But here I am along with hundreds of other Teacher-Consultants of writing projects from all over the country converging on DC for three days of aggressive lobbying to try and convince Congress to reinstate direct funding for the NWP, and perhaps for other programs as well. But things don’t look sanguine. The NWP has already laid off sixty percent of the staff at the National offices. Barring a minor miracle in the coming weeks, most will lose their jobs come May 31. A second round of layoffs will become effective at the end of August.
Without federal funding, many if not most of the more than two hundred writing project sites around the country will vanish. We are fortunate that we will most certainly survive, albeit in a very diminished capacity. The CWP-Storrs existed for nearly a decade before federal funds arrived in 1991. We were instrumental in creating the Aetna endowment in the English Department, and continue to receive fairly significant funds from the Aetna Chair. These funds will enable us to continue the core work of holding a summer institute every year, even though it may mean taking fewer teachers each summer.
Beyond that, we will have to see what other funding sources exist or can be found. Professional development, though districts have limited funds at this time, will continue to bring in some revenue, and then of course there are other grant opportunities to apply for. This is how the CWP funded itself for years before the federal grant. And the folks at the national office expect the federal government to make competitive grant funds available to compete for, though we would be in competition with organizations like Teach for America and RIF, which previously the NWP had partnered with.
I wonder how many legislators are even aware that the NWP had been providing professional development for teachers in Teach for America, helping improve the retention rates of its teachers, or that the NWP has been working with RIF to publish bilingual books for use in schools to help support ELL instruction? Now we will have to compete with those entities rather than work together, though hopefully partnerships will be accepted in at least some of the grant proposals. Much is left to be seen, and the next couple of years will bring a great deal of change.
In the meantime, we continue to move forward. Connecticut Student Writers magazine is all laid out and being proofread and will soon head to the printers. Recognition Night is May 10. We have received nineteen applications for Fellowships to attend the Summer Institute, including elementary teachers, middle and high school teachers, community college instructors, and several graduate students in English, English Education, and Bilingual education. We have mostly English, Language Arts, and Social Studies applicants, as usual, but also a Spanish teacher, so we should have a strong ELL component this summer. And the ELL Network is the only one of the Special Focus Networks the NWP did not cut in response to the federal cuts. (Presumably there is a secondary source of funding for that).
We are also moving along with the Site Early History Project. Our former undergraduate writing intern conducted a few interviews last semester with some veteran Teacher-Consultants, but current intern Sarah Garry has done some amazing work tracking down many of the original founders of the CWP from the early 80s. Sarah has conducted in person, phone, and email interviews with several individuals. Bill Curtin drove up to campus to be interviewed in person. Bill developed and taught the Advanced Composition for Prospective Teachers course I now teach. Ann Policelli was interviewed by phone. Bill Curtin had told Sarah that, while he and others put their names on most of the official documents for the CWP, Ann actually did most of the day to day work, which she confirmed in her interview. Joan Hall, who was the first woman hired for a tenure track position in UConn’s English department, was also interviewed by phone. Joan did not work directly with the CWP, but she had been very involved for several years with Writing UConn, the predecessor to the Long River Review, which the CWP began in 1983 and funded throughout the 80s. We also found Bill Scheidley, living and still teaching in Colorado. Bill was the second director after former department head Bill Rosen, who has sadly passed away.
We’re still trying to nail down Mary Mackley for an interview, and to locate other important faculty from the early years, such as Karen Jambeck and Matt Proser. Matt is local. Karen appears to be living out west somewhere. Mary is just elusive. (Those of us close to Mary may recall how much she always loved technology. And yes, that line is dripping with sarcasm). All the interviews will be published later this spring in the newsletter. A summer writing intern will pick up where Sarah leaves off, and continue tracking down and interviewing some of the founders, and will perhaps work with the NWP and/or the Dodd Center’s special collections library to document and archive pre-1991 publications, such as Writing UConn, old copies of Connecticut Student Writers, and other documents such as the Summer Institute chapbooks and some collections of creative writing by graduate students from 1986-88, when the CWP conducted the professional development pelatihan for the English grad students preparing to teach Freshman English.
Anyway, we’re still here and will still be here in the coming years. We may be a little leaner, but that, too, may change.
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