Focusing on New Sites and New-Site Directors

By: Art Peterson
Publication: The Voice, Vol. 10, No. 1
Date: 2005

Summary: In the first of a new series, The Voice introduces three of the directors of the 12 new sites that became part of the NWP network in 2004: Julie Robinson, director of the Rocky Mountain Writing Project (Colorado); Pamela Carroll, director of the Florida State University Writing Project; and Robert Kibler, director of the Northern Plains Writing Project (North Dakota)...

The Voice has made it a practice to introduce new-site directors with brief profiles. With this issue, we begin a new series of these reports, focusing on directors from the 12 sites that became part of the National Writing Project network in 2004. Here we introduce site leaders from the Florida State University Writing Project, the Northern Plains Writing Project (North Dakota), and the Rocky Mountain Writing Project (Colorado). Directors from the remaining of the 12 new sites will be profiled in upcoming issues.

Julie Robinson, Director
Rocky Mountain Writing Project
University of Northern Colorado, Greeley

Julie Robinson's favorite hobby is playing tennis. "It's like anything worth doing," she said, "difficult and satisfying."

Difficult and satisfying. If those qualities characterize activities that Robinson enjoys, then the director of the new Rocky Mountain Writing Project, Colorado, has taken on the right job.

Robinson pointed to the managerial portion of a site director's job as the part that gives her difficulty. "I have to do all the administrative work at least three times before I get it right," she explained. "The paperwork is mind-boggling at times."

But Robinson's satisfaction with her work as site director significantly overshadows the challenges. Speaking of the first summer institute at her new site, she said, "We had a magical group to work with—and I have no idea how it happened. Our goal for next year is to get a cohesive group together again."

Robinson's energy is propelling Rocky Mountain into the year-round work that is part of the National Writing Project model. "We had a fall retreat with a terrific turnout, and three teacher-consultants joined us at the annual meeting. I have visited the school of each of our teacher-consultants and had a chance to brag about all the good work they did and continue to do in the classroom. It's exciting to watch them teach writing and talk about professional development ideas they have for the future."

Robinson began her connection to the writing project in 1992, as a middle school teacher in Las Vegas working toward a graduate degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She signed up for course work with the Southern Nevada Writing Project to take advantage of the opportunity to earn six free graduate credits. "That was an exciting prospect," she said. But the experience turned out to be exciting in another way: "I was working with Rosemary Holmes-Gull, who is director of the site. The experience was phenomenal."

Robinson went on to earn a doctorate from Arizona State University and for two and a half years has taught at the University of Northern Colorado. For several years prior to this new position, she taught freshman composition, but she now works specifically with undergraduates who want to be teachers, offering courses in writing, methods of teaching writing, children's literature, and young adult literature.

It is Robinson's specific interest in young adult literature—one of her concentrations as a graduate student—that has sparked her next big plan for the Rocky Mountain Writing Project. "We are sponsoring a reading/writing meeting around a visit to our site by [author and poet] Gary Soto. We'll discuss some of his books, meet with him, and then go to a public book reading he's giving at the university. We hope to have other Colorado sites join us for this event."

Will this be a difficult task to pull off? Maybe. But Robinson expects it will be equally satisfying.

Pamela S. Carroll, Director
Florida State University Writing Project
Florida State University, Tallahassee

Pamela Sissi Carroll got a pretty good clue that a career in education would have its ups and downs the year she took on a teaching job. In 1980 she signed on to teach high school English in Florida, enticed by the state's Writing Enhancement Act, which called for every English teacher to have no more than 100 students and mandated a piece of complete writing from each student once a week. That same year, funding for the program dried up.

Carroll was relocated to a middle school, where she taught language arts until 1987. In 1990 she joined the faculty at Florida State University, and now, in addition to her writing project duties, she works as a program coordinator and a professor of English education.

There was a writing project site at the university when Carroll arrived, and she got involved with it. "But due to a myriad of conflicts," she said, "we let our NWP connection go temporarily. I was delighted in 2003 to reestablish our site."

One of Carroll's first experiences as a new director speaks volumes about the struggles and triumphs of a fledgling site. "A few days before our summer institute was scheduled to begin, my co-directors and I went to the school site where the institute would take place. We were thrilled with the facilities and enthusiastic about bringing our library of writing project books, writing tools, and other goodies into the suite of classrooms we had been assigned for our month-long project, imagining all the great work and camaraderie that would occur there. Stopping by the office before we departed, we came upon an assistant principal whose sad duty it was to inform us that a new policy for the use of facilities had been instituted: the price would now be $80 a day. We almost dropped through the floor. As a first-year project, we had not a penny to spare. We had counted on using the classrooms for free. We were afraid that we would have to cancel our institute. A few frantic faxes and some elaborate episodes of groveling later, we were able to convince the school to revisit its new policy. We used the facilities without charge and have already reserved space for this year's institute."

While experienced directors may hear this story as an example of new-site growing pains, they will recognize some of Carroll's other concerns as part of the everyday agenda of a writing project site director. She says that teachers in her area are so overloaded with required inservice responsibilities that these demands diminish their enthusiasm for any elective inservice regardless of how useful. Of course, once teachers come through the door of a writing project summer institute, they are in contact with ways of teaching writing that will likely bring big changes to their classroom work. The challenge for these new teacher-consultants, then, becomes how to incorporate the kinds of writing activities they learn through their writing project experiences into an already heavy curriculum.

But, these bumps in the road have in no way diminished Carroll's enthusiasm. She is quick to comment, "We have larger hopes than fears. . . .We have already begun planning a Writing Summit to be held in fall 2005, in which our teacher-consultants will join nationally recognized speakers to demonstrate writing instruction strategies to an audience of teachers." Large hopes, indeed.

Robert E. Kibler, Director
Northern Plains Writing Project
Minot State University
Minot, North Dakota

For a man who has scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, running a writing project site might seem no more than a minor challenge. But the job of convincing North Dakota state legislators that the Northern Plains Writing Project (NPWP) deserved funding was no easy task, according to Robert Kibler, the director of the new site. "[The legislators] had thought to cut the funds of both writing project sites in North Dakota." Kibler said. Kibler and Kim Donehower, director of the Red River Valley Writing Project, also of North Dakota, presented the case for the long-term presence of writing projects in the state. The legislators agreed, and the North Dakota sites received funding from the state.

Kibler did not always have a passion for the writing project—or even a knowledge of its inner workings. "I joined the NPWP planning team five years ago, as a new faculty member at Minot State, even though I didn't really know what [the writing project] was," he explained. Although over the years he had come to realize the importance of teaching writing, it wasn't until he attended sessions at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention a few years ago that he "realized the profound value of the National Writing Project to teachers across our nation."

Kibler became one of the committed and, last summer, the Northern Plains Writing Project held its first summer institute under Kibler's leadership, drawing as well on the experience of leaders from the former site at Minot State. "Running a dynamic and invigorating summer institute was a memorable accomplishment," he noted. "We ended the institute at the North Dakota Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference, and all our teacher-consultants gave demonstrations to the crowd. Very impressive group. Really terrific." This year, Kibler added, "we intend to hold both an institute and an advanced institute."

Like many of the best teachers, Kibler has interests that are both deep and broad. He has taught professional writing, business writing, and composition for 18 years. But he has also taught "Western History, Literature, Music and Art from the Eighth Century B.C.E. to the Tenth Century C.E." He has even led a student safari to the Serengeti.

Right now, however, the most exciting thing in Kibler's life is working with a "dynamic core of teachers trying to find ways to give our young people a good education." He wants schools and teachers to know what the writing project can do for them. "We have to sell our inservice opportunities. This is the big challenge," he said. A very big challenge, certainly. But having seen the snows of Kilimanjaro up close, Kibler can face the uphill climb.