Selected Works
Summer Writing Institute
A central tenet of the National Writing Project model is that teachers who use writing in the classroom need to be able to see themselves as writers; thus participants do a great deal of their own writing, which they share with peer response groups on a regular basis. Most often this writing takes the form of a poem or personal essay. The institute culminates in a celebratory reading and distribution of an institute anthology. The anthology also includes a write up of the rehearsal lesson created by each teacher to incorporate some of the new learning into an actual teaching situation.
Go to Summer Institute Works (or click links on the left at any time)
Writing Across the Curriculum Institute
Participants in the WAC Institute produce writing in much the same way as happens in the Invitational Writing Institute: they share their writing-in-progress with supportive peer response groups who help them shape it into a finished product that is presented to the group as a whole on the final day and included in the institute anthology.
Literature Institute
Unlike the Writing Institute, the Literature Institute does not end with a celebratory reading. Instead of writing a poem, short story or personal essay, participants end their two-weeks by submitting an account of their learning, which usually emphasis new insights into reading, writing, and teaching. The reflective essays reprinted here give a good indication of just how transformative the two weeks can be. Each participant also writes a review of a pedagogical text and a lesson plan.
Go to Literature Institute Works
Technology Institute
Teachers participating in the Technology Institute do not do writing per se. Instead they create a personalized computer-assissted project for their own classroom that is highlighted in their Learning Results Portfolio, most of which are posted on a website or transmitted electronically.
Go to Technology Institute Works
Other Institutes
Institutes on the neighbor islands often replicate the 4-week Writing Institute and the 2-week Literature Institute. In 2002 Maui unveiled a 3-week hybrid, called Responding to Literature Through Writing, that was offered on Kaua`i in 2004 and is planned again for Kaua`i in summer 2005.
The Kalaheo Complex Institutes (2003, 2004, 2005) and the Shantou University Institute, Shantou China (2002) were shorter versions of the four-week Writing Institute. Following the NWP model, personal writing was shaped by feedback from peer response groups and presented at a final celebratory reading.
Writing: The World of Work was an annual institute offered from 1997-2000 in cooperation with the Hawai`i State Department of Education using federal vocational education funds. Each institute brought together teams of high school teachers from vocational areas and academic disciplines across the curriculum to focus on the transition from school to the world of work. Following the Writing Project model the teachers engaged in personal writing about the meaning of work and actual worksite visits to help them find ways to integrate writing and workplace realities into the curriculum. A WWOW institute was also held in American Samoa in 2000.
