(Re)Visioning Site Work: Extending the Reach and Relevance of NWP Sites

By J. Elaine White, Jane Frick, and Tom Pankiewicz

Summary:
This monograph captures how two National Writing Project sites, at different points in their institutional lives, used visioning retreats as a strategy to take stock of their work and look forward in order to align programs with capacity, to develop leadership, and to continue to engage teachers in the professional community of the site. By engaging teacher leaders in collective inquiry at visioning retreats, both sites continued to build leadership capacity and support new learning. Of interest to site and program leadership teams, this resource describes in detail both sites' planning process and subsequent results and includes an extensive appendix with support materials that are adaptable to planning visioning and similar types of retreats.

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Live Oak Writing Project and Prairie Lands Writing Project use visioning retreats to explore the continuity opportunities that their respective sites need and can support. Through their intentional work at visioning retreats, both sites have expanded their leadership, built site capacity, and supported new learning.

(Re)Visioning Site Work: Extending the Reach and Relevance of NWP Sites includes rich material that other sites might adapt or replicate to plan visioning or other types of retreats. Extensive appendices include documents that are appropriate for immediate use.

Each site has different objectives in engaging in visioning retreats, but both share a reliance on a vehicle (visioning retreat) to bring together key leaders at a site to think collectively about the sustainability of the site. The monograph describes in detail both sites’ planning process and subsequent results.

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The Web as a Tool for Continuity

By Evan Nichols, Carol Tateishi, Sonnet Farrell, Tom McKenna, and Sondra Porter

How can we keep teachers connected to each other across time and space? This monograph illustrates how the web can be used effectively to facilitate continuity and follow-up opportunities at sites. Showcased are the Bay Area Writing Project's ezine, Digital Paper, and the Alaska State Writing Consortium's Virtual Open Institute. This in-depth piece could be helpful for sites whose teachers are geographically distant from each other as they explore shifting to virtual spaces for institutes.

The Story of SCORE: The Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute Takes on a Statewide Reading Initiative

By Lynette Herring-Harris and Cassandria Hansbrough

The SCORE monograph (Secondary Content Opening to Reading Excellence) from the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute offers an overview of programming for content area teachers as part of a statewide reading initiative. A useful resource for teacher leaders, the monograph includes a rich description of five days of workshops (p. 14-19) along with timelines (p. 24-25), and agendas (p.26-31) that structured and organized this work.

On-Site Consulting: New York City Writing Project

By Nancy Mintz, Alan L. Stein, and Marcie Wolfe

This NWP monograph provides an in-depth look at the longstanding New York City WP program of school-based professional development partnerships with the New York City public schools. Former NYCWP Director Marcie Wolfe provides background information on the development and evolution of the program which places TCs on-site at partner schools for multi-year cycles. Two TCs with extensive experience in the on-site consultant role, Nancy Mintz and Alan Stein, then share their experiences. Mintz explores a fundamental consulting/coaching dilemma: how do you hold onto your core beliefs and values, while not trying to enact those beliefs and visions in someone else's classroom. Stein's story describes a crucial shift in school culture and the importance of the collaboration between himself, the principal, and several key teachers at the school. This thoughtful, extensive exploration of work in and with schools serves as a valuable resource for any leadership team considering extended professional development partnerships.

Visioning Retreats as a Strategy for Leadership Development and Site Development

By Pat Fox

Monographs

Continuity in the Rhode Island Writing Project: Keeping Teachers at the Center

By Susan Ozbek, Keith Sanzen, Marjorie Roemer, Susan Vander Does

The Presenters’ Collective Network (PCN) began as a support for teacher-consultants in developing workshops for inservice, but the Rhode Island Writing Project quickly discovered unintended purposes that strengthened the site’s continuity program. Susan Ozbek, Marjorie Roemer, Keith Sanzen, and Susan Vander Does detail how PCN functions along with the tools that help to sustain it.