lunabee34

The big thing for the National Writing Project is the Summer Institute; these are hosted by the affiliate sites. NWP is the big umbrella, and the affiliate sites (most of which are hosted by universities and colleges) are underneath that umbrella. Summer Institute is a several week camp over the summer in which you earn six hours of graduate credit; the focus is entirely on writing: writing across the curriculum, practical writing activities, some research into writing pedagogy and theory. Most of the participants are K-12 teachers, but sometimes college teachers participate; I was an English masters student when I participated. Then throughout the year, they have writing based professional development events of which the writing marathon is one. The Ole Miss site had monthly meetings. Then the NWP has a big conference every year where people present about writing and writing pedagogy.

It's entirely focused on writing; so classroom activities, pedagogy, creating identity as a writer (both for the students and the teacher).

It's extremely high energy and rewarding and generates a lot of great writing.

I remember when I went into the Summer Institute thinking that I was not going to have a lot in common with a third grade teacher and wondering how that was going to translate to me teaching comp to college freshman (the big thing is that participants teach each other through sharing projects). It was wild to me how much I learned from the K-12 teachers; almost everything anybody was working on, regardless of grade level, was adaptable in some way to the college classroom.

If there's a site close to you, you should check it out.

https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/findasite/completelist.csp

There's a bunch in New York and New Jersey (which doesn't mean anything, I know; there's like five in GA and they're all about a 2 hour drive).