Our Writing and Learning Connect Us: Dick Heyler
Publication: NWP 2007 Annual Report
Date: 2007
Summary: Meet Dick Heyler from Harlan Rowe Junior High, Athens, Pennsylvania. He is a part of Endless Mountains Writing Project and the Rural Sites Network.
We were very hungry for a writing project in our area," says Dick Heyler, an award-winning eighth grade writing teacher at Harlan Rowe Junior High in Athens, Pennsylvania. In 1995, Dick attended a writing project institute in Williamsport, over an hour from home. When the opportunity came to establish a new site at Mansfield University in 2004, he wasted no time.
"So many graduate courses," Dick explains, "are just in and out." Not so with the Endless Mountains Writing Project he and colleague Nanci Werner-Burke now co-direct. One focus is on writing across the curriculum, as schools increasingly ask this local site to provide professional development for entire faculties. "We work with math and science teachers, even shop and physical education teachers," Dick explains. "The writing project is high-interest and research-based, so teachers really appreciate it."
The entire eighth grade class—typically 185 students—also benefits from the writing project because Dick teaches every one of them. Under his guidance, all eighth-graders complete an oral history project for which they conduct research; write articles, memoirs, and portraits; and make presentations.
The writing project is high-interest and research-based, so teachers really appreciate it.
In the spring, students exhibit their work at an oral history fair, an event that attracted 1,600 community members in 2007, and produced the publication Everyday Heroes, now registered in the Library of Congress.
Dick's attention to his local community is supported by the NWP's Rural Sites Network. In addition to strengthening professional development and research in rural areas, the network emphasizes place-based education and community programs. A published author, a 25-year teaching veteran, and a member of the state's writing assessment advisory and review committee, Dick remains a local guy, striving to improve education in his part of the world.