We invite you to consider joining the WMWP Technology Team for a morning of workshops centered around the use of technology and writing across the various content areas, including math, science and social studies.
You can download the Technology Across the Curriculum flier with this link and the flier includes a registration form.
Or you can use the WMWP Website to register electronically (but you will still need to send in your fee to reserve your space at the workshop).
We encourage you to come with a colleague and to offer some inducement, we will lower the registration fee by five bucks if you do bring a friend from your building to the event.
See you there!
The WMWP Technology Team
Save the date:
March 19, 2008 from 9am-3pm
Bartlett Hall, Room 256, UMass Amherst
Diana Callahan and Mary-Ann DeVita Palmieri with be hosting a ‘Writing into Retirement’ retreat. All retired educators and those who have not retired yet are invited to attend this retreat. Bring a friend and a poem, story or memories your recall about teaching.
A light lunch will be served. Please RSVP by Friday, March 14th.
Email: wmwp@english.umass.edu
Phone: 413-545-5466
The latest feature on one of our WMWP teachers — Astrid Lindstrom — is in the Springfield Republican newspaper. Her students worked on a unit around autobiographical writing.
Republican photo by DAVE ROBACK Students of teacher Astrid J. Lindstrom at E.N. White School in Holyoke are, seated from left, Natasha M. Pirela, Austin J. Theriault, Sarah D. Theroux, Alexs S. Vazquez, Omara L. Hall, and, standing from left, Natalie M. Rivera, Zane E. Patrie, Lindstrom, Timmothy J. Ortiz, and Lissette Rojas.
Head to the Springfield Republican’s NIE website for the complete feature
Sharon Washington, the new executive director of the National Writing Project, paid a visit to the offices of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project this past week. Washington has taken over leadership of the NWP from Richard Sterling. She has strong connections to the Western Massachusetts region, as she was the founding director of Project SPIRIT at Springfield College (before moving on to leadership slots at University of California, Spelman College and Bennett College for Women). Washington still has family ties here in the area.
Washington sat down with WMWP Executive Director Anne Herrington, in-Service Coordinator Susan Biggs, Technology Liaison Kevin Hodgson, and English Language Learners Network leaders Wilma Ortiz and Karen Sumaryono, who also represented Project Outreach in the chat. The discussion ranged from an overview of the wealth of offerings at our site to integration of technology into WMWP programs to the creation of leadership opportunities through the ELL network.
(Wilma talks about the development of the ELL Network to Sharon Washington, new executive director of NWP)
Washington was curious to know how the NWP can continue to support the work of the sites and Herrington pointed out that much of the work being done at WMWP is supported through NWP mini-grants and the flow of those grants would continue to be valuable to develop and support projects at the site level and in the classrooms.
Lorraine Malone and her young writers are featured in the Springfield Republican this week.
Republican photo by MICHAEL S. GORDON
Lorraine J. Malone, center, a fourth grade teacher at Mapleshade Elementary School in East Longmeadow, poses with some of her students, from left, Rieghan B. O’Connor, Olivia E. Plante and Kendra R. Couceiro, all 9.
Head to the Springfield Republican’s online NIE blog for the full story.
And if you would like to be featured in the newspaper, just leave us a comment here and WMWP Newspaper Coordinator Diana Roy will be in contact with you.
One suggestion that came forth to the WMWP Executive Board from the members of Project Outreach is the idea of everyone on the leadership board reading a shared book so that the site would begin to have a shared language of education and diversity and social justice/awareness.
The leadership team decided on a book called From Outrageous to Inspired: How to Build a Community of Leaders in Our Schools by David Hagstrom. The book investigates ways in which a school can become an integral part of a community and how community can become an integral part of a school.
Here are some key points:
- To find the shared vision among your group members, ask this question: “What do you want for the people you love?”
- It’s not so important to determine what you as a leader want as it is to ask:
“Who are these people you’re with? What are they calling for?”
- Find out what your community is truly passionate about. Then, pour it on!
- Lose yourself in the work of the people. Then find yourself again, energizing them.
- In order to create a sense of community, help the people know they’ve found their home.
For more information on the book, you can go to David Hagstrom’s website.
If you have read the book or are part of the WMWP leadership team, please use the comment section here to post your thoughts, reactions and reflections on Hagstrom’s work as it relates to your school or the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.
The WMWP writing-and-response group meets once each month, on a Saturday, in Bartlett 256 at the University of Massachusetts. It is open to all K-13 teachers in western Massachusetts. All teachers are welcome. This month’s meeting is this Saturday, January 12.
The group meets from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., over coffee, tea, and bagels. Typically the group begins with 90 minutes or so of writing time, followed by some reading aloud and response from peers. Any and all genres are welcome, from the memorandum to the poem.
Dates:
January 12, 2008
February 9, 2008
March 8, 2008
April 12, 2008
May 10, 2008
June 7, 2008
July 12, 2008
August 9, 2008
The Western Massachusetts Writing Project has been fortunate to have forged a partnership with the largest daily newspaper in the Pioneer Valley — The Springfield Republican – that allows us to feature our WMWP teachers and their students every month. We are now in our third year of partnerships.
The newspaper has just launched its own Newspaper in Education Weblog through MassLive that deserves a look. Not only does it have our WMWP teachers and students on its pages, it is a wealth of information written by students and journalists alike that focus on education.
You can find the articles written by Tina Browne, Mary Cowhey, and Molly Snyder at the web site. You can also access some of the archives from past years through the older NIE site.
You can head to the Republican/NIE Weblog through this link.
The Western Massachusetts Writing Project is now in its third year of partnership with the major newspaper in our region — The Springfield Republican — and the first two features of the year have already rolled off the presses and hit the streets.
Tina Browne, of Amherst, was featured for a project around student narrative writing:
And then Mary Cowhey, of Northampton, shone a light on the work she does with younger students on deep topics:
Eventually, the features will be showcased on Masslive.com (the online home to the newspaper), but until then, if you want the PDF version of these articles, they are available for download here:
If you want to be profiled in this feature, please leave us a comment to this post and we will contact you.
More than a dozen representatives from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project site were at the annual convention of the National Writing Project in New York City this month, presenting on a wide range of topics and learning more about ways to improve our work in the classroom and at our site.
Here, Diana, Joann, Charlotte and Kevin await the keynote speech by NWP Executive Director Richard Sterling, who is stepping down from his post after this year. The room was packed with about 1,000 NWP teachers. Those who attended the annual meeting will be writing reports about their experiences and we will share some of those here to spread the learning with our network.
If you want to listen to Richard Sterling’s speech, you can do that here (the levels are a bit low).
Listen to Richard Sterling.
