The Boston Writing Project, and the other Massachusetts Writing Project network of sites, are taking part in the National Digital Learning Day on February 1, 2012.

Building upon a growing movement, the National Writing Project (NWP) and its affiliated sites, are calling on teachers, schools, principals, community leaders, parents, and students to participate in the inaugural national Digital Learning Day on February 1, 2012. An effort of the Alliance for Excellent Education, Digital Learning Day links together a wide range of states, organizations, and corporate partners to call attention to the powerful work going on in the many districts and classrooms where educators are making thoughtful use of the potential of digital tools.

Digital Learning Day will celebrate innovative teaching practices that make learning more personalized and engaging and encourage exploration of how digital learning can provide more students with more opportunities to get the skills they need to succeed in college, career, and life.

The website, DigitalLearningDay.org , offers customized toolkits for all audiences, grades, and subjects to help you think about how you can contribute to the campaign. Teachers, principals, students, leaders, parents, and communities are invited to visit DigitalLearningDay.org today to register to receive toolkits, resources, and invitations to run-up events and activities.

To become part of the local Massachusetts Digital Learning Day and register your plans and become part of the state-wide interactive map and database please complete this form. Join the growing numbers of Massachusetts teachers using technology to advance student learning.

New England Reading Association’s
presents its 2011 conference
“Teaming for Literacy”
September 29-30, 2011
at the Sturbridge Host Hotel and Conference Center
Sturbridge, MA

This conference is loaded with talented presenters, including Massachusetts Writing Project Teacher Consultants Dr. Floris Wilma Ortiz-Marrero, Kevin Hodgson, and Bruce Penniman. It also marks a return to New England for Dr. Ernest Morrell, keynote speaker from the recent NWP Urban Sites Network Conference. Other notable presenters include Dr. Lucy Calkins, from Columbia University’s Teachers College and another Massachusetts DESE Director of Humanities and Literacy Susan Whettle.

<<Download the complete program>>

“Understanding and Implementing the New Massachusetts Literacy Standard”

sponsored by

Boston Writing Project

Tuesday, August 23, 2011
9 AM – 4 PM

UMass Boston – Healey Library, 11 th Floor

Stipend of $125 will be available for 10 BWP Teacher-Consultants.
PDPs: 10, upon completion of 3 hr. online portion (by Sunday, August 28)
Credit: Low-cost Fall independent study available for professional development projects

Register by Friday, August 5th at bwp@umb.edu.

Facilitators: Fred Haas and Bruce Penniman

Dig deep into portions of the new Massachusetts Literacy Standards and national
Common Core Standards, especially the new threads of writing: argumentative,
informative, and narrative.

Learn strategies to help you and your colleagues align curriculum with the standards in
your content area.

Work with Writing Project teachers who have developed rich curriculum
and assessments from participating in the NWP Literacy Design Collaborative Common
Core Project.

Download the Flyer

Ernest Morrell, director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and former Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultant, examines the relationships between language, literacy, culture, and power in society in his keynote speech at the National Writing Project’s 2011 Urban Sites Network Conference.

Join NWP colleagues in preparation from Boston as they gather for the Urban Sites Network Conference. NWP Radio will be visiting with keynote speaker Ernest Morrell and the USN Leadership Team to talk about this year’s conference themes.

Great conversation to kick-off what surely will be a great event.

2011 USN Conference Keynote Speaker Ernest Morrell

In anticipation of the 2011 Urban Sites Network Conference, the Boston Writing Project organizing team recently spoke with author and academic Ernest Morrell, as well as the keynote speaker for the upcoming event, about bringing literary theory and popular cultural into the high school classroom. Among the topics, his his book Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding Connections for Lifelong Learning. Here is a part of their conversation.

Boston Writing Project: With the Hip-Hop Research Project at South Bay High School in Torrance, CA, you had students do research. What readings did you choose, and how did you guide students through the process? More specifically, how did you teach a research-methods course to high school students?

Ernest Morrell: The research project process is more intuitive. All research starts with a problem or question for the students. For instance, what are things in the community you would like to see changed? What role would you like to take? How would you go about answering that kind of question? They do a good job with that; they get it. They do surveys. Once we help them understand the research design, we go into the various research methods, e.g., field notes, teach them how to look at statistical databases, criminal justice data, visual sociology, and film and photography. We explore how you use these within research. Then they do research. We provide the space for students to do research, and we give them the space to create projects.

Read the entire interview courtesy of the National Writing Project site, with questions developed by the 2011 USN local host site conference planning team and the Boston Writing Project: Barbara Barros, Peter Golden, Steve Gordon, Kelly Koushan, Valerie Librizzi, Director Glenn Mitchell, Caroline Occean, Denise Patmon, Emilie Perna, Ling-Se Peet, Katherine Petta, and Team Leader Chris Tsang.

Nurturing Student Writing: Navigating Urban Literacies

APRIL 29–30, 2011

The Colonnade Hotel
Boston, Massachusetts
Host site: Boston Writing Project

The Boston Writing Project at the University of Massachusetts Boston is proud to serve as your host for the 2011 Urban Sites Network Conference, Nurturing Student Writing: Navigating Urban Literacies.

Join urban educators from around the country to explore how we can change the way we look at literacy and what it means to be literate. Students are bombarded with learning a variety of literacies and finding a means to tap into these outlets will prove to be a vital component to education in the 21st century.

For more detailed information visit the National Writing Project’s event page.

Download and complete the registration form. The early conference registration deadline is March 4, 2011 and the standard registration deadline is April 7, 2011.

Summer Institute Fellow fellow writing

Program

This fifteen-credit certificate program is designed for K-12 teachers and administrators in all subject areas who want to learn strategies to strengthen students’ writing and thinking skills, develop expertise in teaching writing and literacy across the curriculum, gain a deeper understanding of literacy learning, and improve their own writing. Participants will examine current readings in composition, literacy and writing pedagogy, share successful teaching practices, develop and implement curriculum, and document the effects of their teaching by collecting and analyzing student work.

The Boston Writing Project (BWP) is part of UMass Boston’s Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT), located in the College of Education and Human Development. An affiliated site of the federally-funded National Writing Project (NWP), the BWP has provided comprehensive instruction in the teaching of writing since 1979. Courses draw on the NWP “teachers teaching teachers” model, which research and assessment have demonstrated to be among the most effective methods for creating authentic, lasting improvements in curriculum, learning, and teaching.

Certificate Requirements

The following three core courses (totaling 9 credits) are required:

BWPEDU 501, Teacher as Writer, in which educators work on crafting their own writing in order to better understand the complexities student writers face.
EDU G 621, Teaching Writing K-12 covers practical classroom applications of composition theory.
EDU G 689, Teacher Research, a course in classroom inquiry, in which teachers reflect on their own practices in a systematic way and draft professional articles.

Participants also select two elective courses (6 additional credits) which may include:

BWPEDU 501, Writing in the Content Areas (Middle and High School)
BWPEDU 530, Teaching and Writing Poetry: K-12
BWPEDU 596, Independent Study
BWPEDU 597, Special Topics

Faculty

Instructors are practicing teachers with a minimum of five years classroom teaching experience, master’s degrees or doctorates and extensive staff development experience. They are teachers and writers whose areas of expertise include composition, special education, early literacy, reading, writing in the content areas, and ELL education. Their common ground is their affiliation with the Boston Writing Project and the shared NWP philosophy of teachers teaching teachers.

Schedule, Location, and Cost

Courses and institutes are offered as intensive two and four-week summer sessions and evening or weekend courses during the fall and spring semesters. They may be held at on or off-campus locations. Some institutes offer stipends or tuition waivers.

Applications and Additional Information

Applicants must be practicing teachers or administrators. A master’s degree is preferred. Pre-service teachers may be admitted to one or more of the courses if space is available.

Applicants may be able to transfer up to six credits from previous BWP courses (completed within the past seven years).

If you are interested in applying to the program, you may apply online through Graduate School Admissions to the Boston Writing Project.* Applications should include a letter of intent declaring your interest in the BWP Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Literacy and Writing. The application process also requires that all undergraduate and graduate transcripts be submitted as part of your application along with an application fee of $40 for in-state residents and $60 for out-of-state applications.

(*You can also make a Graduate Academic Information Request by following the above link and clicking on request materials be mailed to you and then clicking on graduate information request form .)

Co-Director Peter Golden Leading Fellows

Additional Ways the BWP Can Work with Teachers and Schools

Coaching
A BWP teacher consultant will work one-on-one with select teachers in a process whereby the writing project teacher would identify aims and questions at an initial meeting, conduct a classroom observation, and then have a post-visit conversation providing feedback to the practitioner

After School Writing and Response Group
A chance for teachers to meet on a regular basis with a BWP facilitator to share their own writing and provide feedback to each other on writing pieces.

Teacher Inquiry Group
Teachers use a classroom inquiry model to identify an educational concern that they want to observe in their classrooms. They meet regularly over the course of a year to write, pose questions, research and discuss.

Graduate Courses Provided On-Site for Schools, Districts, or Collaboratives

The Boston Writing Project offers on-site three-credit graduate courses for up to twenty-five teachers, support staff, and administrators from a school, district, or collaborative. Sites can opt to purchase a single course or the entire fifteen-credit Certificate in the Teaching of Writing in the Schools. Graduate credits will be awarded through the Continuing Education Program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

New York Times Learning Network Lesson Writing Team Member and BWP TC Amanda Brown

Boston Writing Project teacher-consultant Amanda Christy Brown has been teaching English for over ten years, while always serving a newspaper advisor. However, besides teaching  full-time at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She is also one of The New York Times Learning Network’s teacher bloggers. As one of the network’s ten bloggers, Brown creates lesson plans for the blog’s English Language Arts and Fine Arts Day.

Brown is also a member of National Writing Project’s E-Team, a group of teacher-leaders who respond to E-Anthology posts each summer. A key member of the Boston Writing Project, she was recently profiled on the NWP website.

Read all of Amanda Brown’s blog posts on The New York Times Learning Network.