NWP Radio

A writing marathon is an opportunity for writers to gather, write, walk, talk, explore, and grow through shared experience. It is a beloved practice of many Writing Project teachers, whether face-to-face or online, and has spread to classrooms and national parks across the country. Join Morehead Writing Project teachers and National Park Service colleagues for this discussion about the possibilities and details on how to design your own. This event was part of Write Out 2020, a partnership with the National Park Service. More info along with writing marathon resources can be found at https://writeout.nwp.org/writeout-writing-marathon/

In this episode of The Write Time, we visit with author/illustrator Jerry Craft and eighth-grade student, Dereje Tarrant.

Dereje's favorite subjects include creative writing, Latin, art, and biology. He is also a professional actor and enjoys playing soccer, doing hip-hop dance, practicing piano, spray-painting murals, or working at his latest craft—DJ-ing.

Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal winning author of the graphic novel, New Kid. His second graphic novel, Class Act, was published on October 6, 2020. Craft is also the creator of Mama’s Boyz, an award-winning comic strip which won the African American Literary Award five times. He is a cofounder of the Schomburg Center’s Annual Black Comic Book Festival. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts.

As schools work through reopening plans and teachers reframe curricula for hybrid learning and policy-makers talk of "learning loss," it might be easy to forget the impact of the pandemic on children's opportunity to play and to learn through play.

Playworks, a national non-profit that helps schools maximize the potential of recess and play for children's social and emotional growth, immediately saw the challenge the pandemic would pose for schools, parks, playgrounds, and families, working over the summer to prepare reopening guides and to redo their games and challenges for online and distanced formats. In this CoLab we discuss the resulting resource bank that teachers and families can use to return play to the school day - even when that school day is on Zoom.

Learn more and access resources at https://writenow.nwp.org/play-is-an-essential-a-playworks-colab-babdf6d2836

For years, award-winning National Geographic photographer Andrea Bruce traveled the world, documenting life in international conflict zones. Wherever she went, people asked her “what is democracy?” When she returned home, she wanted to make it possible for all of us to explore the question through the “Our Democracy” project. Created by Bruce, with the support of the National Geographic Society and PhotoWings, Our Democracy invites everyone in the U.S. to document their experience of local democracy in word, image, and video using NWP’s Writing Our Future platform. Learn more at https://writingourfuture.nwp.org/ourdemocracy

Martin Brandt is a high-school English teacher in San Jose, CA and a teacher-consultant with the San Jose Area Writing Project, as well as the author of Between the Commas: Sentence Instruction That builds Confident Writers (and Writing Teachers). In this episode we discuss Martin’s book, instructional strategies from the book, how he has developed as a teacher over the last 30 years, and teaching writing in general. Get the Book: https://www.heinemann.com/products/e10820.aspx

The educator-founders of Equity Unbound, Maha Bali, of the American University in Cairo, Egypt; Catherine Cronin of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education in Ireland; and Mia Zamora, director of the Kean University Writing Project; saw the need to assist their fellow faculty in practices for equity-focused open learning. Working with another colleague, Autumm Caines of the University of Michigan, Dearborn, Maha and Mia began curating and adapting a rich collection of activities and models for creating community and fostering learning in open online environments. Autumm's concept of "intentionally equitable hospitality," a concept developed in an effort called Virtually Connecting, seemed to nicely frame their collection of activities. With support from OneHE, they have published the initial (and growing) collection at OneHE: Community Building Activities.

In this CoLab, they introduce us to the collection and provide advice for creating strong learning communities in online settings.

Read more and see related resources at https://writenow.nwp.org/building-community-online-through-intentionally-equitable-hospitality-109fe8911c63

We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our third and final episode of this mini-series, we will visit with author Kim Johnson and educator Synthia Shelby leads the discussion.

Kim Johnson held leadership positions in social justice organizations as a teen. She’s now a college administrator who maintains civic engagement throughout the community while also mentoring Black student activists and leaders. This Is My America is her debut novel. It explores racial injustice against innocent Black men who are criminally sentenced and the families left behind to pick up the pieces. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Maryland, College Park. Kim lives her best life in Oregon with her husband and two kids.

Our guests Sadaf Kahn, English Supervisor and IB Teacher at TNS Beaconhouse in Pakistan, and Bryn Orum, co-director of the Greater Madison Writing Project (GMWP), discuss how they have used GMWP’s Rise Up and Write curriculum in schools and summer camps from Madison, Wisconsin, to Lahore, Pakistan. Hear stories of young people around the world using writing to effect change in the places they live in and care about.

For many teachers working to figure out remote or socially distanced teaching, two of the biggest challenges this school year are creating trusting, mutual connections with their students and forming productive classroom student/peer communities, especially supportive writing communities. Those twin challenges are at the heart of this CoLab with educators Anna Smith, Matthew Johnson, and Kim Jaxon.

Read more at and get resources at: https://writenow.nwp.org/designing-for-connection-and-community-in-the-online-writing-classroom-a20648cafa25

Writing Can Change Everything: Middle Level Kids Writing Themselves Into the World, edited by Shelbie Witte, is the latest from NCTE’s Principles In Practice series. Offering concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based on NCTE research briefs and policy statements, books in this series demonstrate how principles come alive in practice. Listen to this episode of NWP Radio with Shelbie, Sarah Bonner, Tracei Willis, and Joe Pizzo as they talk about their classrooms and the power of writing to build community, support inquiry, and convey sympathy.