But we also learned that the National Writing Project has been authorized to compete for competitive grants funds for FY11 and beyond. It’s not the news we wanted but it is better than a complete loss of funding.
The best financial news I received came from the Aetna Advisory Board, which voted to increase funding to support the Summer Institute, allowing us to hold a full Institute of sixteen teachers with eight credit stipends and eight cash stipends. We might not be able to do much of anything else, but we can still hold a robust Summer Institute.
Right now at the university we are winding down toward the end of the spring semester. My last day of classes is April 29. But that also means reports—two merit reports, a kegiatan report, intern evaluations, and staff evaluations—and observations—fifteen site visits in four weeks to observe Early College Experience (ECE) teachers teaching Freshman English in the high schools.
But it is also an exciting time. I have been interviewing candidates for the Summer Institute and have enjoyed sending out acceptance notifications to applicants who have been awarded Fellowships. As always, we have a terrific, talented, and diverse selection of teachers for this summer.
Their grade levels range from first grade to community college faculty. We have mostly English and Language Arts teachers, but several social studies teachers and one Spanish teacher. We have a bilingual educator from the Compañeros kegiatan at Windham Middle School, who is in the 6th Year Program in Bilingual Education at UConn, along with the Spanish teacher from New Britain. We have other graduate students in English and Education, and many teachers from urban districts. In fact, there has been a noticeable uptick in interest in the Summer Institute from graduate students, urban educators, and community college faculty. For a mixture of personal and professional reasons, these folks perceive a strong need for the professional development we can provide.
And as much as it is a hassle to drive all over the state to conduct the site visits for the ECE program, I also really enjoy going into all these different schools and observing so many different teachers. I learn a great deal about school cultures and I observe lots of good and sometimes even great teaching.
In the office we are finishing up the publication of the 23rd annual edition of Connecticut Student Writers. Submissions were a little down this year, but still exceeded 700, and it will be fun and exciting to hear all the students from each grade level read their published works at Recognition Night on May 10 at Jorgensen Auditorium.
I’m also preparing to attend graduation ceremonies this year for the first time. Now that I advise the dual degree students in English and Education, I suddenly have a large number of graduating seniors. Thirteen of my advisees and both of my undergraduate writing interns from this year will be among the 210 students taking English degrees. The department holds a reception for them in the CLAS Building where they can bring their parents to meet their professors, and we all stand around and chit-chat while we drink coffee and eat finger food. But then the faculty members don their robes and walk en masse with the seniors across the Great Lawn and over to the Gampel Pavilion for the graduation ceremonies. I hope we get warm weather, and I wish I had nicer robes. I bought the inexpensive ones with the cap that won’t stay on my head. But oh well. No one will be looking at me.
The other exciting thing this time of year is hearing students win awards for graduation or earn cool placements for next year if they are underclassmen or graduate students. On Tuesday, two advisees who are taking my Advance Composition course learned that they had been awarded highly sought after placements. One young woman in the dual degree kegiatan was chosen to be an undergraduate writing tutor in the Writing Center, and another who is an English major pursuing the Concentration in Teaching English learned she had received an internship with the Creative Writing Program’s Long River Review. A third student who will be doing Teach for America in the fall approached me to tell me she had just gotten an essay accepted for publication, and was asked to write a regular column as a first year teacher.
Later that evening I attended the Wallace Stevens Award ceremonies and got to hear yet another former student who had won the award this year read her poem before a full house of English students and faculty, as a warm up to the featured poet, August Kleinzahler. Afterwards, I went out for drinks with a cross section of award winning undergraduates, creative writing faculty members, and Kleinzahler himself. Maybe it’s nerdy on my part to say so, but it’s fun to watch all the young writers socializing with their professors and other professional writers. The undergraduates get so excited to meet the professors and poets, and honestly the professors and poets are equally energized and inspired by all these talented and ambitious undergraduates.
And then, finally, in the midst of all this, I am writing letters of recommendation upon letters of recommendation for graduating English majors to go to the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates, or other graduate programs in Education, and for Education students who have finished their MA year to go on the job market, which is so thin this year. For the next several weeks my stomach will be in knots as I wait and hope for all these talented new graduates to land on their feet.
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