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Warner School Awarded Grant to Launch Genesee Valley Writing Project
A $30,000 grant to the Warner School to launch a Genesee Valley Writing Project will explore and improve writing, teaching, and learning in classrooms and schools across the Genesee Valley region. The Genesee Valley Writing Project is affiliated with the National Writing Project and is one of 190 sites in the United States.
The Genesee Valley Writing Project will be located at the Warner School and directed by Meg Callahan, assistant professor. The local site will recruit teachers and administrators from urban and suburban regions of Monroe and surrounding counties including Ontario, Livingston, Wayne, and portions of Genesee and Orleans counties.
“This is an opportunity to serve local teachers and, at the same time, to advance knowledge about writing that ultimately will help enrich the quality of student education across the region,” says Callahan. “We have an extraordinary opportunity here to be affiliated with the National Writing Project, a renowned nationwide professional development program with a mission that fits well with the Warner’s mission.”
Like the National Writing Project, the Genesee Valley Writing Project will be a teacher-centered professional development program that serves teachers and students through a teachers-teaching-teachers model. This approach will allow the Genesee Valley site to tap into what is known about writing and the teaching of writing from all sources—key research findings, important books and articles, and most importantly, the classroom practices of effective and successful teachers.
In its mission to improving the quality of student writing and learning in area schools, the Genesee Valley site will sponsor an array of programs including an annual Invitational Summer Institute, school-year in-service programs, and professional development continuity programs.
The four-week Summer Institute, the heart of the Genesee Valley Writing Project, will take place July through August 2007 and will include exemplary teachers from all levels of instruction and disciplines. All area teachers, including pre-kindergarten teachers and college instructors, will have the opportunity to demonstrate successful classroom literacy practices, study research, pose their own research and questions, write extensively, and share their own writing. All follow-up programs and activities throughout the remainder of the year will evolve from the centerpiece of the Summer Institute.
Applications for the Invitational Summer Institute will be available in January 2007. For more information, please contact Meg Callahan at (585) 273-5090 or e-mail her at meg.callahan@rochester.edu. Information on the National Writing Project is available at www.writingproject.org.
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