However, the CWP is fortunate, as always, to have Aetna Endowment funding to help us sustain essential programs like the Summer Institute, and we are holding two fundraising events to help establish an endowment for ourselves as well as raise some additional operating funds. One will be the May 11 30th Anniversary Reunion, and the other will likely be a fall cabaret with Barry Lane, though this is still very much in the earliest stages of planning. Nonetheless, some programs will have to be tabled for a year, and others that were put on hold a couple years ago, like the Teacher and Student Writing Conference or the Academy for Young Writers, will have to continue to wait for the economy to improve. (Federal funds for teacher professional development cannot be spent directly on student programs, which is why these were the first to suffer).
The SEED funds have three priorities: “Increasing the number of teacher-leaders prepared to improve the teaching of writing; increasing sustained professional development services in the teaching of writing to
 high-need schools; and developing and piloting new online professional development resources to improve the
 teaching of writing.†The former is clearly intended to help support Summer Institutes. The latter builds on the investment in technology that began with special funding for Technology Liaisons and the development of the Technology Initiative: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/programs/ti. The second initiative gives the NWP the opportunity to partner with Title I schools, and also gives it the opportunity to collaborate with Teach For America, which it was already doing in places like Philadelphia, where the Philadelphia Writing Project was working with TFA teachers in Philadelphia schools to provide ongoing and advanced professional development intended to improve the instruction of TFA teachers and, hopefully, get more of them to stay both in the profession and in Philadelphia.
Much of this is consistent with federal and state initiatives—Race to the Top and SB 24 proposals—to improve teacher training. Some of Malloy’s teacher pelatihan proposals, as you all know, I’m sure, are controversial, to say the least, but I am guardedly hopeful about one component that was announced Wednesday. The Board of Education voted to create an advisory council intended to improve teacher education programs. At face value, this might sound frightening, but the advisory council appears to be fairly well balanced. The Educator Preparation Advisory Council will include the new commissioner, of course, but also representatives from the Board of Regents for Higher Education, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE), superintendents and other building-level administrators, and both teachers unions. For my part, I am glad to see building-level administrators and the teachers’ unions on that board, as well as the president of the BRHE, and that groups like ConnCAN and the Connecticut Business and Industry Association are not included. Honestly, I don’t think they belong in the discussion, and this council, as constituted (or at least as it appears to be constituted) seems more balanced than, for example, the one that made recommendations on tenure. We shall see. As I said, my hope is guarded.
Part of my hopefulness comes from the fact that, at UConn, the CWP has been very involved in the preparation of at least the future English teachers, and I would be very excited to see the CWP use its new funding to be more and more deeply involved in teacher pelatihan and professional development, and perhaps to earn opportunities to work with TFA teachers in places like Windham, where Special Master Stephen Adamowski has announced plans to hire twenty TFA teachers. I think that the Neag School of Education at UConn is already doing many of the kinds of things Malloy and Pryor would like to see become more wide-spread and characteristic of teacher pelatihan throughout the state, and certainly the US Department of Education has recognized that the Writing Projects are capable of providing the professional development necessary to train new teachers and support veteran teachers.
So today was warm and sunny. My son did not have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, as he did yesterday. I received good news on a tawaran I made related to my fellowship (that I will withhold discussing till I learn more). A colleague and friend I wrote a rec for got a big promotion. Six undergrads I wrote recs for got into grad schools. Neag just announced its new students, and I am very happy for the twelve students who got in for secondary English, the seven Elementary Ed admissions who are also pursuing English degrees, and the one Special Ed student who is. And four additional students I wrote recs for received a scholarship, a grant, admission to study abroad, and acceptance into TFA. And now the CWP will have federal funds again in 2013. So maybe circumstance has tinted my glasses rose, but I’ll take it for the time being.
Spring break is next week, and I am going to take a week off from blogging. See you in two.
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