Program Design

Site Outreach and Visibility

Summary: How do you represent the breadth and depth of the work at your site to public and professional audiences? What do you highlight when approaching potential community and school district partners? How can you quantify and communicate your contributions to the university? This collection of resources demonstrates how different...

The Challenge of Change: Growth Through Inquiry at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project

Author: Susan Connell Biggs, Kevin Hodgson, and Bruce Penniman Summary: This National Writing Project monograph describes the inquiry process undertaken by leaders at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project when the site faced radical changes and challenges in funding and leadership. This process led to a reorganization of the site, with...

Southern Colorado Writing Project Coaching Protocol

Summary: Teacher leaders designing professional development programs will find this nine step coaching protocol useful. The resource outlines a cycle for working with teachers and describes how to coach participants through the stages of brainstorming, developing, presenting, reflecting on and revising a presentation/demonstration lesson/inquiry workshop. In addition, it offers “how-to”...

The UCLA Writing Project’s Continuity Programs at a Glance (From Creating Spaces for Study and Action Under the Social Justice Umbrella)

Authors: Marlene Carter, Norma Mota-Altman, and Faye Peitzman Summary: How can teachers remain connected to a writing project learning community? This appendix to the monograph, Creating Spaces for Study and Action Under the Social Justice Umbrella, describes a number of program models that support teachers as they continue their professional...

New Teachers in Urban Contexts: Creating Bridges with Teach For America Teachers

Authors: Dina Portnoy and Tanya Maloney Summary: This article examines how the Philadelphia Writing Project partnered with the University of Pennsylvania and Teach for America (TFA) to provide new TFA teachers with an additional week of focused training before they entered the classroom for the start of the school year....

Blending Place-Based Education and C3WP in Rural Nebraska: A Focus on Civil Discourse

Author: Robert Brooke, Melissa Legate Summary: This episode in the 4-part series on place-conscious education by the Nebraska Writing Project illustrates how a place-conscious focus can blend with the C3WP emphasis on civic engagement and understanding issues from multiple perspectives.

The Birth and Death of Portfolio Assessment

Author: Pauline Sahakian Summary: Although this short article is ostensibly about portfolio assessment, the author warns that promising teaching practices will only endure in a school or professional community if mentors facilitate ongoing conversations about the hows, whens, and whys of practice. In other words, regular practices cannot be taken...

Helping High School Students “Gear Up” for College

Author: Art Peterson Summary: This article highlights a program designed to support 9th graders in understanding how to differentiate and act upon revision and editing concerns. The program’s development and implementation reflects a collaboration between area high school writing centers, teachers, and university composition faculty. Since Gear-Up funds programs throughout...

Enabling Communities and Collaborative Responses to Teaching Demonstrations

Author: Janet A. Swenson, Diana Mitchell Summary: This monograph explains a useful protocol developed by Red Cedar Writing Project for responding to demonstrations in the Summer Institute, called the Collaborative Responses to Teaching Demonstrations (CRTD). This response takes the form of a letter to the person offering the demonstration, thus...

C3WP: Teaching On-Demand Argument Writing

Summary: While developing a more expansive approach to writing, many teachers will still want to ensure that students are prepared for on-demand writing and assessments. This online learning experience from the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) focuses on on-demand writing. A PowerPoint with a slide-by-slide voiceover, the resource provides...