NWP New-Teacher Initiative Moves Ahead

By: Marci Resnick
Publication: The Voice, Vol. 8, No. 1
Date: January-February 2003

Summary: The New-Teacher Initiative launched its work at the 2002 NWP Annual Meeting. Nine local writing project teams met to share their dreams, challenges, and plans for working with new teachers in their districts and schools.

The National Writing Project's newest program, the New-Teacher Initiative (NTI), launched its work at the NWP Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Nine local writing project teams met to share their dreams, challenges, and plans for working with new teachers in their districts and schools. Supported in part by a grant from the W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation, the NTI, an outgrowth of the Urban Sites Network, has identified part of its mission as creating a learning community within the NWP that works to develop or strengthen successful local models for supporting new teachers in low-performing urban schools. (For more background information, see "NWP Launches New-Teacher Initiative" in the September-October 2002 Voice, Vol. 7, No. 4. )

All writing project sites that were members of the Urban Sites Network in the past two years were invited to submit proposals and, after a review process, nine sites were selected to participate in the NTI. These sites represent a range of urban communities across the United States. They include the Boston Writing Project, the Chicago Area Writing Project, the Coastal Georgia Writing Project, the District of Columbia Writing Project, the Maryland Writing Project, the New York City Writing Project, the Oklahoma State University Writing Project, the Philadelphia Writing Project, and the Third Coast Writing Project (Michigan).

Each site's proposal contains unique features that respond to the specific contexts and needs of local writing project schools and districts. All nine programs include a mentoring component for new teachers, with strategies to maximize the impact of a mentor relationship. Some sites, for example, plan to integrate an electronic communications component to ensure ongoing communication and conversation. Other sites have planned monthly workshops on aspects of writing and scheduled on-site consultation that focuses on implementing teaching strategies. Another site has included a minigrant opportunity to assist teachers in planning and implementing writing curricula.

All of the NWP sites awarded NTI grants understand the critical need for new teachers to have this reflective community of colleagues and provided for this in their proposals.

Throughout the year, sites will work closely with a member of the NTI Leadership Team to implement, document, and disseminate their models of work. The NTI Leadership Team includes Amy Cordrey, Louisville Writing Project (Kentucky); Christine Cziko, University of California, Berkeley; Judith Kelly, District of Columbia Area Writing Project; Linette Moorman, New York City Writing Project; Carol Rose, Philadelphia Writing Project; Liz Stephens, Central Texas Writing Project; Lisa Ummel-Ingram, Oklahoma State Writing Project; and Marci Resnick, NTI director.

Along with strong plans of work, sites also included in their proposals the questions they had as they began to imagine working with new teachers. These included questions such as the following.

How can the NWP model be adapted to serve the special needs of new teachers?

How can NWP add what we learn from our work with new teachers to the national dialogue about teacher preparation and quality?

How do online conversations and mentoring support teachers?

What are the commonalities and differences for new teachers across different local contexts, and how do we balance classroom management and content-specific support and professional development?

Like most writing project programs, these questions will help sites to continually and carefully examine and revise their work. We look forward to sharing these works in progress at the Urban Sites Network Conference in Santa Barbara, April 25–26, 2003, and at next year's NWP Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Perhaps Amelia Coleman, team member from Philadelphia, best summarized the spirit and hope of this first gathering of the NTI, when she shared these thoughts at the Atlanta meeting:

...Looking back on my first year of teaching (just four years ago), I can recall many hours spent after school conversing with other first-year teachers about . . . their contemplations of leaving the district. First-year teachers often feel a lack of support and validation, and, as a result, many have opted to leave. Too many questions went unanswered beginning with the teaching of reading and writing and never ever ending with classroom management and student motivation. In turn, a large number of classrooms were abandoned. It is our dream that through our work, new teachers will find solace within their own teaching practice and begin to leverage their capabilities within their classrooms to better meet the needs of students. It is our dream that through the work of the NTI team a collaboration of experienced and new teachers will ultimately create a strong sense of community resulting in the sustainability of competent, inquisitive, professional educators.

Download "NWP New-Teacher Initiative Moves Ahead"