NWP Radio

Each year, five National Student Poets are chosen from a pool of outstanding writers, grades 9-11, who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. Listen as we celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation and some poetry reading with this year's National Student Poets.

This is the first in a six-part series discussing a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership. This episode, which examines the practice of advocacy, analyzes three case studies to explore what teacher leadership through advocacy can look like, and how teachers can take up the practice of advocacy.

How can teachers use the Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC) to assess student writing in a way that informs their instruction and provides meaningful feedback to students? This is the question that Mary Ann Smith and Sherry Swain explore in their 2017 book, Assessing Writing, Teaching Writers: Putting the Analytic Writing Continuum to Work in Your Classroom. We talk with the authors and members of various teacher action research groups about how the Analytic Writing Continuum can be used to focus instruction and feedback.

Given the multitude of information flowing through social media, news websites, television, radio, and print media, young people (and adults!) benefit from tools and strategies to situate stories. All information comes from sources; all information has perspectives. Arguments, to be generous, fair, and truly persuasive, need to characterize the uses of their sources, and understand them deeply. Listen as Tom Fox, Casey Olsen, and Linda Denstaedt from the College-Ready Writers Program discuss these issues.

The Graide Network connects K-12 teachers with remote, on-demand teaching assistants to grade and provide thorough feedback on student work online. "Graiders" are highly qualified, vetted undergraduate and graduate students from colleges across the country who are aspiring teachers. We discuss the importance of effective feedback and how teachers are using The Graide Network as a powerful instructional tool. We also discuss best practices for feedback and what effective feedback really looks like. And finally, with the increased focus on enhancing teacher preparation programs, we explore the value of experiential learning for pre-service teachers and virtual fieldwork opportunities.

Since coining the term "techquity" and related hashtag, Joe Dillon from the Denver Writing Project, along with a number of other colleagues, has been using it to imagine ways to overcome issues of inequity in rapidly changing environments. As he wrote in a 2014 blog post, "We need to dig deeper into ways of leveraging technology's potential for learning, while remaining critical and mindful of #techquity issues." We discuss this important and ongoing conversation; find out how colleagues have been engaging around issues of #techquity, in and across a range of spaces and communities; and learn about the resources they have created along the way.

Networked Narratives (#netnarr) is an open connected course of digital storytelling, world building, civic imagination, and a bit of digital alchemy hosted online and as a course at Kean University during the Spring 2017. The course is led and conceived by Kean University Writing Project Director Mia Zamora with DS106 founder Alan Levine, and explores the ways our learning and storytelling intertwine.

Listen as we talk with Bronwyn LaMay, author of the recently published book Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom. LaMay, a high school English teacher, is interested in transforming classrooms and schools into places where youth can explore the intersection between literacy and their lives. The conversation focuses on young people and their relationship to school, literacy, and learning.

Since 2009, youth in central New York have had opportunities to participate in Writing Our Lives conferences and afterschool programs in support of the writing they do. Dr. Marcelle Haddix, originator of Writing Our Lives, and Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield, have collaborated to provide locations and opportunities for young people to 'speak their truth' during community events in a celebration of writing.

We discuss teaching writing, teaching science, and how to create classrooms in which students use writing to learn and think scientifically with Kim Jaxon and Leslie Atkins Elliott, authors of the new book Composing Science. Kim and Leslie talk about concrete approaches for engaging students in practices that mirror the work that writing plays in the development and dissemination of scientific ideas, rather than replicating the polished academic writing of research scientists. They also address a range of genres that can help students deepen their scientific reasoning and inquiry.

Historically and in recent years, the National Writing Project has focused its efforts on supporting the teaching of writing in low-income and underserved schools, districts, and communities. NWP's i3 College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) grant supported 12 writing project sites in providing professional development in 22 rural school districts. Specifically, this work focused on improving the teaching of source-based argument writing and engaging young people in writing high-quality, source-based arguments in school. This work continues through the CRWP SEED Advanced Institutes and the CRWP in High-Need Schools grants. These grant programs continue NWP's commitment to equity and social justice by supporting teachers and students in economically poor communities. Join three NWP leaders as we discuss the value and importance of NWP work in high-need schools, and how the CRWP resources can support that work.

NWP director of national programs, Tanya Baker, talks with NWP Writers Council member Kip Zegers about his new poetry collection The Pond in Room 318, as well as the role that poetry plays in his life and his teaching.

Leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election, youth from across the country published their opinions at Letters to the Next President 2.0, sharing their thoughts on the issues and topics that matter to them most. Listen as we talk with teacher-leaders from several Writing Project sites about the ways they engaged with this project and what they learned about supporting this kind of civic participation and connected learning in their contexts.

In celebration of the National Day on Writing, we visited with award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca; family activist and co-director of the Family Story Project Mia Birdsong; and writer/educator Brian Mooney, along with some of Brian's students.

This episode of NWP Radio highlights a special collaboration between artist Rick Shaefer, the Fairfield University Art Museum, teachers who attended CWP-Fairfield's 2016 Invitational Leadership Institute, and Ubuntu Academy, a young adult literacy lab for immigrant and refugee youth.

NWP staff discuss what's in the air this fall, covering topics like writing in response to this year's presidential campaign, writing arguments in school and out, writing in times of violence, and the power and promise of the poetic voice, and discussing what to expect at the 2016 NWP Annual Meeting.

Student civic-action projects facilitate project-based learning, while illuminating and supporting the incredible capacity of young people to work together to tackle problems and improve their community. Listen to our conversation with Steve Zemelman, author of From Inquiry to Action and director of the Illinois Writing Project, and Liz Robbins, the Chicago teacher whose work inspired the book.