NWP — Teaching Writing for Work and Soul

Guest post by Melanie Burdick, Greater Kansas City Writing Project

I began working with the Greater Kansas City Writing Project (GKCWP) in 1997. I attended the summer institute (SI) that year and it deeply changed the way I saw the profession of teaching and who I was as a teacher. After the SI, I realized it wasn’t enough to just close my door and teach. It wasn’t good for me, it wasn’t good for my students, and it was irresponsible to the profession. I realized through this one summer experience that in order to be the best writing teacher I could be, I had to write with my students. I had to use my voice to write for my students and in turn, I should allow them to find and use their own voices. I also learned that there were many like-minded colleagues I could turn to, and it was O.K. to not have all the answers. I had a support system that could help me face my challenges.

A few years later, I had the privilege of serving as the director of the GKCWP, and the job was both rewarding and hard. I was trained as a teacher, but all of a sudden I was asked to write and oversee a budget, write grants, assess programs, calculate contact hours and matching funds, tabulate pages and pages of data, and create annual reports. This work felt tedious and cumbersome, and I had to educate myself in the best ways to do this administrative work. However, when I had finished each report and was able to step back and view the data, I was able to see a statistical picture that undeniably showed that teachers found our programming valuable. This programming reached into their schools and classrooms in ways that other professional development could not. Finally, it was absolutely clear that we were doing a lot with the funding we had. We got a lot of bang for our buck. Because of the intense data collection the NWP required of me to continue our site’s funding, I had a very clear picture that the work we were doing was professionally effective and cost-effective.

At the same time, as site director, I had the honor to see beyond the dollars and numbers and witness some amazing teachers and some amazing transformations, and these are the stories that make the loss of federal funding tragic. I have dozens of these stories, but here are a few that come to mind this morning as I write:

One middle school music teacher I know has recently asked her choir classes to write song lyrics. This one assignment has become a book of poetry and these poems/lyrics are being set to music for an upcoming performance at a local Jazz club. She says her kids have been transformed because they are able to tell their stories. They see themselves as valuable and creative, and the teacher is able to portray herself as leader in her school, collaborating with English teachers and allowing her kids to shine in a positive and authentic light.

A young teacher who was ready to quit teaching after a very difficult first year attended the SI and found a group of mentors and supporters who encouraged her and helped her see her own strength. She returned to teaching and is no longer at risk of becoming one of the dire statistics of failing teacher retention.

Another science teacher who worked at a tough urban alternative school collaborated with a suburban history teacher and another urban English teacher to implement service learning in her school’s community. In a community where the neighbors were often distrustful of the students, this project transformed the relationship between community and school. This teacher took her kids out of the classroom and allowed them to research and write about what they found in the streets and shops surrounding the school. Later, at a national conference this teacher was invited to share her project with other teachers, and she was able for the first time to see herself as a leader in her profession.

One high school teacher I know has provided such leadership that the entire school this year participated in a poetry slam. The entire school! Every English teacher in her school taught spoken word poetry, and every student in her high school performed a 50+ lined poem about a topic that mattered to them. Even more importantly, this took place in a very poor and overlooked school, where over 70% of the students receive free or reduced lunch, and where the testing is central and where the stakes are high. My WP friend told me that she definitely teaches more than poetry. She wants her kids to be able to write and express their ideas in cover letters to future employers. She wants them to appear intelligent when they write e-mails to their children’s teachers. She wants her students to be able to write and communicate effectively in the world and in their work places.

“But,” she said, “writing and performing poetry is good for their souls.”

And I think that sums up what I have seen the NWP doing in many teachers’ lives. It has provided sound teaching skills in reading and writing, smart pedagogical methods, solid literacy research that helps teachers do better for their students and their schools – the important work of the world. At the same time, the NWP is good for teachers’ souls. It is the support and collaborative space that is often missing in the very isolated and very complicated and often very lonely profession of teaching. If the NWP is defunded, I do worry that many teachers will miss out on the training. But I more deeply mourn for the support so many teachers will lose, and I mourn the loss of respect and fierce cooperative strength that comes from like-minded Writing Project teachers who come together for their kids and their work. There are few other professional development programs out there that address teachers’ intellect and soul. And if we worry only about the intellect and skill set of our teachers and deny their “souls” we will be denying or even obliterating the very thing that moved them to become teachers in the first place. We could take away a program that sustains them, and it troubles me to think where that might leave us.