2nd Day at the NWP

I went to a facilitated discussion that dealt with closing the achievement gap between minorities and the “dominant culture.” Teachers talked about dealing with the failure of the American education system in acknowledging racism and its effects on our students. The discussion was fairly open and honest in the way that the participants talked about the big duo of race and poverty. The teachers made several suggestions for “bridging the gap.” Some of the solutions included, providing positive role models for students, becoming culturally aware, allowing students to bring the skills they already have into the classroom, and to not be afraid to be questioned by a students.

The next session I attended was the “Using Personal Voice Writing in a Gay and Lesbian Literature Class.” I went to this session purely out of curiosity, since there are no gay and lesbian literature classes that I’m aware of in any secondary or post-secondary school in south Georgia. Two teachers from a high school in Amherst, Massachusetts explained and explored the syllabus to their gay and lesbian literature course. Through having their students understand and break down gay stereotypes and analyze literature, the teachers were able to create a course in which personal voice (gay and/or straight) was a critical component that gave way to creative and viable composition.

Another session I attended explained the mini-grant process. Writing the mini-grant is a fairly intuitive and easy process. It requires less than a thousand words. However, (you know there has to be a “but”) coming up with an idea is more difficult. The mini grants are used for “professional development,” “seed[ing] pilot programs,” and “deep[ing] existing networks” among other things. One session participant I had an opportunity to talk to explained how she used her grant to host an advance institute that introduced teachers to technology. For more info, check out the site . The dealine for submissions is January 11, 2006.