvo, editor of the New York Times Learning Network, and Jennifer Lemberg of the Holocaust Educators Network.
This summer, eight teachers from three writing project sites spent a month in Chicago exploring the power of systems-thinking to support students in the way they learn, make, and write. This project, called "Grinding New Lenses," involved teachers in their own learning and thinking about systems, followed by an opportunity to lead a summer camp with youth from the surrounding area.
Through an array of site practices, programs, and partnerships, NWP sites provide teachers with opportunities to explore the strengths and challenges that define rural education in America. This episode features what NWP has learned from its member sites about teaching and learning in rural schools.