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NWP at Work's New Series Highlights "Continuity" at Local Sites
Date: December 24, 2008
Summary: NWP's new Continuity series of monographs focuses on the practices that nurture ongoing professional development and provide an indispensable source for sustained leadership development at local sites.
What does “continuity” look like in the nearly 200 sites of the National Writing Project? What are the different ways that sites provide an intellectual home for writing project teacher-consultants?
Site leaders from the New York City, Western Massachusetts, and Rhode Island writing project sites share approaches to building dynamic leadership and providing ongoing professional development for teacher-consultants in three new publications in the NWP at Work monograph series.
Work on the Continuity series began in 2006 with a writing retreat for leaders from a number of sites, who were invited to write about a particular slice of their site’s plans to nurture an ongoing professional community. Beyond the three monographs that have been completed and published, several more Continuity monographs are in process and will be available in the spring of 2009.
Authors and editors of this series had an opportunity to explore in depth the concept of continuity and its importance to the growth and sustainability of NWP sites over time. They concluded, as the foreword to the new monographs notes, that the two major purposes of continuity at local sites are to
- support continued learning through programs that are “wide-ranging and varied in intensity, drawing on local interests and needs”
- develop and support project leadership as sites find “ways to respond to shifting educational priorities while preserving their core values.”
Taken together the monographs in this series will offer a theory of continuity and its enactment at local sites across the country, both as long-range programming and as less-formal and more-social occasions for learning that contribute to keeping teacher-consultants involved and connected.
Read the Continuity Series
The Continuity monographs are available in PDF or hard copy through the NWP website.
The Challenge of Change: Growth Through Inquiry at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project
Changing circumstances, both anticipated and unanticipated, led the site to rethink its leadership structure and take an inquiry stance toward planning work and programs.
Supporting On-Site Teacher-Consultants: New York City Writing Project’s Community of Learners
The New York City Writing Project’s Friday meetings offer professional development to its on-site teacher-consultants in a safe, academically rigorous, and reflective professional community. The author traces the program’s evolution in response to the changing educational environment.
