Fri, 25 May 2012 11:48:05 -0800WeeblySat, 19 Mar 2011 09:27:47 -0800http://www.ekuwritingproject.org/5/post/2011/03/restore-national-writing-project-funding.htmlFor background, visit: Congress, Obama Cut Funding for National Writing Project & Cooperative Catalyst

My Writing Project testimonial starts in the early 1980's when I was a graduate student at LSU, and my advisor, David England, applied to NWP for site funding.  NWP founder, Jim Gray, visited us in Baton Rouge to help us think through what we hoped to achieve.  Although my roll was little more than taking notes and arranging meeting locations, I was hooked by Jim's intensity.  He valued David's ideas while providing guidance in approaches that were successful elsewhere.  That summer, I participated in my first Summer Institute and knew I had found gold.  Teachers from all areas of Baton Rouge Parrish participated, sharing themselves and their teaching practices while learning together how to think about improving the teaching of writing.  The relationships built that summer modeled how teachers can help teachers within their own schools, districts and region. 

Several years later when I was teaching at Eastern Michigan University, Kathy Fleischer, EMWP Director, invited me to co-direct the project, alternating leadership of the Summer Institute.  I had another glorious summer with teachers who taught me so much about writing as I helped them share their teaching victories and reflect on why they succeeded.  The NWP meeting that fall showed me ways that I could further involve those teachers in workshops around our region.  When I moved from Michigan, I feared by Writing Project days were hehind me, but later was blessed to be hired as director of the EKUWP in the summer of 2002.  At EKU, I've worked not only with the nearly 150 teachers participants in EKUWP Summer Institutes since 2003, but dozens of EKUWP teachers who participated with Charles Whitaker before then.  In addition to that crowd, I've met and worked with hundreds of teachers in schools in the EKU service region and across the state.  I'm never disappointed in the quality of the programs and the dedication of the teachers involved.

Each of the eight years I've directed EKUWP. I've attended the NWP annual meeting and in several additional institutes and conferences.  NWP is the spine that holds the work of the sites upright, providing the nerve center for the network of more than 200 sites with flexibility and grace.  NWP is the structural base for site leaders and teachers who engage in Writing Project work because it make a difference in their teaching lives as well as in the writing development of their students.  Without an adequately funded NWP, this work would atrophe, and the teaching of writing in our nation's schools would lose esteem and focus.  Students in our schools need the National Writing Project!

Please contact your Members of Congress and ask that they restore funding to the National Writing Project.
Thank you,
Sally Martin

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