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Professional Development - General Professional Development Resources

Literacy Coaches Explore Their Work Through Vignettes

June 2008
Carrie Usui
What is the work of a literacy coach? During a weekend retreat funded by an Urban Sites Network minigrant, twelve UCLA Writing Project teacher-consultants serving as literacy coaches explored this question. More ›

Working Solo: The Experience of a Lone Teacher-Consultant

March 2008
Lyon Rathbun
Taking a writing project approach, a teacher introduces the magic of writing to teachers and students in a low-performing school in an economically depressed former mining town. More ›

Missouri Sites Implement Literacy Academies

July 2007
Michael Muenks, the Missouri Department of Education's director of assessment, needed a multiyear professional development program to help boost literacy in the state's underperforming middle schools. He welcomed the three-year program developed by the Missouri Writing Projects Network. More ›

NWP Professional Writing Retreat Handbook

May 2007
Tom Fox, Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, Joe Check, Carol Tateishi
The Professional Writing Retreat Handbook offers advice about planning, funding, and conducting a retreat to support teachers as writers. This 93-page booklet also provides tools and resources to help sites design local retreats, including such things as deciding pre-retreat readings, daily schedules, the role of facilitators, and post-retreat follow-up. Learn more about NWP's Professional Writing Retreats. More ›

Post-Tsunami Storytelling in Indonesia

The Voice, 2006
Katherine Schultz
Schultz was invited to Indonesia to mentor new teachers hired to replace those who perished in the tsunami-devastated province of Aceh. The Indonesian teachers left with new visions of child-centered teaching and learning. More ›

Writing to Learn for Preservice Teachers

The Quarterly, 2005
Samuel Totten
Why do few teachers incorporate writing-to-learn strategies into their classrooms? The answer, according to the author, is not very complicated: they have never been taught these strategies. More ›

Dear Jaynie: A Meditation on Theory and Grad Talk

The Quarterly, 2004
Britton Gildersleeve
Many teachers are averse to theory. They would rather subsist on a steady diet of rutabagas than down their Vygotsky straight. Britton Gildersleeve, however, believes that teachers need theory. In this article, written as a letter to a first grade teacher, she tells why. More ›

It Takes a School

The Voice, 2004
Mary Ann Smith
Smith describes a tour of Meade Elementary School where a five-year partnership with the Philadelphia Writing Project has built a professional community working toward school reform. More ›

The Maryland Writing Project Is in My Closet

The Voice, 2004
Sarah Abernethy Snyder
A teacher-consultant shares how she uses such props as Lego blocks, fancy paper, seashells, a magic wand, and a kaleidoscope... More ›

The Writing Project and Tulsa Schools Collaborate for School Reform That Works

The Voice, 2004
Eileen Simmons
Simmons reports on how writing project inservice work can support local reform efforts by centering on pedagogy and offering a program focusing on teacher questions and concerns. More ›

Because Writing Matters: A Book That Shares What We Know

The Quarterly, Winter 2003
Art Peterson
A new book, Because Writing Matters, created by the National Writing Project, pulls together the concepts and theory that have generated the successful practice of NWP teachers and makes the case for what needs to be done to advance the teaching of writing in American schools. More ›

Teaching the Teacher: What I Learned from Teaching a Content Literacy Methods Class

The Quarterly, Spring 2003
Ingrid Spence
When junior high school teacher Ingrid Spence was approached to teach a class at the local university on reading and writing in the content areas, she was excited and enthusiastic. She soon learned that these were feelings some of her students did not share. More ›

Do NWP Teachers Make a Difference?

The Quarterly, Summer 2002
Jon Marshall, Ruie Pritchard
Through research on district-led staff development, two teachers unveiled some unsettling circumstances about teacher disincentives to initiate change and assume leadership roles. They define some of the constraints on the impact teachers can have in this age of standards and accountability. More ›

Inverness Report Surveys Benefits of Summer Institutes for Teachers and Students

The Voice, May-June 2002
Carl Nagin
A report from a survey of summer institute participants confirms that NWP institutes offer "valuable and influential professional development experience to teachers." More ›

Observations in the Classroom

The Quarterly, Spring 2002
Allen Wiseman, Randy Koch
Springboarding off the summer institute practice of teacher demonstrations, Randy Koch and Allen Wiseman enter into a classroom observation project that puts Wiseman in Koch's college English classroom twice a week for a semester. Although the project began as an extension of ideas—and a rapport—generated by the South Texas Writing Project Summer Institute the two shared, the success of their efforts far exceeded their expectations, much to the benefit of both the observed and the observer. More ›

On Being a Hedgehog

The Quarterly, Winter 2002
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy
When the zeal for accountability ends up being the zeal for paperwork, reports, and teaching to lists of check-boxes, teachers are forced to get creative—and sometimes to move on. More ›

A Voice That is Heard: Living the Writing Project Philosophy as Coaches

The Quarterly, Summer 2001
Sidnie Myrick
Myrick describes how the key to successful coaching is the belief that a coach is no more and no less than a partner in this process. More ›

Book Review: Updrafts: Case Studies in Teacher Renewal, Edited by Roy F. Fox

The Quarterly, Fall 2001
Michele Pittard
Michele Pittard reviews Updrafts: Case Studies in Teacher Renewal, Edited by Roy F. Fox. More ›

English Journal Meets Darth Vader
Teacher-Consultants Need Theory to Back Up Practice

The Voice, September-October 2000
Helen Collins Sitler
Helen Collins Sitler discusses why teacher-consultants need theory to back up their successful classroom practices. More ›

CSA Offers Teachers Powerful Tools

The Voice, November-December 2000
Becky Young, Asali Solomon, Art Peterson
A description of the NWP-sponsored series of workshops designed to involve teachers in the work and methods of the Centre for Social Action, which promotes a unique approach to working with those who use social services. More ›

Imaginary Gardens and Real Issues: Improving Language Arts in the Urban Elementary School

The Quarterly, Winter 2000
Joe Check
Using the form of a hypothetical narrative, Check argues that improved literacy instruction is inextricably linked to improved schools, and that the NWP is an ideal vehicle for helping urban schools build needed exemplary contexts. More ›

Project Outreach Transforms Professional Development
A Report from Johnston County

The Voice, September-October 2000
Sandra O'Berry, Patsy Butler
What was it like for a small, rural satellite site to join the Project Outreach Network? "Like building a plane as it taxied down the runway: risky, but we hoped it would fly." More ›

Recruiting Tips for a New Site: A Year-One Story

The Voice, January-February 2000
Liz Stephens
Site Director Liz Stephens describes her strategies for promoting the new Central Texas Writing Project and recruiting for the site's first invitational summer institute in 1998. More ›

NBPTS: Six Stages of Certification

The Voice, November-December 1999
Nancy J. Larsen
More ›

Rediscovering the Passion to Teach

The Voice, November-December 1999
Diane Scollay
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The Truth About Lightning Bugs: What Our Children Know

The Quarterly, Spring 1999
Kim Patterson
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Tulsa Writing Camp

The Voice, November-December 1999
Eileen Simmons
Simmons describes how the Oklahoma State Writing project developed a summer writing camp at two elementary schools in which the schools' teachers served as faculty after two weeks of professional development work with OSUWP teachers. More ›

My Beliefs About Teaching Before the National Writing Project (and How They Have Changed)

The Voice, Summer 1998
Susan Bennett
Bennett discusses how her involvement with the writing project has changed her views about her profession, about teacher community and collegiality, about reflective practice, and about university-based learning. More ›

Honing

The Quarterly, Spring/Summer 1994
Don Gallehr
Donald Gallehr, director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project and co-director of the National Writing Project, compares the honing of a blade to the sharpening that the NWP provides for the mind, explaining why the writing project has been so successful in improving education throughout the nation. More ›

Assessment of the Chicago Area Writing Project

The Quarterly, February 1981
Anne Mickles, Betty Jane Wagner, Steve Zemelman
More ›