Lighting the Way in the Longest Teaching Month

April 20, 2023
Lighting the Way in the Longest Teaching Month
Write Now Teacher Studio Presents: Protecting Ourselves, and Our Most Vulnerable Students, with words with special guest Willie Carver, Author of Gay Poems for Red States

Can words help protect us and our most vulnerable students in these times?

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, a published poet, and also a teacher who needed to leave his classroom to protect his most vulnerable students. In this webinar, he will talk about his experiences advocating for Black, Brown, and LGBTQ students in often hostile education environments. Drawing on his own experiences and those of other teachers, Carver will talk about the challenges minoritized students and teachers are facing today as well as some of the ways teachers and students can resist and can work to protect their students in this atmosphere. As a bonus, he will also share some works from his upcoming book of narrative poems about the experience of growing up queer and Appalachian, Gay Poems for Red States. March 30, 4:00 p.m. PT/7:00 p.m. ET RSVP today →

Photo of Jessica Early on top of blue background with book cover of Next Generation Genres

Find new ideas for engaging students in writing about issues that matter to them

How can we remix writing instruction to invite students to write across a range of genres? How might a genre framework for teaching writing support students in writing for specific audiences and purpose? Listen to this NWP radio interview to hear Dr. Jessica Singer Early talk about her new book Next Generation Genres: Teaching Writing for Civic and Academic Engagement. Listen →

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Speaking of next generation genres, consider Wikipedia entries for Women’s History Month

Only founded in 2001 and created through massive volunteer labor, Wikipedia has fast become a first stop for any research endeavor. But studies show that many content areas, including women’s history, are insufficiently developed. Read here how a history professor and a librarian at Rochester Institute of Technology have organized Wikipedia edit-a-thons for Women’s History Month, then consider adapting their resource for your own use. Read more →

Headshots of Ralph Fletcher and Tracey Flores on dark background with show title.

Ralph Fletcher challenges us to help our writers focus on craft

Ralph Fletcher, newest member of the NWP Writers Council, has been a long-time mentor to teachers and young writers and has helped generations of teachers understand the importance of letting go and trusting their writers. Join us for an episode of The Write Time in which Tracey Flores will interview Ralph about his latest revisions of A Writer’s Notebook. March 9, 4:00 p.m. PT/7:00 p.m. ETSave the date →

Is it time to refresh your bell ringers? Write into class with a clear purpose in mind

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If March has you thinking that it’s time to refresh some of your classroom routines, you might want to start with those bell ringers. In this new resource at Teach Write Now, Tanya Baker takes a curator’s eye to a set of blog posts by Deanna Mascle on how she thinks about bell ringers. Rather than a list of 100 activities, Deanna’s blog posts opened up four reasons or purposes for using writing to move your students into the day. Read more →

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It is Civic Learning Week! Catch inspiring events include a conversation with Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The national Civic Learning Week, hosted by iCivics, is happening now. It is an opportunity to highlight the importance of civic education in sustaining and strengthening constitutional democracy in the United States. As part of this annual celebration, Justice Sotomayor will meet with teachers and students on Friday, March 10 at 1:00 p.m. ET in a pre-recorded Q&A with middle- and high-school students. Save the date →

March can be the longest month of the teaching year. (31 days, no holidays, and it’s still cold and a little dark!) If you are looking for some light to see you through, try joining the Write Now Teacher Studio. There’s something there for every writing teacher. JOIN THE STUDIO

Teachers as Poets

Poetry? Definitely. Mark your calendar for two upcoming poetry events: On March 30, The Studio hosts Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. (see above) and on April 20 the group Teachers as Poets hosts a three-poet reading. And if you are a poetry writer, you just might want to join the group Poets as Writers.

"This practice not only requires students to say they are writers ... it shows them that they are writers while demonstrating the power and magic of writing in human lives." Bell Ringers and Community Building metawriting.deannamascle.com

Low Stakes Writing? RSVP for the Connecting the Network call, March 15. This call, hosted by the Drew Writing Project, invites any writing teacher who would also like to be a teacher who writes to come spend some time writing together, join an impromptu writing group, and hear about how to take your writing into publication. There are posts in the main feed inviting folks to share ideas about using bell ringers effectively in the classroom, and also about signing up for Slice of Life, an annual celebration of Low Stakes Writing for teachers and other writers. Catch up with these conversations, or start one of your own.

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Discussions of Teaching Writing? They are everywhere in The Studio, but if you want to join a sustatined conversation over time you might join Teaching Argument. (This group used to be called C3WP, but recently changed its name.) There’s a great conversation just starting there about putting together a unit of study on whether teen agers should have cell phones. If you want something that starts with the theory, instead of the practice, maybe you’d like to join the James Moffett Reading Group. They meet monthly to read and discuss works by Moffett, whose work is considered seminal to the Writing Project.

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Conversation about the current state of teaching and learning? Depending on what’s got you most worried and/or excited, you might like to follow the conversations about teaching writing with AI. Much of this is happening in the Deeper Dive Writers & Robots. Or you might want to talk about policies and practices that are restricting your or other teachers’ capacity to teach certain books or engage certain ideas. You can join Policies and Practices to follow trends and news across the United States and to discuss how to respond in ways that are safe and effective.

Take a look at what we have been up to!