Building New Pathways to Leadership by Innovating Beyond the Traditional Writing Project Model Institute

At virtually all NWP sites, the Invitational Leadership Institute stands as the signature program and entryway for strong practitioners to become part of the local site. But at every site, there are strong educators who by virtue of geography or position or life circumstance are not able to take advantage of the site’s traditional offerings. Yet their leadership would be valued and the participation would help expand the impact of the site far beyond its current boundaries.

So, how do sites reinvent their leadership institutes to engage these potential leaders with a view toward maintaining the power and scope of their original Invitational Institute model?

The resources collected here provide powerful examples of how six Writing Project sites created new designs that go beyond their traditional Writing Project summer institute model to reach new groups of teachers not well-served by that model. Whether using online tools and innovative scheduling to overcome problems of distance; creating supports and programs specifically for early-career teachers; or taking advantage of new writing standards to invite content area teachers into the Writing Project, these resources provide detailed examples of the kind of planning, execution, iteration, and learning that takes place when Writing Project sites adapt their programs to build new pathways to teacher leadership.

These six projects were developed as part of the broader Building New Pathways to Leadership (BNPL) initiative, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative served to create new ways to scale our work and reach underserved teachers, as funding challenges render the classic model of establishing new university-based sites inadequate. The initiative also supported the development of this Write/Learn/Lead Knowledge Base and the articulation of the NWP Social Practices framework, which makes explicit six key practices of NWP-style teacher leadership.