Funding for the National Writing Project has been cut this year, and funding for next year looks bleak.
I attended the summer institute in 1995, just prior to coming to teach in Leverett. The Western Mass Writing Project, based at the University of Massachusetts, is a fabulous resource for writers and writing teachers. The summer institute is a phenomenal place to hone the craft of teaching writing and to be a writer: to relearn the craft through writing and giving and receiving feedback on writing. The third component on the summer institute is to research best practices in writing and share those practices with other teachers, both in the summer institute and, later, throughout the academic year with colleagues and in other schools as teacher- trainers and mentors.
Writing is communication and communication is essential to our democracy. The power of the written word has sparked revolutions across the Middle East and overthrown despots and dictators. As we strive to race for the top in Education in the U.S., we must not give short shrift to Writing in a push to promote Science and Math.
The National Writing Project has a new web site with some great links, tools, prompts, and ideas:
digitalis.nwp.org
A letter from Anne Herrington of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project follows:
As you may or may not know, funding for the National Writing Project has
been cut from this year's federal budget and likely also from the following
year's budget. While WMWP will be able to continue most programs for next
year, after that, we will have to seriously curtail most everything,
including Summer Institute and other summer courses. This is very serious.
Please lend your voice, your words, to advocate to Congress to restore
funding for NWP.
How? Blog or email our Congressmen. Click on the following link at
Cooperative Catalyst
-
http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/
and then click on the link to #blog4nwp for a fuller explanation. It's
important to act as soon as possible. The more blogs, the better.
