As a newly minted teacher-consultant with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, I remember being asked to deliver an in-service to a nearby school district on using technology in the middle school classroom. This was, probably, 1998.
It was the late Pat Hunter, a co-director of the site, who at the time invited me to lead this work. I had focused on technology and writing as my demonstration during the summer institute and so, Pat reasoned, I could use my newfound knowledge along with my experience as a practitioner to facilitate this PD.
“You’ll be great,” she said.
I found out later that this is what Pat Hunter did. She saw in teachers abilities and skills and leadership potential that we didn’t even see in ourselves. And then she invited us to live up to that vision.
Another piece of work I was invited to be a part of, soon after going through the WMWP Summer Institute, was the publishing of student writing anthologies, funded by state monies (that have long since dried up). I, along with a half-dozen other writing project teachers, collected student pieces from classrooms all over Western Massachusetts, from cities like Springfield and Holyoke to tiny rural towns like Dalton and Leverett. I co-produced one of two elementary anthologies.
Like most writing project efforts, the process was key. We held a day at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in which student editors gathered together to read through the hundreds of submissions and choose the ones they felt were most worthy of being included in the anthology. They included brief explanations of why, scribbled at the end of the photocopied piece. When the work of choosing was done, the editors collectively named the anthology and created possible cover art which they then discussed and voted on.
The teacher-producers, like me, would then take all the hand-written pieces chosen for the anthology and type them into a book format using a publishing program. The WMWP office staff would send letters of congratulations to students’ whose pieces were selected (we tried to include as many as possible and usually had over 100 pieces in each edition) and an exhortation to try again to those whose pieces were not. (In some cases, entire schools participated, sending hundreds of poems, prose pieces, and non-fiction essays. Sometimes it was just a class. And occasionally, it might be an individual student who heard about the anthology in the way students hear about these things who submitted.)
And then we’d have a showcase day. Students whose pieces were published would be invited to attend, and would get two additional tickets. Usually, the ceremony was held in the UMass English Department auditorium. Some of the kids would be invited to read a piece, or a snippet of one. All grades seemed to be represented, from kindergarteners to seniors. Many families came along, too, clearly proud of their kids. They’d sit in the wooden chairs for over an hour, in the middle of a work day, all because they wanted to celebrate the writing of their kids and the recognition being bestowed.
Each family received two anthologies. We also had more for sale. I remember once it was my job to try to sell those extra anthologies.
A woman clutching the hand of a young child walked up to me and asked to buy three.
“I am so proud of my grandchild,” she said. Then, nodding to the girl and then the anthology, she said, “Her story is in here.”
Pingback: The #blog4nwp archive « Cooperative Catalyst