MUWP Leadership Team

How did I come to writing project?  I came for the free graduate credit.  It sounds harsh, doesn’t it?  I always think of my original purpose when I hear site directors or leaders from around the country at national meetings make statements like: “We have to find ways to recruit true leaders.  We can’t keep taking applicants who only are motivated by the credit.”  I would like to tell a story that I always knew writing project had something for me and I finally got there.  I would like to tell a story about how I was on the look-out for a professional home and in my systematic search found the writing project.  But those are not my stories to tell.  The truth is that I was looking for six hours grad credit to make sure my teaching certificate stayed valid.  I wasn’t expecting to become a leader.  I didn’t want to become a leader.  I wanted to take a class that wouldn’t interfere with my life too much but would be interesting and perhaps a little fun.  There’s some irony in my drafting my leadership story today, 12 years later, but I won’t go into that now.

I completed my first summer institute with West Virginia Writing Project, which conducted an on-site Summer Institute in Logan County.  I don’t remember the flyer or brochure that I read, but I vaguely remember filling out a form.  It didn’t occur to me that it was an application.  I thought I was registering.  I didn’t know that I would need to interview, and didn’t realize that I had interviewed until years later, but I remember being called to the office at school because someone from COGS (the college of graduate studies) wanted to speak with me on the phone.  It was Dr. Fran Simone, the director of the West Virginia Writing Project, and in hind-sight I now realize she was conducting a phone interview.  I don’t remember her ever telling me that it was an interview.  I don’t really even remember what we talked about, but I do remember that at the end of the conversation I knew there was going to be a class kick off meeting one evening at Chapmanville Middle School.  I said to a colleague “That’s the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had on the phone.  Are all people from the University level that odd?”  I guess it was a strange conversation, since I didn’t know it was an interview. 

I remember the kick off meeting for that SI group.  I learned that as participants we were called “fellows”.  I learned that we were expected to “write and share” frequently.  It’s ironic that, as an English teacher, I had no idea what that meant.  We were in the commons are of Chapmanville Middle School, and Fran, as SI director, gave some information and had us do an opening write.  My strongest memory of that evening is that we were placed in our first “writer’s response groups” and I was in a group with an English teacher I only knew peripherally, and for whom I had zero respect, and an art teacher, who I did not know.  We sat around the table looking at each other with almost nothing to say.  We clearly had not one thing in common, and were incapable of finding common ground on our own. 

Then the event was over, and I went home, and in five or six weeks the school year was finished and it was time for the summer institute to begin.  There was no contact between any of the fellows or SI facilitators during that time, and I largely forgot the entire kick off meeting, until the evening before the first day of institute, when I began to really think back to the kick-off.  I replayed the disaster of writer’s response group over and over in my mind.  I determined that there was no way I fit in with the group.  I became convinced that the problem was the expectation that I write with no other particular direction.  After all, I had ever been a good student, and when I clearly understood the expectations of the instructor I gave them exactly what they wanted for an “A”.  I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the fault must undoubtedly be with the facilitator.  Or the teachers in my group.  Or the assignment.  But certainly not with me or my understanding of teaching. 

Then I began thinking about my primary teaching role at the time.  I was a science teacher in my high school, teaching Applied Physics.  Clearly this writing stuff wouldn’t really affect me.  I doubted anyone could find a way to get me to connect to writing in science class, so I thought that I would armor myself with my science teacher mind set and make it really hard for the Summer Institute facilitators to get to me. 

By the next morning I had talked myself out of participating in Summer Institute.  Trying to force myself to get my body to the school, I stopped walking on the bridge that crossed the creek to my house, on the way to my car, and couldn’t go another step further.  My husband found me standing there when he came out of the house to go to work.  I told him “I just can’t do this.  Those people are too weird.  I’ll hate this.  I was so stupid to sign up for four weeks of this shit.  Four weeks of the three of us looking at each other?  I’ll die.  I’ll explode.  I’ll go Julia Sugarbaker!”  And Ernie gave me no sympathy.  He refused to hear me whine.  “Get down there!” he barked .  “You’ve got to get those hours.  Plus they’re free.  You’re not going to pass up a deal like that.  Do you want to spend your money on tuition when you can get a free class in Chapmanville?”  Ernie’s smart.  He knew his audience.  He played up to my basic Baisden tight-wad nature and forced me to go.  “Take a book,” he continued, “if it gets boring you can read.  It won’t be too bad.”  I always tell this story verbally by saying that I went wailing and crying and gnashing my teeth into the car and that all the way down to Chapmanville I sobbed, but that’s just an exaggerated truth.  The truth is I went to that first day of SI pissed off at myself, because I just couldn’t pass up a good deal like free credit.  I was mad because in my basic heart of hearts I’m cheap, and I knew that morning as the sun shone over the beautiful mountains and the fog rose up out of the hollers I was passing that I was going to hate all 20 days of that ignorant class.

Clear memories of the morning are dimming with age and a bad thyroid, but I remember a few specifics.  I remember that another girl, also named Tracy, showed up as a fellow of the SI, and interestingly enough she was carrying the same novel I was–The Witching Hour by Anne Rice.  I remember that I was nervous.  Fran was already there arranging the room, and I couldn’t understand her very clear obsession with the way the tables and chairs were placed.  It seemed to me that rows had worked fine for the last 200 years of public education, so I couldn’t understand her compulsion to have the ‘circle balanced’ as she kept saying.  I took that as another sign that these people were just too weird for me.  I don’t remember the opening activities, but I remember that sometime during that day we were given a chapter from one of Donald Murray’s books with which we were to read and respond.  And that’s when I got hooked.  That’s when I first began to think “Wow!  There might be something to this”.  In his book Murray wrote that drafting is done “with velocity”.  Velocity was a word I understood from my science background.  To move with velocity is to move in a specific direction.  Velocity is not speed.  Speed is simply rate – how fast or slow something moves.  Velocity adds the layer of direction.  By writing to me that drafting should be done with velocity Murray helped me begin the first drawing together of two parts of my teaching spirit that had been disparate – the Language Arts and the Science teacher sides of me began to envision ways we could connect.

By the end of the first day I really was converted.  I wish I knew how Fran, and Paul Epstein (the SI co-facilitator) created that magic that caught me, but the real point is that it happened.  Summer Institute turned out to be a much better bargain that I thought it would be, since I ended up with a professional teaching home that I continue to work on, remodel, and upgrade, much as I do the physical house that I live in. 

So why do I think this first intro to the SI model is so important to my development as a leader of my site?  Because once I was hooked, much against my will, I could not leave the work of the National Writing Project.  I hungered to be around teachers who love students, and who constantly seek to improve their teaching practice.  I thrive on the simple thrill of discovering something new, and the many layers of writing project provide that for me on a regular basis.  I’m like an adrenaline junky working as an ER nurse – except I get my adrenaline from the next great written idea, word, line or image that my students and co-teachers create.  Because I was hooked I literally threw myself at writing project leaders in an effort to stay connected to the site.  I didn’t know there was a state or national network.  I didn’t have an idea that I wanted to be a leader in my community.  I simply knew that my teaching life was being dramatically changed by writing project, and I didn’t want to be separated for long from the work.  I was like a new Christian who wants to sit and absorb.  If it meant that I had to trade a little labor to get to be included in writing project events, that was worth it to me. 

I also think my first introduction to the summer institute model is important to my thinking about applications that come to summer institute, and the teachers who come through our front doors and belly up to the table.  I myself wasn’t motivated to find some wonderful professional development community and home.  I wasn’t motivated to be a teacher of teachers.  I wasn’t particularly motivated to get along with the members of the group my first summer.  But I am not heartily glad that Dr. Fran Simone and Paul Epstein didn’t write me off as a lost cause the minute they detected my bad attitude and reluctance.  I know that it’s important for leaders of writing projects to know that strong leaders (and I am one, now) can come to the table for all the wrong reasons, but stay at the table for all the right reasons. 

The next summer Marshall University Writing Project decided to visit Logan and do an on-site summer institute.  I applied so fast I imagine mine must have been the first application they received.  I called Dolores Johnson, the director and volunteered to do anything she needed.  I remember that I ended up being demo coach that summer.  I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but I knew I was willing to learn, if it meant being in the Summer Institute again.  From that first taste of leadership I began a love affair with growing as a leader in The National Writing Project. 

I’ve written all this to remind myself to think about the applications of the teachers who apply for the SI.  Today, as a director and member of a national leadership team, I have a very clear idea about what a strong applicant to SI is like.  Ironically though, I didn’t meet my own criteria, when I began 12 years ago.  Twelve years ago I was looking for free credit. Now, I know there is so much more available to a teacher who comes to the SI.  It’s imperative that as we grow as leaders, we don’t lose sight of our own first, humble roots in the work. 

Category: TracyB | No Comments »

I Have a Problem 

Returning to Corbly Hall on the beautiful campus of Marshall University brought back many memories. Since I was a certified language arts teacher, and Marshall University was my educational home, I was on familiar ground. I desperately needed Senior Seminar, but it was only taught during the school day. I had a job and knew there was no way that I could take the class.

Dr. Shirley Lumpkin taught the class, so I took one day of spring break to go to Huntington to try to get some arrangements made to solve my problem. Upon entering Shirley Lumpkin’s office, I commenced by telling her about “my problem.” Not only was  I furthering my education by taking classes designed to fulfill requirements for a Master’s Degree, but I was also taking courses to upgrade my English/language arts degree from grades 5-8 to grades 5-12. I was tired of being RIF’ed every year. By having the certification to include grades 5-12, I would have more leverage the following spring when teachers would be notified that their services were no longer needed.

When I entered Shirley’s office, I told her, “I have a problem. I know it’s my problem, but I need your help. I need your class which is taught only during the day when I was at work.” Living and working in Logan County presented a scheduling conflict. I nervously rambled on until Dr. Lumpkin started interviewing me.

“How long have you been teaching?” She asked.

I replied, “Five years.”

“What grade level do you teach?”

I told her that I taught seventh grade English.

As the discussion continued, she inquired about classroom practices and the types of writing in which my students were involved. She stood up and said, “Come with me.”

Following the Leader

Shirley whisked me upstairs to the English Department and introduced me to Dolores Johnson, Director of Marshall University Writing Project and related my story to Dolores. The two ladies said they had an offer for me. These ladies were responsible for the Writing Project at the university, and I had tried several times to arrange my summer schedule so I could become a participant. Summer time was always spent taking graduate classes; therefore, I had not been able to do Writing Project.

Earlier that morning, brochures for the 1994 Summer Institute had arrived and Dolores was pleased to share them. Shirley proceeded to make me the offer of a lifetime. If would take the six hour professional development, they would ask the dean to allow the substitution of Writing Project for Summer Seminar. Looking back to that spring day, I now realize how miraculous it was go on campus without an appointment with any of the college professors and come face-to-face with all of those people who would be responsible for changing my life in a dramatic way.

When I left campus that day, I was so thrilled. The dean of the English Department agreed to the substitution of the classes. The College of Education agreed to the course changes. The letters from the dean in the English Department and one from Shirley became inhabitants in my file in the College of Education. I will forget the assistance and kindness that Shirley Lumpkin and Dolores Johnson extended to me that day.

Applications in Hand

Nor only was I invited to participate, but I was given three additional applications to bring back to Logan to recruit three more teachers. On monday morning, I shared my story with a dear friend and mentor, Jane Long.  From the beginning of my career, Jane had been available for me.  We had participated in other professional development together, so it was only natural for me to ask her to go with me. 

Jane and I waited for lunch so we could call the board of education to discuss making necessary contacts in order for us to attend.  I spoke with Dr. Pat Joe White, Director of English/Language Arts in the county.  He said that he coming to schoolt that day any way, so he would comee upstairs and talk to me.  Jane and I definitely wanted to attend.  He also asked that we contact Paula White and Lynn Woods.  We had four teachers to register and wait for time to head to Huntington.  I had waited for this opportunity for so long.  

The summer of 1994 was awesome. For four weeks we wrote. We laughed. We cried. We broke bread together. I grew as a professional educator that summer; I was energized and anxious to take the new ideas back to my classroom.  I could not participate in Writing Project in 1995 because I was scheduled to take a seminar on Shakespeare.  Of all the places in Corbly Hall to take a class, we were assigned a room down the hall from Writing Project.  Each time I heard laughter wafting out of the room and down the hallway to my classroom, my mind returned to 1994 when I sat in that room and once again became a writer and a teacher of writing.  I longed to be there but when Shakespeare called, I had to say “Yes!”

Becoming a Writing Project Leader

After attending the Summer Institute for two years, I was asked to co-direct a creative writing camp for students in Logan County with Tracy Baisden. It turned out to be the “golden egg” the goose laid. Working with students using the model of the National Writing Project was appreciated by the students, other teachers, the local school board, and Dolores Johnson. Many of the teacher who had children that attended the first writing camp would later become Writing Project Teacher Consulants too. 

In 1998, I was invited to co-direct Logan County’s first Summer Institute. The work that began as a small wish turned into a partnership between MUWP and Logan County Schools. Each year the work has grown, and the first writing project satellite was born. Our work-creative writing camps, weekend round-up, summer institute, in-service programs for teachers-was desperately needed. Many of the teachers in our area have small children and traveling to campus was not an option for them. Bringing the programs to Logan County and the coalfields of Southern West Virginia introduced teachers to quality programs modeled after NWP. The Satellite has now grown into Coalfield Writers. We continue to grow and bring services to local teachers and students.

Staying involved with National Writing Project has been the easiest hard work that I have ever participated in. Teacher Leadership in Writing Project is ever changing but continues to provides opportunities to participate in programs on the school level, the county level, state level, nationally and internationally. I am from the head of a “holler” in an extremely rural area in Logan County. A poor kid, such as I was, could never have imagined or dreamed big enough for opportunities that Writing Project has provided.

Traveling Abroad

Thanks to Writing Project, I was given an opportunity to go to Europe to present to an international audience the work being done in classrooms in our area.  Tracy Baisden from Logan, Amy McElroy from Huntington, and I submitted a proposal on writing poetry to enhance other areas of student writing.  After the conference, we toured Amsterdam and London.  While in Amsterdam, we had the opportunity to go the Anne Frank House. One of the most profound moments in my life occurred during that visit.  I was moved beyond words.  Tears filled my eyes and heart.  Anne Frank and the others that co-habitated the annex came to life right before my eyes.  I had read the play with my students and watched the video, but to walk up the hidden stairs, to walk where the Franks had hidden, to look out the window as Anne and Peter had, and to see the marks where Mrs. Frank had measured the childrens’ growth with pencil marks on the wall was too much for me to comprehend.

The experience in the Anne Frank House moved in a way that no literature or historic place had ever done before.  Since that time I have become an avid student and teacher of the Holocaust and the many atrocities that were delivered to the European Jews.  Writing Project allowed me to study the Holocaust in an in-depth way.  During the summer of 2007, I received one of eighteen fellowships to study at the WWII Memorial Library in New York City with the Holocaust Educators Network.  I am sure that the recommendation from Shirley played a key role in this. 

Currently, with guidance from Shirley and Dolores at MUWP, Tracy Baisden, Karen Dillon, and the other TCs at Coalfield Writers, I am working on a multi-cultural creative writing camp for middle school students.  The theme is Diversity University.  We will train a cadre of teachers who will then expand our work across our service area.  I would never have known about the opportunity to study in NYC if it had not been for Writing Project.  Now, I have another chance to be a teacher leader and extend the work to others.  

Staying Connected

I stay involved with Writing Project because it is always brand new. The learning community extends beyond the four walls of my classroom; it validates and confirms that I am a better teacher because of Writing Project.

Each year, I become a stronger teacher of writing. Anything that I learn circles around and fuels my excitement of teaching writing. Since beginning my career, I have seen many programs come and just as many go. But, Writing Project is different; it has been actively involved in training teachers to train other teachers how to utilized writing for over thirty years.

I appreciate all the opportunities that Marshall University Writing Project has provided in the past and look forward to remaining actively involved. Shirley Lumpkin and Dolores Johnson continue to encourage me to participate in programs that will enhance the education of my students and other teachers in the coalfields of southern West Virginia.

Another one of my passions is mentoring beginning teachers; I was asked to participate in the New Teacher Initiative. Through that program, I was able to work with beginning teachers to help them learn how to design and deliver writing instruction in their particular disciplines. NTI allowed me to work on a national level, state level, and locally. Later, I was a participant in a professional writing retreat in Seattle, Washington, and I wrote about my experiences as a mentor.  I finished a draft on how writing impacted two young men that I worked with as a mentor.  I intended to pull it back out, make revisions and perhaps submit it to one of the NWP publications.

My professional home is National Writing Project.  I has been involved with NCTE for years, but is NWP that stays near and dear to my heart.  I love the work and look forward to many more years with the MUWP and Coalfield Writers.

Category: MaryH | No Comments »

          In Donna Pasternak’s Spring 2000 come kind of education class we heard about the illustrious Writing Project. It just came up every now and then. At the time I had no idea what it was, but it sounded very prestigious. I was especially enthralled after having seen Amy McElroy’s presentation on multigenre projects. How in the world did she get her students to produce such creative research projects? One of her kids actually built a mailbox! I was still a substitute and hadn’t had the opportunity to have my own class, but surely her classes were all flukes. Mrs. McElroy couldn’t get students to build mailboxes and flowerpots to house research projects unless they were mutants. Did they only allow mutants at St. Joe? Was private school “where it’s at”? No…I didn’t go there. I went to the old Huntington High. Besides, most kids had the same potential. What was the difference?

Score! I landed a job at Chesapeake High School for the fall of 2000. I bought a new car; my 1986 Buick Cutlass Supreme just was cutting it – poor Artie the Croatian Armadillo. I moved into a scary little house with two roommates that September and continued my graduate classes. With no boyfriend or social life school and school were no problem, and I found myself looking for things to get into. I noticed fliers and jabber about this Marshall University Writing Project thing and considered getting into that. After all, it did offer six graduate hours tuition free. I could dig that. It was supposed to be really awesome too.

I looked into it. I talked to Dr. Johnson in her office. I noticed she had a picture of Chris Johnson on one of her shelves. We’d gone to school together. A little less intimidating. I’d never had Dr. Johnson for a class, and this was The Marshall University Writing Project. You had to apply to go to this thing. Dr. Johnson reassured me and gave me the proper papers. But alas, it was not to be. I decided to use the summer to visit my sister in Connecticut. I needed a break – teaching wasn’t exactly what I thought. Those kids weren’t very nice and they didn’t try very hard. So, I ended up getting a three week carpentry internship at a theatre in Sharon, Connecticut and having the best lobster ever in Bar Harbor, Maine. Writing Project would have to wait until next summer.

I met my future husband before the beginning of school in the summer of 2001 and decided to satisfy my foreign language requirement the next summer by traveling to Peru and studying Spanish for two months and then testing out when I got back. Thus, my social life suddenly became packed and my summer would be stolen once again. But I kept hearing about Writing Project. At my cousin’s wedding after I returned from Peru in 2002, I spoke with my Aunt Lillian who had just graduated from Summer Institute. She said that Donna Pasternak really liked me and that Writing Project was a great experience even though it was difficult. Lillian seemed genuinely proud and happy to have invested the time Summer Institute required. If she could do that and raise what seemed like a million kids, there was no reason I couldn’t. Besides teaching wasn’t going so well. I needed refreshed. Motivating seemed my biggest problem, and this Writing Project thing had gotten rave reviews.

The spring of 2003 I turned in my application and before I knew it I was sitting in the Huntington Museum of Art filling out a recipe for teachers and eating a lemon bar. Toodie Ray look wild and interesting. Wow. There was a new level of intimidation floating through the tasteful room. I had only been teaching three years, and all these people looked like my parents. And yet, they seemed a bit anxious themselves.

Once Summer Institute began the rumors were confirmed. Yes, it was a difficult “class,” but the freedom to write what we wanted, explore our own pedagogy, and experience what others were going did rejuvenate my teaching spirit. I looked forward to returning to the classroom to test my new theories and see what I could make work.

The fall follow-ups were like spurts of caffeine the day after an all-nighter. They helped me gather my strength long enough to be a “good teacher” until the next one came around. This Writing Project was like steroids for teachers. Performance drugs at their best – these suckers were legal, and they didn’t cause you to morph into a hairy deep-throated beast incapable of reproduction.  Hooray! I’d found a teacher spa.

The summer of 2004 brought a round of busyness that would not allow me access to my new spa. I took French and German at the same time, got married, bought a house, and passed my comprehensive exams – in that order.

It was that same fall, while setting up house that my curriculum director sought me out to attend the national meeting in Indianapolis. I think now that he was confused and really just wanted me to go to NCTE. But he claimed to want to run a Writing Project site in Ohio, and it seemed like a pretty good trip for me. The school paid for me to go to NCTE and for all my accommodations. All I had to do was figure out how to start a site. If the beginning of Summer Institute was intimidating, I’d surely pee my pants before I got to Indiana. I called Dolores Johnson (the formality of doctor had been dropped the first day of SI). She was thrilled I was going, and we said we’d see each other there.

I ran into some people from MUWP that first day and got to know them a bit as the weekend progressed. I didn’t have any of the same workshops, and I was mostly on my own, but just being there and feeling everyone’s energy was inspiration enough to feed me through the spring.

After my incidental trip to the national meeting, I found myself at the planning meeting in January and as a director of SI the following summer. I was supposed to shadow, but the Writing Project gods had another plan for me.

Although having a baby or two has limited my involvement recently, I still love Project and feel as though I would be less of a teacher without it. Thus, I foresee a sequel to my leadership story in the none-to-distant future.

Category: MelanieH | 1 Comment »

LEADER?

            Writing Project came along for me in 1985 when I was in a hot fever of search for something, anything that seemed more humane, more authentic, more honorable than what I’d been taught and what I saw around me as supposedly good teaching practice.  I’d read some works by new researchers in composition.  I suppose I should go back and say that my first year of teaching, I was assigned a class of 10^th grade composition and I’d been really taken aback.   Never had I had a class where composition was really taught.  At the university, the composition class was one where we were assigned a topic and graded on it.  I can’t recall one lesson on how to write, or what the process of writing was all about.   I probably would have never taught, if I’d learned the art of writing earlier in my life.  But that is another story, a related story , but another one still.  The words “writing project” made me think that I would sit in a class for five weeks and take notes on all the new theories about writing that I’d recently heard about.

            John McKernan came to HHS and recruited actively five or six teachers in 1985 for the first WP –SI at Marshall.  I was in that group.  The first night, we sat at an opening banquet and we were assigned to write to some prompt I can’t even remember now.  Talk about fear.  Talk about anxiety.(It was an old, familiar anxiety, however)  Then we were asked to read what we had written aloud to the group there whom we did not know, did not trust yet, did not even care about. (This bumped the anxiety up by 50%)   It was so intimidating that I wasn’t sure I would return.  But somehow, the following Monday morning I sat in the classroom with a new journal in my hand and a favorite pen  ready to go.  The three university professors began the course with us in a circle.  I can remember thinking that sure leveled out the playing field.  Of course we all knew who was university and who was public school and it was intimidating too.( the theme of this paragraph is in-tim-i-dation)

     It was amazing because by the end of the first day, I knew I’d be back.  I could see that the SI was not going to be like any class I’d ever had before.  The circle, our level playing field, the tell tale shaking of the hand of one of the instructors, the trembling voices of each one of us as we read and tried to do what was asked of us in sharing our thoughts and feelings about teaching, about writing, about learning and growing.  In addition there were perks of all sorts,—-new books, a big green MU notebook, articles that enticed and spoke to concerns I had as a teacher.  Intimidation evolved into  inspiration;  it was like coming to a place called home that I’d known some other time.  Teacher talk abounded.  We could not get enough.   Then there were guest speakers from New York, from MU, from everywhere.  And there was us and our demos that taught too.   And there were books about every thing you could want to know– we thought then.

       At the end of the SI, we were all afire with our new take on teaching and writing and teaching writing.  No more enthusiastic bunch ever returned to school than that first year of MUWP—SI.     The following spring, Shirley and John invited several of us back to work with writing groups for the new SI 96.   How wonderful to be chosen to return and get credit for it, and share with others what had so inspired us.  The fire that had started the summer before blazed ever more brightly, and  all we wanted  was to ignite every teacher with the desire to write and use writing in their teaching.  

       But you know it wasn’t just the joy of it for ourselves, it was the transformation that happened within us as we walked again in the shoes of our students in our own learning and felt as they felt, as we had felt as young students when teachers had asked us to expose ourselves through our writing, reading or speaking.  To feel that way again from the perspective of a teacher transformed  how we saw ourselves as teachers  and  as students, and more importantly, how we saw our students .   It was transforming also to learn that there was a better way of dealing with raw exposure in the classroom, that higher ways than criticism and judgment and faultfinding existed ( which had been the only way teachers had taught writing and graded writing and talked about student writing that I’d ever known as student and teacher.) It became then a spiritual experience, because if alternative ways of seeing existed there, then they possibly existed in other experiences of living as well. Some place had opened within, some closeted space had experienced a ray of light.

       And some of us were invited back.  What did that say to us?   What did that mean?  The ray expanded and felt warmer and brighter, like a sun. Then, NCTE beckoned.  And next, the NWP annual conference invited us in like family. We sat around big tables in large banquet rooms and shared practices.  We wrote and shared writings.  We planned new vistas in emerging fields of work.  We shared new dreams as new faces, new ideas, new voices, excited, sharing, giving and wanting to give even more, renewed our joy each summer institute that followed.

 Writing project from this vantage point reminds me of a well fed growing child, changing every day, going through periods of intense activity,  rambunctious and loud, then quiet and still.   Growing.  Leading a site of an ever-changing entity even at a local level stretches the imagination.  I think leader is perhaps the wrong word.  It takes a village.  It takes a village of committed, common thinking folk who care about the child.  I worked with people who were centered in that way.  And though I was called the leader, it was not so; it was the village. 

Tags: , leadership, muwp | Category: DoloresJ | No Comments »

MUWP LEADERSHIP STORY

by Diana Clay

      It all started with a picture in my head and a picture on the wall.  That was the first dose that was given freely to me, and that led to this addiction.  The time was late August in 1994.  I had dropped my 12 year old son off at the football field on my way to the back to school workshops.  Steam appeared to rise off the green field as the heat of the early morning burned away the night’s dew.  I couldn’t sit there and watch it, go back home, or even go get a cup of coffee because I had to attend staff development workshops to get CE hours before the school year began.  I entered the halls at LHS dreading the 3 hour workshop before lunch.  The session, I learned, was being conducted by teachers who had spent 5 weeks of their summer in a writing program.  I knew these people.  One of them was an art teacher and one of them was my cousin.  My decision to be in their room was based solely on knowing the presenters.  They started, miracle of miracles, by asking us to write about a scene from our morning.  So—I wrote about my son and the view of the field.  That was the picture in my head.  Later in the morning they chose some paintings—obscure—maybe the kind you find on the pages of a collectable calendar—and had us look at them and choose the one that said something to us to use as a writing prompt.  That picture, that doesn’t stay in my memory, was an open pathway to the untapped writer within finding direction to move into the light offered by pen and paper.                         

            Those presenters had attended the first NWP Summer Institute that had been brought to Logan County.  They had been converted.  Over the next several years, before the educational system decided that staff development needs to be sustained and ongoing about site based issues, I had to attend a number of 3 hour sessions.  I hunted these SI people down like a lion stalks its prey.  By this time I learned that there were two names that were synonymous with good workshops.  One was Tracy Baisden, my cousin from the first session, and the other, Mary Hawkins, who used to be Louise Robison when we regularly haunted the shelves of the library at Logan Central Junior High in the mid 60’s hunting for reading material as blind puppies see for a mother’s teat.  We didn’t really understand what those books provided, but it nourished us as our eyes were opened and our minds grew.  I digress.  These two teachers, both with less experience than me, were presenting workshops that made an opportunity for me to express my thoughts and feelings on paper as well as give me ideas to take back to my classroom.

            Then they expanded.  From the workshops for teachers, they  moved on to offering something for kids—and that son who walked onto that football field those several years back was of the right age to attend.  He went to a Kids Creative Writing Camp in the summer—and liked it, he really liked it.  I went to their coffee house to showcase the kids writing—and I liked it as well.  Then within the next year, not only were these two teachers doing the kids camp, they were going to offer in Logan County the SI that had started it all.  I couldn’t go.  Being a single parent, I had summer work and the stipend wasn’t enough.  A couple of years went by and things changed as they always do. The oldest child was away at college, and both she and the son previously mentioned were now working.   My summer work had changed, so now I could take this class.  Yes, it was a class-I thought.  As the weeks flew by, I learned that class was not the right term.  The SI was more.  It was therapeutic.  It was cathartic.  It was fun.  It was bonding and it became addictive.  The beginning of the picture in my head and the picture on the wall was now an integral part of my persona.  I wanted to be a part of this group of people.  I came back the next year, and the next year.  I guess they recruited me—but it didn’t take much work.  They let me help with the kids’ camp.  They let me become an ethnographer. The let me ride along to a National Meeting.  Since that initial SI in 2000, I have had something to do with every SI and since the next fall when I attended NWP in Baltimore, I have not missed a national meeting.  I became a leader for a number of reasons.  The main one, I think is the same reason that I became a cook.  I like to eat and I need to eat, so I must be able to feed myself, and if I prepare it, I know it’s going to be good to eat and good for me.  So is Writing Project.  I like to write and I need to write, so I must be one who helps prepare the way for the writing. 

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Mike

I first became interested in the Writing Project through contact with several members of the Leadership team for Tech Matters.  Tech Matters was hosted at Marshall under the direction of Karen McComas, some might notice the same last name and wonder if we are related, we are, she is my better half.  I assisted Karen by driving people to and from events and hosting many of the leaders in the social events of the evenings.  I saw people who shared the same passion for learning and teaching that I had.  I could see that these “techies” were looking and searching for the best teaching tools and methodologies that could inspire and motivate their students.   I decided that I wanted to be a part of such a group and I signed up to be a fellow in the summer of 2006. 

I had a positive experience and really felt that I was able to find my writer side in the Summer Institute that summer. I learned about my personal writing and what it meant to write.  I was shocked when George Ella Lyon showed just how much work went into writing a short story for young children.  I thought you just sat down and wrote something, I mean, I would just sit down and solve math problems, why would someone spend so much time writing and re-writing?  I learned that writing is a process not an event.  This one lesson will and already has made me a better teacher.  I was also able to reflect on my teaching and practices and really take a look at the research behind what I was doing in the classroom.  I put quite a bit of work into my demo and was able to connect what I was doing to what the research suggests I should be doing.  Although I have been teaching for quite sometime, it was exciting showing what I had learned and how I incorporated it into my teaching.   Afternoons were primarily set aside for technology and its uses for teacher.  Karen was the facilitator of this part of the Summer Institute and I had already had the opportunity to learn from her about many of the things that she exposed to the fellows through both her teaching and the members of her tech team that came in at different times during the SI.  Karen devised a process of teaching and exposing teachers to technologies that fellows could embed in their teaching and I was able to watch, learn, and participate in her efforts.  Her leadership skills were vastly superior to mine and I was able to watch and gather all information about technology, teaching, and teaching teachers.

I was honored when I was chosen to be a member of the Summer Institute leadership team for the next summer, 2007.  I was one of four selected to be SI facilitators and worked with Diane Clay, Peggie Henderson-Murphy and Melanie Hughes developing and then facilitating SI.  The four of us were there in the morning to write and share during our sacred writing and all of us were there to participate in each of the demonstrations as leaders of writing groups that wrote written responses to each fellow.  We also lead reading groups that read and discussed our selected books.  In the afternoon, much like the year before, we spent the majority of the time on technology and teaching.  Again, through the guidance of Karen, I was able to work with the fellows and assist them as they learned to make blogs, post on their blogs, use nicenet to post responses to exit slips, use google alerts, readers, find resources, and other assistance as necessary.  I think we developed a pretty good leadership team.  Peggy has good organization skills that are important in an SI leadership group and Diane has great people skills and makes everyone feel welcome and special.  I think I was able to also use my people skills and use them even more so in the afternoon tech sessions.

I have found that leadership is making others better at what they do and I have enjoyed the opportunity to exactly do that through working with the MUWP and the MUWP tech team.  I have grown as a leader and would like to thank Amy, Peggy, Melanie, Diane, and Karen for your support and guidance over the last couple of years.

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WRITING PROJECT LEADERSHIP STORYA ROUGH DRAFT REFLECTION: 1/6/08Amy McElroy 

            I do not have time to be brief here—I just read that line somewhere and of course it means that well-crafted writing takes real time and effort.  It takes lots of work to be concise and brief.  I’ve currently got about fifteen minutes and that’s probably not all in one chunk—such as it is right now.  But writing still must be worked in—even if for the briefest of time. 

            I remember Spring Semester 1997, one semester of teaching under my belt, a temporary teaching license; six graduate hours to fulfill over the next three years.  I happened to be walking up the path to Corbly Hall and I literally stepped on a pink flier.  The flier was advertising this year’s Writing Project Summer Institute.  Dr. Dolores Johnson’s office was on the bottom.  Her office was in Corbly—I ran up.  The flier said I could get six hours of graduate credit!  I filled out an application and began my Writing Project journey that summer.  I was the first one there on that first morning and I immediately saw my 8^th grade English teacher, Rosemary Grant.  She was one of the facilitators of the Summer Institute.  And then…whom should I see but The Dr. Lumpkin!!!  Oh my God!  She sat right beside me.  Was she in this class?  I’m quite sure I can’t be in a peer response group with her.  But of course, The Shirley has taught me most everything I know and do in the classroom—literally and figuratively! 

            While Writing Project was, is, and ever shall be my life line to me in terms of my professionalism and to my sense of being a learner, it was not some foreign place with new bizarre ideas.  Remember, I had been properly “lumpkinized.”  Over the course of my college career I had taken several courses from her:  as a Freshman in 1990, Eng. 201H, as a Senior, Spring of 1994, Rhetoric for Teachers, Spring of 1994 Senior Seminar.  Yes, I said Spring 1994 twice!  That’s two Lumpkin classes in one semester!!  And finally as a graduate student in 1996, a clinical course for English teachers.  So the notions of process and hard work were very much ingrained in me as writer, learner, and teacher.  What writing Project was for me in those early years was affirmation and support.  I did not have much of a teacher network early on in my career—even now at my current school it is tenuous, random and haphazard at best.  But Writing Project was a place where being a teacher was a grand thing; where what I believed was right and good about teaching came into focus!  It was a place where I was nurtured as a person and a professional.  Writing Project wasn’t about rockets shooting off and the earth moving under my feet.  It really was a place, a concept where my ideologies were confirmed.

Most of the time when I think about leadership—in a generic or universal way—I think about experts guiding others.  I have never felt that way in terms of my leadership positions in Writing Project.  I see myself first and foremost as a fellow learner.  I think it was difficult for me at the start to be in a leadership position.  I was young.  I had worked with Marshall’s Writing Project as a fellow for two years and participated marginally the third.  It was after that that Dolores asked me to be a co-director.  I was flattered!!  But really, I just figured that MUWP must be desperate to ask me!  That first summer running the Summer Institute was frustrating and rewarding.  I really was not sure of my exact roles.  I always felt like I didn’t quite know what I should be doing.  But as Shirley has so often said, “Trust the Process.” Writing Project, as a concept and a process, works.  I just plugged into the plan and it worked!

I slowly began to define and decide what it meant for me to be a leader within the MUWP community.  Much of this definition was influenced by evolving teaching philosophy; Parker Palmer; my participation in the National/Professional Community—NCTE (presentations), NWP (Social Action); my participation at the International level—Conference in Utrech (presentations); my work with Summer Youth Writing Camps; my professional reading, etc.  All of these experiences and situations strengthened me for SI leadership.  But it wasn’t exactly leadership, and this is where the defining comes in.  For me leadership is Writing Project is more about facilitating than leading.  Making it “easy” for others “to do.”  The word facilitate comes from the Latin verb,  facio, facere, feci, factus—to do, to make and the related adjective,  facilis, facilis, facile—easy.  At a closer glance we find out that facio also means to compose, create, confer, grant, practice, suffer.  All of these things seem to me to be good leadership ideas. The adjective’s meanings expand to mean easy-going, good natured, ready, and quick.  My students dearly love this word, particularly the third person singular present tense form, facit, for obvious reasons, I think.  But for me these words help inform my concept of leadership; not just in terms of Writing Project, but in my classroom as well.  I see leadership through this lens as a way to help others sdiscover what they know, what they need and want to know.  I have found Writing Project a place to simultaneously challenge people and build confidence.  I strive to build on these notions in my own classroom.  I would like to be more of a facilitator in my classroom, to play the role I do in WP.  BUT, I am an incurable control freak which makes facilitator a scary place to be!  What if we have students who are not on the edge of their seats dying to discover what they know, what they need and want to know….  BUT with WP most fellows care and that’s the key.  I believe in the notion of an attitude on being in this together and extending an invitation to others to grow.  This is facilitation.  Sometimes in the classroom I call my assignments invitiations—my students stare, laugh, roll their eyes.  But really, that’s what we are doing.  We cannot force anyone to learn.  We can only offer opportunities in which they might come to that choice.  I think in Writing Project this sort of invitation to grow and learn is the kind of attitude fellows appreciate and deserve.  I think there must exist a mutual respect and a sense of equality where we all grow together.  That seems to me to be at the heart of “Teachers Teaching Teachers.”  But for all of this, leadership is a sticky thing.  I am currently not able to be the fearless, or fearful leader in WP, but I think we can always give and take something at whatever juncture we are in our lives.  We have to learn to believe that this is about our students, our colleagues, and ourselves.  

            Looking back, with only one semester of teaching I’m surprised I was accepted.  But I still think new teachers have valuable things to offer—they aren’t beat down yet!   And I’m eternally grateful to Dolores for having taken that chance on me—the day she welcomed me to summer institute and the day she called me to join the leadership team.  She helped foster a confidence in myself that I need everyday.  She has offered me opportunities to grow and learn that I could never have imagined.  She has introduced me to so many amazing people here at this table as we write together—that so sacred a communion.  She enabled me to extend these acquaintances beyond MUWP even to NWP.  So Writing Project has been about friendship too—so many good things!

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“When I am passionate about something I go at it full tilt.”  I wrote those words recently in an e-mail to Shirley.  After writing them I realized that there have only been three things in my life that I am truly passionate about:  my education, teaching and writing project.  However, when I attended Summer Institute as a fellow I was not a classroom teacher.  I had left the classroom and escaped to the university.  Being in the classroom had made me feel inadequate and self conscious.  I knew that I wasn’t reaching my students and I had no idea what to do.  I had become a teacher to make a difference and I wasn’t sure I could.  I had decided that my personality just wasn’t conducive with being a high school teacher so I began my graduate studies and decided to pursue a doctorate in English.  Between my first and second year of graduate school Dr.  Johnson asked me if I would be interested in attending Summer Institute.  I’ll admit it, I came to writing project for the six hours of graduate credit.  I had no intentions of returning to the high school classroom.  But that summer as I listened to the teachers tell their stories I started missing my students and my classroom and I began pondering the possibility of returning.

 It was an odd summer.  The public school teachers didn’t consider the college instructors to be “real” teachers.  They saw themselves as toiling alone in the trenches.  Although I still disagree with that view, it did have the effect of making me feel like I had abandoned my calling.  That I had some how let down the students I hadn’t even met yet.  I learned a lot that summer but it wasn’t the summer experience that was life changing for me.  Writing project changed my life because for the first time I believed that I could find the answers I needed to be a good teacher. 

The National Convention was in Pittsburg that year and when Dr.  Johnson asked if anyone wanted to attend I spoke up and said, “I want to go”.  I remember Dr.  Johnson looking at me sort of quizzically and saying, “Oh.”  I think she was hoping for someone else; maybe a “real” teacher.  I do not think anyone can understand what it means that I spoke up and said, “I want to go.”   I have been painfully shy all my life, but at that moment I just knew not to let the opportunity get away.  I went to Pittsburg by myself.  I barely spoke to anyone there and when invited by the MUWP group to dinner I begged off out of pure fright.  I had heard that MUWP needed facilitators for the next summer and by the time I left Pittsburg I was sure of one thing; I wanted to be one of those facilitators. 

That fall Dr.  Johnson asked the graduate students if they would be interested in joining faculty writing groups.  I jumped at the chance and specifically chose Karen McComas’ group because I knew she had something to teach me.  I was right.  Being in Karen’s writing group started me on the path of being a leader.   I watched her question, comment, work, revise, and lead.  It was the first time in my life that I sat down at table with professional people who I could respect and who treated me as a colleague and as a professional.  What is really sad about that statement is that I had taught in public schools for three years before coming to Marshall and I had never had that experience.

In January when MUWP had their annual Leadership retreat my name eventually surfaced as a possible Summer Institute facilitator.  Bart told me the next Monday that Dr.  Lumpkin was going to talk to me.  I had never met Dr.  Lumpkin.  I had seen her once breeze through at fall retreat in her black tam and purple and red clothing.  I couldn’t decide if I was excited or terrified.  A week or so went by and I was getting nervous.  I really wanted to facilitate and I was afraid it would just go away.  I would never meet Dr.  Lumpkin and she would never ask me.  Then one day I spotted her leaning over the typewriter in the English Department.  “Dr.  Lumpkin, I am Peggy Henderson Murphy and Bart said you wanted to talk to me???”  If she had paused, taken a breath or said, “About what?”  I probably would have turned around and ran out the door.  But she didn’t skip a beat. 

That Summer Diana Clay, and Karen McComas agreed to facilitate and Karen Scalf and I were to be shadows.  I have to tell you I have always found that term a bit eerie and confusing.  What is a shadow?  What does a shadow exactly do?  In my case I wrote exit slips and filled out paper work.  Now that might sound boring to you but I love paperwork.  Again the summer was a bit odd, but again I learned a lot and my faith in the model was strengthened when I attended the National Convention in Nashville.  I went to a session led by The Red Cedar Writing Project and I came away overflowing with ideas.  As a leadership team we decided to make some changes in the way we recruited fellows and we decided to hold interviews.  Those small changes along with a few others made a world of difference in our Summer Institute and I think, although Amy continues to disagree, that the summer of 2007 was the best SI ever! 

My leadership story is inextricably bound with my Writing Project story.  Writing Project has given me the confidence to be a leader in the classroom and in my school community.  I have had the opportunity to have an impact on other teachers and that is an amazing feeling. When I attend Writing Project conferences and observe rooms full of teachers who are professional and who are passionate about teaching I am proud to be a teacher.   If I hadn’t found Writing Project I would never have discovered that I had the courage to be a public school teacher and, although I have many things to learn and a great many paths to trod, I would never have discovered that I have the potential to be a leader of teachers.   

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How I Became a Leader “How did I become a leader?”  That is a question that needs a lot of thought…going deep into my mind, and it takes me back in time to a place called ‘cyberspace” by many.   As a veteran teacher and an administrator with fifteen plus years in early childhood, I found myself at the bottom of the totem pole.  They say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and I found myself newly hired into a school system dedicated to the success of every student, with new things to learn.   Now I was on my own with new rules and regulations.  I was now personally reclassified and called a “new teacher” as I re-entered the world of public education.  With my heart full of excitement and anticipation of the new people and surroundings, I entered into an elementary school environment. Previously, at home, I answered a phone call and heard the voice of someone unknown. The nice and soft voice was from a lady named Rosalie.  After I carefully listened to Rosalie and thoughtfully considered what she had to say, I accepted the opportunity to attend a class called “New Teacher Initiative.”  When she said “three free graduate hours” I was sold, and I knew I could take any class with any other new teachers.  I now had the time and welcomed the opportunity to learn new tricks. After school and on a Friday night, I found myself on the second floor of Corbly hall. Several other new teachers and I entered the room where you could hear a pin drop.  We all sat quietly, and suddenly the teacher entered the classroom with a smile so bright that it lit up the room.  I knew this experience was going to be good.  Mrs. Pat Porter, small in frame, sweet smile and armed with a big voice of dedication, wrapped her blanket of knowledge around us and made me feel welcome. She introduced writing with   prompts and talked constantly over the next several months on how writing is across the curriculum.  By the end of the semester a new voice from a veteran educator was beginning to emerge, and finally I began feeling like a flower and not a weed in the writing garden of education. Summer vacation quickly arrived and the uncertainty of a job when again I answered the phone to a familiar voice.  Pat Porter called and asked me to help co-coordinate the new teacher initiative.  At the end of the next year it was time to dedicate my summer to the even bigger umbrella called the National Writing Project (NWP).  I did not want to go alone so I recruited my new mentor and friend Andrea.  She was someone who, like me, was dedicated to young children with special needs and who had helped ease the pain and to support my survival during my previous year of teaching. Armed with a bag, snacks, paper and pencil I walked into a small conference room to begin the journey of NWP. We met our instructors, introduced one other, and settled into sacred writing.  I was apprehensive at first about sharing and worried because I did not feel like a writer.  Little did I know that sacred writing would become my favorite time of summer institute.  I cherished the small space, welcomed the closeness of our writing bodies and appreciated the openness and honesty in sharing.  I laughed, cried and still remember stories told around that conference table.  I often think that should we ever come together again the feelings would be the same.  I believe there is a trust in writing and those I feel most comfortable with are from the Marshall University summer institute.  I know that some will be lifelong writing friends.  Summer institute should be called the soul writing of summer leadership institutes.  My leadership was developed quickly, during a number of weeks that eventually seemed like one long day.  My teaching now reflects many aspects of the experience - both large and small. While working with young children, they grant me the opportunity to record their words and model journaling for them.  I ask questions and they answer.  Together we weave a written document that is shared with families at the end of the school year.  Finally, I must answer the question “when or how did I become a leader?” The answer is neither easy nor easy to explain, so I will end my writing like this. The answer is simple…it is called living one day at a time.  

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