Teaching writing is teaching thinking. Helping our students to articulate their thinking is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. All year long, our English language arts teachers have spent each of their professional learning days together with colleagues and teacher consultants from the Ohio Writing Project, learning to create classrooms that support student writing. We’ve received some of our most positive feedback from these times together.
Funding for the National Writing Project is now at risk. Join me and thousands of educators from around the country in raising our voices on behalf of student writing. You will often hear me talking about research-based pedagogy. The NWP has a solid research track record. Please read the blogs and articles linked here by our digital colleagues and fellow educators. Please share your OWP personal successes and student stories in the comments, below. And please consider sharing your thoughts with your representatives in the federal government.
PS OWP was a West Clermont staple “way back in the day.” Angie Ferguson and I participated in OWP after-school sessions for a yearlong PD program in the (gasp) mid 1980s. In the summer of 1986, I spent July on the Miami University campus learning to be a better writer and a better teacher-of-writing. That was one of the best, lasting professional learning experiences I’ve ever had. Let’s keep NWP alive.
In 1987 after my first year of teaching, I attended the OWP 4-week program to inform my writing instruction. I left that experience with a greater awareness of myself as a writer. This was something that I didn’t expect. During the spring of 2007, 20 years later, I decided to enroll in summer OWP course work. Again I began the next school year renewed on so many levels. OWP never gets old. When I heard that funds from the federal gov. for the NWP were on the chopping block, I made time to write my congress persons to tell them my story.