Summer Institute in the Valley – Week 2

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Sometimes we need to be in a room with other people who love what they do, too.

This week we shared a Writing Marathon day with two other National Writing Project sites. Over 40 teachers  met in the morning on the pedestrian mall in the historic part of our city.  After some brief introductions, the distribution of maps and visitor guides, and the formations of smaller groups, the writers ventured forth.  They visited the independent book store, the library, the Civil War museum, and as they meandered, they wrote. Some wrote phrases, others returned to work already in their journals, and more wrote new pieces as inspiration struck. Many groups ate lunch together and extended their discussion of writing and teaching, finding common ground across grade levels and disciplines. The day culminated with a readaround at our local high school.  As the writing spirit moved them, writers would stand and share their newly created or freshly revised pieces.   A sonnet and found poems delighted us. A narrative about the kindness of strangers and a passionate spoken word poem about teaching children in poverty moved us to grab tissues. We laughed a lot, too, feeling the special camaraderie that comes with people who understand how important our work is and how crucial it is that we keep ourselves up to the task.

We also heard two wonderful presentations this week about how to help teenagers understand poetry and how to help all our young writers remember to play with words.  These teachers, one from fourth grade and one from AP English 12, showed how much we have to learn from one another.  Both gifted educators, they revised and tweaked and worried over their presentations, wanting so much for it to be just right, and for each of the audience members to get useful information that we could adapt to our own teaching situations.  They succeeded brilliantly.  Their humor and humanity shone through. Such lucky children to have these wonderful teachers.

Writing groups met twice over the week and we are growing in trust and honesty, trying to help each other make our writing better but still supporting the writer as we do.  It’s a delicate balance but as we struggle with it, we are learning how to do the same thing with our students; how to be careful and truthful, how to focus on the writing but still understand the emotions behind it, how to ask questions that might lead to insights, how to gauge the writer’s strengths and build on them, how to illuminate places where the writer to reader connection is broken.  This is complicated work, make no mistake.

The fellows (teachers) are hard at work planning a ‘Slice of the Summer Institute’ for the last week.  Administrators, principals, and other decision makers are invited to come and witness the hard work of the fellows over the summer. The fellows are focused on making these powerful ‘higher-ups’ see the magic that happens every summer in SI’s across the country.  Teachers teaching teachers, growing a community from the ground up in a few short weeks, a community that will make a difference in kids’ lives for years to come.

Sometimes we need to be in a room with other people who love what they do, too.


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