431 MTSU SITE OF NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT INSTITUTE

$93K Matching Grants Secure Opportunity to Offer Monthlong Program;MTSU Also Will Sponsor 2-Week Youth Writing Camp for Grades 4-12

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 15, 2006
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Lisa L. Rollins, 615-898-2919


(MURFREESBORO)—Thanks to generous matching grants totaling $98,000, MTSU will soon embark upon its second annual Middle Tennessee Writing Project (MTWP), an on-campus writing institute for select teachers of kindergarten through college students.
Regarding the teacher-focused project, Dr. Bobbie Solley, professor of elementary and special education at MTSU, said the multi-week institute targets those educators who are already doing good work when it comes to writing instruction in the classroom.
“This will be for those people who want to expand their repertoire,” she said of the MTWP, which will meet 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Thursday beginning June 5 and ending Friday, June 30.
Participating educators will be required to present a 90-minute demonstration of an effective writing strategy that they have used with their students. By doing so, Solley said, teachers will learn from one another and do their own writing, too.
“We believe that to be an effective teacher of writing, you have to write yourself,” she remarked. “So they will write and publish several pieces during that time period.”
MTSU is only the second site in Tennessee to offer such a writing project. The MTWP is part of the The National Writing Project, which is a federally funded program launched in 1974 by professors at the University of California at Berkeley who were interested in helping teachers become more effective teachers of writing.
“This is a very good thing for MTSU,” said Solley, who—along with Dr. Trixie Smith, assistant professor, English—penned the grant request that made MTWP possible.
“When you look at the National Writing Project map and see that Alabama has seven sites and seven universities, Mississippi has eight, Kentucky has six or seven, and Tennessee had one (at the University of Tennessee at Martin)—it was kind of embarrassing (to not be included),” she observed.
Solley said that it’s important to note that the MTWP is not a remedial writing institute, but instead, focuses on best practices in writing instruction.
“We will bring in 16 teachers who are already doing good things in writing,” she explained. “They will become teacher consultants at the end … so these teacher consultants will go out and conduct workshops and will be paid through grant money.”
Participants also will be required to hold workshops and in-service sessions in their own schools and each will receive six hours of graduate credit, said Solley, who adds that this year’s teachers come from Rutherford, Wilson, Cannon, Maury and Williamson counties, as well as from the Franklin City Schools district.
—more—

WRITING
Add 1

“What really excites me about me about this is teachers being put up on a pedestal,” Solley said. “These are professional people. They have the knowledge that other people don’t have, so let’s use it and spread it.”
Solley and Smith are required to submit a report every fall and re-apply for the grant each year. Solley said Dr. Keylene Gebert, MTSU’s provost, has indicated her intent to provide matching funds for the annual project, as was done this year.
As for the writing ability of today’s learners, Solley has characterized the current writing skills of students from elementary grades to graduate school as unimaginative. In the lower grades, she added, teachers traditionally have been pressured to teach writing through a prompt, which eliminates the creative process of children coming up with an original subject.
“Kids come to kindergarten bursting with imagination and ideas, (but) by second grade, they are already struggling because too many teachers have only the right stuff to write about,” she said.
As for the college set, ample room for writing improvement also exists.
“I have graduate students who can’t write. Their sentence structure is simple and boring, and I think it’s for fear that they don’t know how to use commas right,” remarked Solley, who said she hopes the writing project will spark renewed interest and involve teachers and principals in reversing this situation in our schools.
In addition to the MTWP, this year MTSU also will serve as host for a two-week summer youth writing camp for up to 15 children in grades 4-12 from Rutherford, Bedford, Cannon, Wilson or Williamson counties.
The cost of the youth writing program, which will meet 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. four days each week from June 12 to June 22, at MTSU, is $200 per child. Applications for the youth writing camp are available online at www.mtsu.edu/~mtwp.
• For more information about the MTWP, please access its Web site online at
www.mtsu.edu/~mtwp or contact Solley directly by calling 615-898-5934.


ATTENTION, MEDIA: For editorial needs, including interview requests with institute organizers or past teacher participants from specific counties, please contact Lisa L. Rollins in the Office of News and Public Affairs at lrollins@mtsu.edu or by calling 615-898-2919.