As we launch our eighth invitational summer institute, I feel sincere gratitude for two things: being able to wrestle with big questions of writing instruction alongside thoughtful participants and knowing there will be time for us to write together each day for the next four weeks. The late James Gray, who founded the National Writing Project in 1974 with around thirty fellow educators, coined the phrase “teachers at the center” to describe the type of work for which NWP has become known. This would not be an organization that hawked silver-bullet answers to educational problems or grew an army of out-of-town experts who dropped into schools for a few days with a shiny new program or quick-fix. NWP and its network of local sites would position teachers as experts who would write, question, and think together in the name of continually, restlessly, and passionately improving writing instruction.
As I sit looking at several full notebook pages and reflect on our first day together, I’m struck by how writing and teaching are inseparable and how often I lose sight of this fact. Teachers are busy. In addition to our daily responsibilities come new mandates, initiatives, and regulations often handed down by people who seldom – if ever – set foot in a classroom. It can be hard to carve out the space to write if we’re navigating this changing educational landscape and trying to maintain a healthy personal life. But we have to find the time. We have to keep writing at the center. We’re better teachers when we do. Five minutes spent in our notebooks or at our laptops is better than no time at all. If all this brief moment of writing does is raise another question or give us a moment to catch our teacher-breath, it has served its purpose. That particular piece may go nowhere, but bit by bit this regular writing gives us confidence and credibility as those who would ask our students to do the same. The writing – and not always the text it produces – is the point.
As a first grade teacher, I’m used to hastily stolen writing time. A six year old’s average attention span forces this comfort. I’ve often sat down alongside my students to write and found myself just settling in as the hum in the room begins to grow louder. I must smilingly accept a first grader’s approximations and attempts a sentence or even a word at a time. I have to extend this same kindness to myself. The short piece of writing left in my notebook may seem unfinished and insignificant, but it has been written and probably changed the course of the teaching day for the better. While I still crave and seek out longer blocks of writing time, these smaller bursts of composition have become welcome moments of quiet during hectic weeks.
So for the four weeks of the summer institute, we’re lucky. We’ll have protected and extended time to write, talk, and think – things we don’t get to do over the course of a regular school day. Writing will be at the center of everything that we do together. When the summer institute ends, it’s our job to keep it there.
Aaron Thiell
