Educator Innovator

Mike Caulfield and NWP teacher-leaders using the SIFT curriculum approach have had their eyes out for electoral misinformation. See this wrap-up of Mike’s October look at electoral misinformation and find resources for better information for your students. Learn more and see resources at Write Now, our publication at Medium: https://writenow.nwp.org/media-literacy-week-and-election-2020-7b2affdf1077

Check out this NWP CoLab with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Program Director Marya Brennan and high school teacher Sean Krazit for an orientation to NaNoWriMo, tips and strategies for making it work in the classroom or online, and pointers to resource collections covering everything from curriculum ideas to approaches to assessment. Read more info and resources at: https://educatorinnovator.org/ready-set-go-write/

About the Guests in this Show Jacob Kramer grew up in Providence, RI and studied film-making and writing at Harvard. Like Noodlephant, he loves hunting for mushrooms, eating noodles, and organizing with friends in pursuit of justice. K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She illustrated Okapi Tale and Noodlephant, and wrote and illustrated A Normal Pig. Sheryl Block was a 4th grade and special education teacher, and currently serves as the Coordinator of Professional Learning with the Louisville Writing Project in Kentucky. For more amazing episodes of The Write Time, visit https://educatorinnovator.org/campaigns/the-write-time/

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 i

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.

We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our second episode we visit with author Ger Duany and educator William King leads the discussion. Ger Duany is a survivor of the tragic exodus of an estimated 20,000 Sudanese children, the "Lost boys of Sudan," and has been appointed as UN Goodwill Ambassador. Born in the town of Akobo, Ger was caught up in Sudan's north-south civil war and was forcefully recruited as a child soldier. At the age of 14, he managed to escape to neighbouring Ethiopia and was eventually resettled to the United States from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In 2014, UNHCR helped Ger reunite with his mother and other family members in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp. He is also a model and actor. See past episodes of The Write Time with other amazing authors at https://educatorinnovator.org/campaigns/the-write-time/

In this 20-minute interview Jessyca Mathews, recent Michigan Region 5 Teacher of the Year and a teacher-leader with the Red Cedar Writing Project, reflects on working with her students this past spring to surface “what really is necessary” to support their writing and learning.

Robert Rivera-Amezola is a Digital Literacy Teacher at Francis Scott Key Elementary and a teacher-leader with the Philadelphia Writing Project. In this 19-minute interview, Robert discusses insights that came from watching students chat with each other online during non-teacher directed time.

Beth Rimer is an Instructor of Composition at Miami Univeristy in Oxford, OH, and codirector of the Ohio Writing Project. Over the course of this interview, Beth describes the ways to build community and give students choices while also helping them learn to make choices. She also talks about the distinction between teaching writing and assigning writing, a particular challenge in remote and online environments that can focus on “making assignments.”

We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our first episode in this series, we will visit with author Candice Iloh and educator Sharonica Nelson will be leading the discussion. Candice Iloh is a first generation Nigerian-American author and dancer based in Philadelphia, PA. Iloh has performed poetry and spoken word around the country and has served as a program director and workshop facilitator with Voices UnBroken, and as a teaching artist with Split This Rock, poetryN.O.W., and The American Poetry Museum. Throughout her work, Iloh has remained engaged with the communities she works and lives in by mentoring young people creatively within public school classrooms, athletic programs, and writing workshops. Visit The Write Time archive for past episodes with other authors: https://educatorinnovator.org/campaigns/the-write-time/

This CoLab features Writing Project colleagues—author-educator Ruth Devlin, artist-illustrator-educator Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez, and editor Amy Bauman—sharing their story of collaborating from a distance in the creation of a picture book: Ants: Across, Around, and Through. In this episode they share their process, the challenges and possibilities of collaborative work, and consider implications for teaching writing. You can watch the video and view the full archive at: https://educatorinnovator.org/campaigns/beyond-storytime-a-colab-series/

Join us for another NWP CoLab where we'll further explore online instruction, specifically how to make it manageable for both students and teachers. Our featured guest is Deanna Mascle, an Instructor of English at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and the director of the Morehead Writing Project. Also joining the discussion are middle/high-school educators David Lopez (CA), Katherine Williams (MS), and Ben Woodcock (MI). More info and resources at Write Now, our publication at Medium: https://bit.ly/2YnMOu1