Texas Writing Teachers Find Their Inner Author

Publication: The University of Texas at Austin
Date: June 14, 2010

Summary: The Heart of Texas Writing Project exists to remind every student who has a poet inside and every high school teacher who wants to pen her memoirs that writing is for everybody and that good writers are made, not born.

Excerpt from Article

HTWP [Heart of Texas Writing Project], which inspires and instructs Texas students as well as their teachers, is part of the National Writing Project (NWP) and The University of Texas at Austin is one of 200 university project sites around the nation. It's in the university's College of Education and led by Dr. Randy Bomer, a professor of language and literacy studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

Working from the research-based conclusion that a teacher who writes will be a better writing teacher, HTWP offers monthly workshops and four-week invitational institutes to K-12 Texas teachers. In the workshops, the teachers learn best practices in writing instruction, review research, build a strong network of like-minded colleagues and, most important, produce writing of their own.

"It's more common than not that people balk at writing," says Bomer, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. "There's an aura of mystique around it and the act of 'being a writer' has an air of exclusivity. Especially when we're dealing with students, we need to remember that writing's like everything else in that you're probably not going to get better at it if you never do it."

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Read Writing teachers find their inner author with help of College of Education program on the University of Texas at Austin website.