WSU to host Kansas Writing Project

By Julie Rausch

Last winter several area elementary English teachers told Lori Norton-Meier they wanted to breathe new life into teaching writing.

Now the assistant professor in the department of curriculum and instruction is giving them that fresh approach by starting the Kansas Writing Project at WSU.

The project, funded by a $20,000 grant, is a five-week summer course that will give teachers ample opportunity to write, study current research on reading and writing, and share writing methods they are using in their own classrooms.

It also will establish a network of teachers who will be a resource for other teachers whose writing programs are stuck in a rut.

When Norton-Meier first heard from the teachers, she looked online for the National Writing Project, a program she had been involved with while teaching in Iowa.

The NWP is a federally funded higher education/public school initiative that improves student writing abilities by improving the teaching and learning of writing in U.S. schools.

She discovered that Kansas was one of only a few states not included in its national writing network.

She e-mailed the NWP, asking where she could refer the teachers. They responded by asking Norton-Meier if she would start the project in Kansas and later provided the $20,000 grant.

One philosophy of the NWP is that you can’t be a good writing teacher if you don’t write yourself, Norton-Meier said, which is why the 20 or so teachers accepted into the project will devote time to writing during their summer session.

The grant will cover the tuition costs of the six-credit-hour graduate class. In exchange, the teachers also agree to teach two-hour in-services for other teachers during the Kansas Writing Project session.

"This core group has to be really strong to make this work," Norton-Meier said.

"It starts at a university, but the idea is to relinquish that control to the teachers so it becomes their writing project."

Another part of Norton-Meier’s job is to encourage schools to invite teachers from the Kansas Writing Project network for in-service activities. She’ll keep a record of the teachers’ expertise so that when a school requests a particular subject, she can make referrals.

Norton-Meier said they will take the writing project on the road probably starting summer 2001, as well as continue a session at WSU.

The National Writing Project began at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Now all but two states offer the writing institutes for teachers.

The NWP has won several awards and the National Council of Teachers of English recognized the organization as a "national resource" calling it the "best staff development model in history."