It was the summer of 2004; that's when my life changed.
Not just personally, but professionally. Maybe that should read, not just professionally, but personally. For I was in one of the National Writing Project's Summer Institutes. Eighteen days, which, at the time, seemed like one. A single long day when I discovered that I was a writer, a writer, who taught. Beyond that, I was a teacher leader-someone who had something to offer other teachers. You'd think I was a brand new insecure teacher: I had 24 years under my belt.
I went to the Annual Meeting that fall and joined a couple thousand other Teacher Consultants (TCs) of the National Writing Project who had, at one time, been born into this begetting agency as I just had. Every workshop offered at the convention was led by other teacher leaders and I heard in every room the call that I belonged-that somehow, I was one of them.
Initially, I led advanced institutes of writing with other TCs for two consecutive summers, writing books for educators in both cases. I also led an after-school writing group in my district, but eventually, I became a co-director of my site and have worked for the past six years as a presentations coach and co-director of our summer institute. I've worked closely with about seventy-five fellow educators in our service area, facilitating their own discovery of their abilities and gifts.
A few years ago, I was invited to join the E-Team, a group of TCs who respond to writing by summer institute participants posted to the national web site. Right now, I am the co-coordinator of the remarkable, unequaled group of teachers. At this time, I have probably responded to the writing of over 1,000 teachers all over the country.
As a Fellow of the National Writing Project, I was not only awakened to the present, to the immediate investment I could make in education, but I was also inspired to forward thinking. In May of 2010, I finished my masters in writing and that fall I taught remedial writing students at a local junior college, using everything I'd learned in the summer institutes.
Because of NWP's philosophy that anyone, everyone can write, I suggested to my wife that I believed she could write a book. We actually wrote it together; Broken Road was completed in the summer of 2011. We're currently working on the sequel.
The most recent opportunity to serve my profession and the teachers who comprise it came in March of 2011. The task actually began 20 months prior, when I became the conference committee chairperson for a national conference held in Little Rock. I led a team of TCs from our site who hosted 200 educators from across the nation.
The National Writing Project didn't teach me to do any of these things in which I've been involved over the last seven years. The NWP invited me to do them while at the same time, it revealed in me that I had these abilities all along. The beautiful truth is that every TC has tremendous capabilities which are totally unknown to them.
And now the National Writing Project has lost its funding. Who will open the eyes of teachers who haven't yet been awakened, who haven't heard the message that they can write, they can teach, and they have immeasurable, limitless gifts to offer students, educators, and the craft?
If this truth could have come to educators apart from the NWP , it would have.
A nation of educators waits.
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