Teachers depend on a variety of methods and tools to help students learn. One of most important items in an educator’s tool box is writing — how to do it and how to teach others to do it.
To that end, the Flint Hills Writing Project, based at Emporia State University, recently was awarded two grants totaling $35,000 from the National Writing Project.
According to Dr. Heather Caswell, “Being awarded the 2017-2018 Advanced Institute to Scale-Up NWP's College-Ready Writers Program Grant will allow the Flint Hills Writing Project to provide a rigorous professional development for 12 to 16 experienced middle and high school National Writing Project Teacher Leaders. All teachers work in high-need schools.”
Caswell continued, “The advanced institute will begin Summer 2017 and continue through the school year until May 2018. This year long ongoing professional development will allow embedded professional development within the Teacher Leaders’ classrooms as well as outside work collaborating with other Teacher Leaders across the state.”
“The second grant, the 2017-18 SEED Invitational Leadership Institute,” stated Dr. Roger Caswell, “will allow FHWP to work with upwards to 24 new teachers, Kindergarten through university-level instructors, in all academic disciplines, in the summers of 2017 and 2018. The purpose is to equip teachers to be active participants in an educational landscape of new standards and technological innovation.”
The Flint Hills Writing Project was established in 2014 by Dr. Heather Caswell, assistant professor in Elementary Education/Early Childhood/Special Education, and Dr. Roger Caswell, executive director of the Jones Institute for Educational Excellence at Emporia State.
For the last few years, the FHWP has hosted a four-week Invitational Leadership Institute in the summer, immersing educators in a teachers-teaching-teacher model before continuing as teacher leaders in their respective buildings and school districts.
Over the 40 years of its existence, the NWP has established 200 university-based writing project sites across the U.S. and in U.S. territories. The FHWP is the only NWP site located in Kansas. To learn more about FHWP, visit www.emporia.edu/teach/fhwp/.