And it begins

This week I met the newest members of my writing family.  We spent two days in Casper, Wyoming, getting acquainted as the Wyoming Writing Project Invitational Leadership Institute kicked off for Summer 2017.  This is the third summer I've spent learning more about myself as a writer and pondering ways to improve teaching writing in classrooms.  It is not work though I suppose it is technically part of my position as Co-Director.  It feels very much like a retreat with friends.

Last year we tried a new approach to the Invitational Institute.  Normally, these institute activities are three weeks of face to face professional development with K-12 teachers.  Wyoming is a vast geographical area and our top notch teachers wanting to improve writing instruction are also those who work on so many other summer things for both work and family.  Asking them to be on campus in Laramie is difficult and not cost effective.  We decided to plan a hybrid institute with a pre-institute, three face to face weekly meetings, and an online component.  Oh, and then to make it even better we ask the participants to teach their colleagues at three sites around the state.  Last year we worked with more than 60 teachers in Sheridan, Thayne, and Laramie.  The feedback was positive from all.  Teachers learning from teachers is a powerful thing to witness.  Teachers feeling empowered to deliver a PD session to colleagues, often for the first time, is a powerful thing to witness.

This year we are taking the same approach.  We have now met and know each other.  In two weeks we'll kick off our institute with a trip to Wheatland to deliver K-12 PD to educators.  The topics will vary depending on participants' expertise and passion for topics in writing instruction and assessment.

That's the nuts and bolts but that hardly represents what truly happens in an institute.  Returning from Casper yesterday I had time to reflect on my work with WWP and my Wyoming writing family.  I hesitate to describe what takes place as magical.  It often feels that way but it is planned purposefully to unfold.  And, the recipe is fairly simple.  We put some educators in a room who want to learn more about writing and be the best teacher they can for their students.  We ask them to write and share and then we discuss how vulnerable that sharing is for us and, in turn, for our students.  We put ourselves in our students' shoes.  We ask these educators to ponder burning questions about writing in their classrooms and in their learning communities and then ask them to research ways to answer these questions.  We ask them to engage in the writing process and to share and conference and revise.  We share ideas for teaching.  We share ideas for assessment.  Most importantly, we wrestle with the tough stuff.  In Casper we discussed the challenge of motivating students to write in different contexts for different audiences.  We talked about how difficult it is to remove the writing from the writer.  Critiquing a student's writing is not a personal attack on their humanity but it can certainly feel that way to them, and to all of us.  We gave each other ideas for ways to improve peer conferencing, ways to use rubrics effectively, ways to balance process with the knowledge that writing is not a linear process.  We began book studies on writing topics.  We tweeted about these books and were excited to get immediate feedback from the authors.

I am always struck by the first full day of the institute and the power it holds.  That power is in a group of vulnerable educators sitting in a circle discussing problems and solutions, sharing stories from teaching, and simply having the time to do so.  Our lives as teachers are so busy these days.  We don't have, or take, the time to puzzle through the hard stuff and to share ideas.  The power is in the gift of time.

Oh, and we laugh.  Wow, do we laugh.  It's an abdominal workout.  We cry sometimes as writing is often an opening of the soul.  We share memories.  We share our families.  We share our students.  We share life.  Even if we don't all identify as writers yet we grab on to the faith that one day we will, or at least we'll find joy in the journey and the company we keep along the way.

This summer I have a few goals for my own writing journey.  I want to learn more about Self Regulated Strategy Development so I can address it in my college course as one approach to supporting student writing.  I want to read more about Imposter Syndrome and how it hinders writing- and how to work through it.  (I guess I want to publish something about how I seem to not put myself out there to publish something...)  I want to complete three articles that have been in the works for some time now.  They must leave my computer and take flight no matter where they may land.  It's time.

I am so fortunate to work with amazing people at UW and across the great state of Wyoming who share a passion for writing instruction and for writing and expressing of the self in all forms of written communication.  My co-director Tia, my East, keeps me moving and helps me to laugh at myself.

I am a West.  Tia is an East.  Sometimes I'm a South but I'm a South who deals with being a West first and a South next.   What in the world am I talking about?  Stay tuned.  When my new family meets in Wheatland we'll be finding out our personality directions and discussing how they play out in our teaching and in our writing.  I'll be updating in the weeks to come.

Happy Writing, Pondering, and Sharing!