WMWP Online Newsletter

The Pat Hunter Award is given each year to a member of the WMWP community who has contributed substantially to the work of the WMWP and who best exemplifies the values Pat Hunter embodies in her work with writers and teachers. Pat Hunter, a founding co-director of WMWP, died in 1999.

Charlotte taught in the Springfield School systems for 37 years, retiring last June. She began as an elementary teacher and subsequently took on roles as a District Elementary Writing Resource Teacher, a District Literacy Coach, and Instructional Leadership Specialist. In that role, she has woven the WMWP model of teachers teaching teachers into coaching and mentoring. Charlotte is an alumna of the 1996 WMWP Summer Institute and has served on the Executive Board of the WMWP since 2001. The Executive Board of the WMWP is very much a working group, and Charlotte is an active member, helping develop programs and write mini-grants and always advocating for teachers and students. She has also been a teacher consultant for in-service presentations at a range of area schools—from Athol to Worcester, Chicopee to Oxford, and for the Pioneer Valley Reading Council. In 2004, she was co-facilitator of a very successful WMWP course on “Revitalizing Writing” for Springfield teachers.

She is presently working on developing a variation on that course to offer this spring, with support from a NWP mini-grant that she helped obtain. In addition to her regional work, she has also written and published articles on professional development and teaching and presented at national conferences—another way she exemplifies the principles of the Writing Project. The titles of her presentations convey something of her interests and her inquiry work: “Whole School Reform through the Eyes of Professional Developers as Change Agents”; “The Arrow Points Both Ways: Navigating the Bridge between Assessment and Instruction”; and “Urban Scrawl: Looking at the Literacy of City Kids.”

Upon accepting the Pat Hunter Award for 2007, Charlotte Lak took the opportunity to share a poem she had written to Pat Hunter.

1/14/05

Dear Patty,

I found it today,

That little note from you

about my poem.

I thought I had lost it

Or thrown it away

inadvertently

In one of those need-to-get organized

rampages

that possess me so seldom.

I had stopped searching for it

about a year ago, or so

After all, it’s just a

piece of paper

With a note about my poem,

and your name,

your signature.

At first, I needed to find it

Because it was you—

tangible

My way to keep you here

and hear your words,

your voice

as I read it.

But—

It’s just a piece of paper

So, I let it slip

from my memory

for a little while.

And I thought of you instead

and said,

“What would Patty DO?”

And that’s why I’m here

today

writing

And looking back at

things I wrote

And shared with you,

And found!

Tucked in with all that

The little note from you

about my poem.

It’s so good to hear your voice.

Charlotte