The National Writing Project: Building Skills, Confidence and a Sense of Joy
Amanda Nicole Gulla, Ph.D.
I have had a relationship with the National Writing Project for over twenty years, and have been continually learning new things that benefit my students for the entire duration of that relationship. First as a middle and elementary school teacher, then as an on-site consultant for the New York City Writing Project (NYCWP), and now as a professor of teacher education, the work of the National Writing Project has had a profound impact on my work with students.
The talk about education these days is full of words like rigor, accountability, testing, reform, crisis, failure…all weighty, serious words. But joy? What could the National Writing Project possibly do to bring joy to schools? And do we even want joy in schools? Is there any measurable evidence that joy will raise Annual Yearly Progress? While there may or may not be a direct link between joyful classrooms and improved test scores, a sense of joy makes students want to come to school and learn, and it makes teachers feel that their efforts are bearing fruit. My own early teaching experiences were difficult, as are many new teachers’ experiences. It was my experience with the NYCWP, one of the oldest and largest of the National Writing Project (NWP) sites; that gave me the confidence to stay with teaching and make a difference in my students’ lives.
I started out as a middle school English teacher in the mid 80’s in the South Bronx. Drug dealers owned the blocks between the subway stop and the school. My students were struggling readers and writers who seemed angry all the time. They were angry that they couldn’t take for granted that they’d make it home safely every day. They were angry that their parents worked two or three jobs and could just barely manage to keep body and soul together. They were angry that they had to spend time in school, when it seemed to have little or nothing to do with their lives. And there I was, with my grammar text book and basal reader, feeling totally unprepared to disabuse them of this notion. But I instinctively knew that there had to be ways that I could help these students find their voices and make their school experiences work for them—that reading and writing could and should have a place in their lives. I knew there was a way to reach them and teach them, and I also knew that it wasn’t in those grammar books.
That first year was so difficult I had serious doubts that I’d last very long as a teacher, but that summer I was fortunate enough to find out about the NYCWP’s open seminar. That was where I spent a summer reading and talking with wonderful, committed teachers about literacy teaching and learning, and I also spent the summer writing, writing, writing—reconnecting with my own voice. The experience was deeply joyful. I had found a community of people who understood the challenges teachers face in their daily lives, and unlike the ones who had given in to frustration, who I encountered in the lunch room every day, griping about kids and counting the days until summer, this group of teachers were passionate about teaching. They were full of questions and full of ideas. I left the seminar that summer with a notebook full of teaching strategies that I still use, more than two decades on. I was invited to return the following summer for the Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institute—the hallmark of NWP sites all over the country—and that led to my becoming a Writing Project “Fellow,” which set me on the path of eventually becoming a teacher educator. It is this model of teachers teaching teachers that is the hallmark of NWP’s success.
So, back to my kids in the South Bronx…I returned in the fall with a new sense of confidence, full of ideas about creating meaningful connections between reading and writing, ways of helping students find and express their voices through poetry and essays, and using writing as a tool to develop critical thinking. Fear and frustration were replaced by hope and joy.
Now my students are teacher candidates in the in the graduate program in English Education at Lehman College, City University of New York. They are new teachers or future teachers, they are beleaguered by or frightened of difficult circumstances, they want to make a difference in their students’ lives. Every class I teach is first and foremost characterized by the marriage of theory and successful practice that are at the heart of NWP’s work. Looking back over my fairly long career, it is true that every mentor or colleague I have learned something positive from that I have wished to practice, preserve, and pass on to others, has been involved with the NWP themselves. The roots and branches of the NWP’s work are powerful indeed. And now I see my former graduate students progressing in their careers, continuing to gain skills, confidence and a sense of joy from developing a solid teaching practice that is directly traceable to the work of NWP, passing their wisdom on to younger colleagues. It would be as impossible to count the numbers of students touched by the NWP’s work as it would be to quantify the impact of the joy of learning. But if we as a nation were to lose this treasure; this jewel in the crown of American education, our schools would become colder and bleaker, and all of those teachers who want so much to help their students find their voices might be lost themselves, just as I might have been if I hadn’t found NWP.
