Hoosier+Writing+Project+Summer+Institutes

The Hoosier Writing Project is a site of the National Writing Project, located at IUPUI in the Department of English, and directed by Prof. Steve Fox.

Founded in 1974 at the University of California at Berkeley, the NWP is the only national program in the US working to improve writing and learning. • The NWP has over 200 sites across the country, including HWP, founded in 1993. •The NWP model of professional development helps teachers build the best classroom practices, improve their own writing, and study and discuss research. •NWP teachers are encouraged to become researchers in their own classrooms.

For more information, see the HWP website: http://hoosierwritingproject.org/.

Summer Institute
Every summer HWP holds an intensive invitational summer institute. Teachers K-university apply, and we invite from 12-20 teachers to join us. The institute includes teaching demonstrations, professional reading, discussion of teaching writing, and perhaps most essential, writing and sharing writing. Steve Fox works with two K-12 teachers (experienced HWP teacher-consultants) to facilitate the institute. We follow the NWP model, learning from other sites, and adapting our own local practices. The "syllabus" below gives some idea of what we do, though the institute is not a traditional graduate class by any means.

Every teacher who participates in the Summer Institute prepares a teaching demonstration. We borrowed some ideas from another NWP site a few years ago and started calling these "Inquiry-Based Demonstrations." The teaching demonstration therefore goes beyond show-and-tell; instead, the teacher chooses a meaningful question to pursue through the demonstration and through professional reading and discussion with other participants.