University of Houston-Clear Lake’s School of Education conducted its annual Greater Houston Area Writing Project’s Summer Institute during July and August. Classroom teachers come together for an entire month to better understand the art of writing and to learn enhanced ways to teach the subject to their students. In addition to daily writing and critiquing assignments the educators prepare a typical lesson plan for presentation and discussion ultimately providing new material for teachers to use in their classrooms. One writing exercise included a local excursion where the educators spent the afternoon capturing the experience on paper. Pictured above are (standing l to r) Maria Garza, Pasadena ISD; Amy Hopkins, Galveston ISD; (seated l to r) Kelcey Ivens, Pasadena ISD; Sharon Dennis, Houston ISD; and Shonda Dudley, Galena Park ISD. 

Writing program inspires the muses in teachers

Teachers enrolled in University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Greater Houston Area Writing Project Summer Institute learned firsthand how intimidating writing can be for students. The terror of having to fill a blank page, the panic of not knowing what to write about, the nervousness of receiving feedback from teachers and peers can make writing a dreaded subject, yet writing skills are essential for success in today’s world whether it’s writing a resume, responding to the boss’s email, or simply expressing oneself.

To become better at teaching students how to cope with these common anxieties and help them develop the necessary writing skills, if not instill a love for the practice, teachers from across the Houston area took up pen this summer and plunged head first into the world of writing.

UH-Clear Lake’s GHAWP Summer Institute is a part of the National Writing Project, established 34 years ago and now in place at 200 universities across the nation. National Writing Project touches more than 100,000 teachers annually.  The program’s premise is twofold: teachers who write are better able to teach writing, and classroom teachers learn best from other classroom teachers.

In addition to four weeks of daily writing and critiquing assignments ranging from poetry to journals to proposals, each educator presents a demonstration lesson – a writing workshop technique that is modified for classroom presentation. The group then discusses additional methods of adapting the material for their school’s students.

“Teachers go back to school in the fall energized, and with ideas they can immediately implement in the classroom,” explains UH-Clear Lake Associate Professor of Reading and Language Arts and GHAWP Director Kathy Matthew. 

Annually, the GHAWP publishes a collection of family recipes from the institute participants. Each recipe includes a brief description by the contributor about family memories associated with the dish.

“It’s really fascinating to see the look on these adult faces when they see their words in print,” Matthew says. “It’s like the students in their classrooms when suddenly they are authors and their words are in print.”

The GHAWP experience changed the way Machelle Herrera, Secondary Curriculum Specialist for Language Arts grades 6-12 in the Galveston ISD, teaches reading and writing, and with remarkable results. Herrera, who completed the GHAWP in 2005, says she used to select a single book for the class to read and then write about. Now, she understands the importance of giving students a choice. Today her students might be reading as many as six different books.

Among her most memorable student success stories was a class of 14, 10th-grade students many of whom had been in correctional facilities. Only two of the group had successfully passed the state’s mandatory reading and writing test. After working with the students for six months, Herrera reports, all of the students except two passed the mandatory exam when retested.

“It’s one of the most amazing programs – I don’t know how you get results like this. It’s just modeling, modeling, modeling and relationships. It’s probably 90 percent relationships and then giving them the freedom to read what they want and to write about it. It has to be a choice,” Herrera says.

In addition 63 of Herrera’s students had poems published, and one young student even collected a $5,000 check for a winning entry submitted to an online contest.

“It’s legendary where I teach,” says Stephanie Gilbert, seventh-grade language arts teacher at Dickinson ISD’s McAdams Junior High of GHAWP.  “I’ve heard about it ever since I came to Dickinson.”

Gilbert attended the institute last summer and returned this year as a teaching assistant. “I’ve fallen in love with writing again,” says Gilbert, who minored in creative writing but admits she has had little time to write since leaving school.

Back in the classroom Gilbert incorporated not only her rekindled passion for writing, but also some of the techniques she learned. 

“I do a lot of modeling,” she explains.

Now when Gilbert gives a writing assignment to her students, she writes, too. She has even shared with her students the multiple drafts of a single essay she prepared during the Summer Institute. The students were surprised to learn that “even teachers aren’t perfect,” and that they also have to do revisions.

“The more I show them how I write, the less resistant they are going to be,” Gilbert explains.

For Carla Gerardino it wasn’t only a renewed passion for writing she discovered, but a new-found confidence that emboldened her to take a more active leadership role. Being uncomfortable is part of the learning process, explains Gerardino. At the institute’s end the participants feel more at ease, which makes them more effective as a teacher, leader and writer, she says. “That’s the whole spirit of the writing project.”

Gerardino, who recently completed a master of science in reading at UH-Clear Lake, initiated a writer’s workshop for a group of Dickinson second graders she volunteered to teach reading.

“When they got their (writer) notebooks you’d have thought I had given them gold,” she says. She helped each put a photo on the back of the notebook with a brief “About the Author” summary. “They were so excited about writing. You can’t bottle that.”

Recently one of the young students approached Gerardino outside of the classroom to show her a poem she had written that day. “She’s still writing, and still wanting to share her writing with us.”

In the end that is the best judge of GHAWP’s success.

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