Author: J. Elaine White, Jane Frick, and Tom Pankiewicz
Summary: This monograph captures how two National Writing Project sites, at different points in their institutional lives, used visioning retreats as a strategy to take stock of their work and look forward in order to align programs with capacity, to develop leadership, and to continue to engage teachers in the professional community of the site. By engaging teacher leaders in collective inquiry at visioning retreats, both sites continued to build leadership capacity and support new learning. Of interest to site and program leadership teams, this resource describes in detail both sites’ planning process and subsequent results and includes an extensive appendix with support materials that are adaptable to planning visioning and similar types of retreats.
Original Date of Publication: October 2010
Live Oak Writing Project and Prairie Lands Writing Project use visioning retreats to explore the continuity opportunities that their respective sites need and can support. Through their intentional work at visioning retreats, both sites have expanded their leadership, built site capacity, and supported new learning.
(Re)Visioning Site Work: Extending the Reach and Relevance of NWP Sites includes rich material that other sites might adapt or replicate to plan visioning or other types of retreats. Extensive appendices include documents that are appropriate for immediate use.
Each site has different objectives in engaging in visioning retreats, but both share a reliance on a vehicle (visioning retreat) to bring together key leaders at a site to think collectively about the sustainability of the site. The monograph describes in detail both sites’ planning process and subsequent results.
Related Resources
Original Source: National Writing Project, https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3303