2023 Newsletter
Sustainable Teaching Retreat Days
By Molly Robins
Over the course of this school year, the Denver Writing Project through a partnership with the Colorado State University Writing Project, sponsored four Sustainable Teaching retreat days. Facilitated by Molly Robbins, Brittany Richardson, and Bine Trujillo, these days had twelve participants who came together to build connection with other teachers looking for ways to fill their cups to examine how to build healthy teaching lives. This group came from districts all over the front range, with one participant braving the drive from Telluride.
We began our year with what we refer to as “cave practices,” those tools we can utilize with ourselves to build greater resilience in tough times. We discussed the nervous system along with creating compassionate boundaries. The final two retreats we shifted our focus towards creating “hospitable spaces” for ourselves. This included an exploration of who we offer our trust towards and building a superhero story of our own to be “enough” in the ways we navigate our careers.
This summer we will offer a full weeklong Sustainable Teaching Institute along with the four retreat days over the school year. Please reach out to Molly Robbins if you are interested: mllrobbins@gmail.com Details to come!
Facilitating Digital Discourse Project
By Joe Dillon
At the outset of 2020, the Denver Writing Project was selected to participate in “Facilitating Digital Discourse: Teachers as Learners in a Digital Age,” a 5-year research project headed by the University of Pennsylvania and the National Writing Project (NWP). Funded by the James S McDonnell Foundation, the Teachers as Learners grant investigates how expert literature teachers understand and facilitate discussions that help students develop their individual and collaborative reasoning, and how they translate those discussions to online platforms.
A team of nine teachers from the Denver Writing Project began the inquiry in the 2020-21 school year, and have worked in collaboration with a teacher cohort from the Philadelphia Writing Project. The group representing DWP, led by Joe Dillon from Aurora Highlands P-8, is comprised of teachers from across the Denver metropolitan area: Jennifer Dunbar from Centaurus High School, Jennifer Henderson from Aurora Central High School, Molly Robbins from Cherokee Trail High School, Jon Saliman and Alex Thieme from Littleton High School, Shelly Smith from Thornton High School, Sarah Woodard from UCD and DPS Online High School, and Calbe Wohlust from Endeavor Academy. Additionally, Dr. Miranda Egger from UCD works with DWP’s teacher cohort as a research liaison.
The work is guided by inquiry questions that help us understand how English teachers lead digital discourse:
- What can we learn about high-quality discussion about literature online?
- What moves (on the part of facilitators or moderators) help us get toward ‘high quality’?
- How are online literature discussions shaped by the different contexts and formats in which they take place?
In the first year, teachers shared their practice by leading each other through lessons they’d developed and participating as students to experience and think critically about different forms of digital discourse. In the second year of the project, teachers shared artifacts of student work from their classrooms. The team annotated those artifacts socially using a framework drafted by the research team to study the ways students responded to texts, tools, and the social opportunities afforded by different teaching approaches.
During this, the project’s third year, teachers have created discourse spaces and refined approaches to test in their classrooms. Our team recently met in Atlanta, Georgia, to mark the midpoint of the project and to share their designs face-to-face with teacher colleagues from Philadelphia and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania. Also at this meeting in Atlanta, researchers and teachers from both cities began designing two professional learning venues to engage a new cohort of teachers from the National Writing Project network: an open online professional learning that will take place this summer and inquiry group cohorts that will help teachers apply their summer learning to classroom teaching.
Looking forward, this collaboration between teachers and researchers will culminate in a fifth year devoted to writing and disseminating a framework for digital discourse, teacher methods, and findings from studying the way teachers learn in inquiry groups.
Fall 2021 Newsletter
Summer 2021 Advanced Institute
By Blaine Miller
The Denver Writing Project’s Advanced Institute (AI) celebrated another successful session. COVID presented its challenges, but the AI folks continued writing and learning. We wrote into our days, shared our thoughts as writers and as educators who cared about doing what was best for the kids. We talked about our struggles with remote and hybrid learning; we discussed the impacts of COVID; we discussed how the impacts may last for many years, as well as how things have changed. It was, for me, very much a National Writing Project event: a group of dedicated professionals working towards a common purpose. And we wrote about all of it as often as we could.
We took a chance this year offering a theme we had not tried. How can we use writing to reengage ourselves as teachers, as writers, and as individuals? We encouraged participants to take risks and try different genres. We witnessed writers doing what they did best: write with honesty and compassion. There were narratives, poems, observational essays, and analogy pieces. I wrote a letter to a rookie teacher and tried writing a villanelle poem.
We were treated to our traditional speakers and project leaders, and much of the project remained unchanged. Sometimes we need variety, and sometimes we don’t. This year was difficult in many ways for most of us in the educational arena: balancing the classroom in an online world; making sure kids were ok and “Zoom” ready; managing our own wellness and self-care. It was a long year, and the DWP was what we all needed.
We still ran sessions remotely due to the restrictions on social gatherings. It was disappointing not being able to see folks. I miss the face-to-face, the handshakes in the morning, the bantering over coffee, the workshops, and the discussions about writing. I miss walking around the campus observing. In short, I miss the way it used to be.
The Summer Institute was exactly what some of us needed. We continue to support each other as we navigate this brave new world. For those who have been involved with the DWP over the years, welcome back! For the newcomers, welcome to what I believe will become your professional development home.
Keep Writing!
Blaine Miller
DWP/AI Facilitator
2021 Denver Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute
By Alma Olaechea
Swimming, drowning, cicadas, inner saboteurs, sustainability, and being enough. These are just some of the many topics that the participants of the Denver Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute explored during their three-week online session this summer. Guest speaker and poet Jovan Mays shared his process of “breadcrumbing,” asking, “Where is my idea going?” and “What haven’t I said yet?” before taking time away from a draft. Writers examined their desks, front doors, and sought inspiration outside during co-director Abbi Heller’s Neighborhood Writing Marathon. Ideas for this year’s writing demos included identity, storytelling, implicit bias, and setting goals. For a fun overview of conversations and events, please enjoy the following poem by 2021 participant Janna Winkle:
Sometimes a gift is…
by Janna Winkle
Time. And talents. And truth.
Making a stranger chuckle
Or smile beyond courtesy.
A wiggly, biting puppy, a cat in the crook of your neck, or walking across the back of your
couch or tattooed on your shin.
The giant turtle who watches you run.
The cicadas that sing you to sleep.
The clover mite that doesn’t bite
yet carries its own mysterious purpose.
It’s the cool breeze that breaks the heat wave.
The silence after the jack hammers.
The sound of double-dutch ditties sung by neighborhood kids.
It’s a new bookstore, with open doors before open hours before open pages.
Recommendations of restaurants, books, ice cream flavors, and parlors.
It’s a door.
An unexpected friend.
A check in the mail.
A new pen and notebook.
The mug you don’t need and must keep.
Jazz written for what wasn’t written.
Compasses that show where you are but more importantly, where you haven’t yet been.
It’s exploding moments of creativity
newly recalled memories of moth orchids, moon earrings, marathons, markets, and markers. Whether swimming or drowning, it’s the etceteras of life.
Someone who throws her head back to laugh.
It’s a mid-morning break.
Food delivered to your step.
Prosecco brunches and long lunches.
It’s a group without the token annoying person. A space where catharsis says, “Here. and now.” Backgrounds of books
Bridge words
Black-outs
Breaths
and breadcrumbs.
Silent snaps
Orange hair
Long hair
Morning hair
Drinking tea -- instead of pee.
It’s the shore between the river and the mountain.
It’s insights, incidences, and inspiration
Sometimes a gift is...
Knowing it’s enough
knowing
you’re enough.
Young Writers Camp 2021
By Shannon Hanschen
The Denver Writing Project continued its programming in an online environment during the summer of 2021. The DWP’s Young Writers’ Camps are a place for enthusiastic young writers to start their summer with numerous, engaging writing experiences to power them through a summer of writing play. This summer- more than ever- youth needed these kinds of experiences, so the DWP was fortunate to be in a position to offer them.
During the week of June 7th, master Colorado teachers communed online with over 60 enthusiastic young writers, grades 3-12+ for three and a half hours each morning to make writing magic. The young writers showed up, and the week still sizzled with good writing juju.
Over the course of the week, youth engaged with a variety of writing genres and challenges to craft multiple strong drafts that they could continue revising and building from throughout the summer. A much-loved piece of Young Writers’ Camp is experiencing workshops facilitated by a professional writer. The Denver Writing Project (DWP) was elated to partner with Jovan Mays, former poet laureate of Aurora. He delivered two energetic writing workshops in which youth explored their own writing voice. As always, it was a captivating and energizing workshop that had young writers dancing, laughing, and challenging themselves to explore deep themes in their writing.
Another evergreen part of camp was having youth understand and explore the writing process. Young writers were supported to finalize a piece or two to share during the Writer’s Celebration on Friday, June 11th. This celebration is the culminating activity of Young Writers’ Camp each summer. Family and friends listen in as young writers read their work. To hear young writers writing in their own voice is always such a delightful and meaningful conclusion of camp. While the space this year shifted to the digital, the magic was preserved.
The DWP was also delighted to offer a three-day Minecraft and Writing Workshop for youth this summer. Across three, 90-minute sessions, involved youth were able to engage conversations around Minecraft, play-tested worlds with embedded writing tasks created by the National Writing Project, and switched off the game to write outside the worlds for 20 minutes. Young writers also explored game review mentoring texts in order to notice and emulate the features that worked in their own writing. DWP looks forward to offering a similar workshop in person next summer.
The Denver Writing Project is proud to offer innovative, engaging programming for young writers while at the same time giving teachers the space and support to explore innovative teaching approaches. This is the highest, most effective form of teacher professional development: giving teachers the space, encouragement, and support to do what’s best for youth of today. The DWP will forever continue to respond to the needs of young writers and teachers in the Denver metro area and beyond.
Fall 2019 Newsletter
Advanced Institute Summer 2019
By Blaine Miller
It was another energetic and active summer with the Advanced Institute of the DWP. The weather was warm on the campus as we embarked on another packed week of writing, discussing, conferring, and above all, learning how to reach our students. The topic this time was something a little different. We tackled the art of persuasion and rhetoric. The week started out with the group creating our argument and rhetoric frames for the week. We tossed around names of individuals who we determined were good speakers and writers, and we also played around with topics that lent themselves to good argument and persuasive discourse. The conversations and discussions flowed naturally as we jumped from common, everyday issues to educational policy to families and our own backgrounds. It was a strong start to a busy week.
There is a certain security in knowing what to expect. The DWP came through once again. We were treated to the insights of Mark Overmeyer. He gave both groups some insights on how to get students motivated to write and how to keep the process going in case they might need some reengagement. We were all treated to Overmeyer’s positive energy, and I am sure we look forward to hearing from him again soon. Nicole Piasecki presented to both groups, and she jumped right in with some writing prompts to jog our memories using song lyrics. It was inventive, and in those few minutes, our energy was laser- sharp towards our writing. Having been involved with the DWP for just over five years now, I always find Piasecki’s insights as a writer and as a teacher inspiring.
We ended the week with our traditional writing marathon at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The weather was warm, and walking along the paths, observing, and enjoying the variety proved inspirational. We ended our days with some hugs and promises to see each other soon. Not a bad way to begin the summer. I hope to see you all again soon. Keep writing!
The Gnarly Nine at the DWP Invitational Summer Institute
By Abbi Heller
The DWP Invitational Summer Institute started off in rain and darkness, not the typical summer setting we are accustomed to in June. No amount of June gloom could keep the loyal nine secondary students from creating their own sunshine in their writing, their wit, and their genuine collegiality. Although ten Teacher Consultants were inducted in May, nine carried the torch for the three weeks at the King Center, room 210. These nine educators exemplified the mission of the Denver Writing Project, earning themselves the nickname: The Gnarly Nine. The Gnarly Nine learned about the power of predictions from Mark Overmeyer, the power of creative non-fiction and intertextuality from Nicole Piasecki, and the power of the prose poem from Eliot Wilson. Our final speaker, fellow DWP alumni and director, Molly Robbins reminded us how we must take care of ourselves as people before we can be teachers and caregivers of our students. Robbins allowed us permission to be amazing teachers who also live amazing lives outside of our classrooms.
The Gnarly Nine took risks in their writing and even bigger risks in sometimes sharing, but most of all, they jumped into their demos with gusto allowing themselves optimum opportunities for growth and reflection for their future classrooms and students. This summer’s ISI was fortunate enough to go on two writing marathons: one at the Denver Botanic Gardens and one traveling the streets of LoDo writing amongst the cats of Larimer to the comings and goings at Union Station, ending with food at the Milk Market.
It was a bittersweet ending to the summer as we shared food and our polished pieces at The Book Bar. The Gnarly Nine showed up at the Post-institute feeling nostalgic for Room 210 and the company of one another on their adventures of self-discovery through writing and demos from the summer. Although the ISI came to a close, this group of fabulous educators has organized themselves into a writing group, promising to meet up once a month and share writing, life, and of course, food.
Auraria Young Writers Camp
By Shannon Hanschen
Ahh summer…! More time for writing. That’s how the Denver Writing Project and the 120 young writers who attended Young Writers Camp last June felt anyway. DWP is thrilled to provide the space for young writers grades 3-12 to work out their writing muscles through exploring a multitude of genres and styles through guest writer presentations, attending master-teacher led workshops, and workshopping their own ideas in peer-led groups at Young Writers Camp 2019.
This year young writers learned from three professional local writers. Len Vlahos, young adult fiction writer and co-owner of Tattered Cover Bookstore, explored narrative writing through the stages of the hero’s journey. Whitney Gaines, essayist and poet, used abstraction as inspiration through color gradient and Clifford Still’s paintings. Jovan Mays, former poet laureate of Aurora and award-winning slam poet, encouraged young writers to go deeper through focused concentration on dynamic sentence starters.
Master-teacher group facilitators led spirited workshops on a variety of topics, such as parody writing, community mapping to find through-lines, writing in a digital space, and micro-narrative. With plenty of time to both write and share, young writers added an abundance of skills, genres, and tricks to their writers’ toolboxes.
One high-school-aged writer reflected on the opportunity for collaboration at camp stating, “We take time out of the day to do peer revision, exchange stories, and provide feedback. Every member of my group looks extremely uncomfortable as we all read their work, but the criticism is helpful. Once the sharing is done, we go back to writing, diving into new projects, or continuing to revise the one shared.” Sharing writing can be difficult, but it is necessary to continue to grow as a writer. DWP is glad that gutsy young writers are willing to share and grow alongside one another, making new connections with like-minded peers.
The culminating event of the week is the Writers’ Celebration on Friday afternoon. Young writers gather with families and friends to share a piece or two they worked on throughout the week. It is a highlight for sure and leaves audiences gratified, amused and humbled by the beauty of writing that flows from young people when given space and support.
The Denver Writing Project is delighted to continue to offer summer opportunities for young writers in the Denver metro area and beyond. Finding one's voice is a lifelong journey, and DWP is grateful to support young writers along the way.
Writing for Civic Engagement Young Writers Camp
By Christine May
During the week of June 10, 2019, twelve young writers from around the Denver Metro area descended onto the University of Colorado Denver campus to experience the Writing for Civic Engagement Young Writers Camp. Young writers, ranging in ages from 12-16, spent the week engaging in thinking and writing activities designed to help them establish a social justice lens and expand their perspectives on the world around them.
Throughout the week, we had two returning guest writers join us to lead the students in writing workshops. On Tuesday, Jovan Mays, National Slam Poet Champion and the former Poet Laureate of Aurora, led his presentation with the theme that is best described by a Chinua Achebe quote: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Mays encouraged our writers to tell the story of the “lions” in their lives. He presented the idea of using first person to create change by calling readers in rather than focusing on calling out and using third person to point fingers. He then led our young writers in a writing activity that required them to write continuously while receiving a new sentence starter, like “when the ground gives way” or “I was told to fly, unless,” every two minutes.
Our second guest speaker was award-winning artist, activist, and educator Suzi Q. Smith, who like Mays grew up in Denver. Smith spent time getting to know our students and their favorite books, and then she allowed her students time to individually define who they are with an activity that had them moving about the room based on how they saw themselves. This activity then led to a writing assignment, where first students brainstormed a list of terms that defined their personas. Smith then asked them to start with “To know what it’s like to be....” and end the phrase with one of their brainstormed ideas. She allowed the students to show their expertise in an aspect of their own lives, teaching them that you have to know who you are and what you believe in before you can begin to create change.
Both of our guest writers got students to think both inward and outward about important topics of identity and social justice. Inspired by them, our writers also completed a writing marathon around the UCD campus, inspired by the views and people around them at each location. By the end of the week, they had produced a plethora of pieces but ultimately narrowed it down to one piece to share with friends and family on the last day. The whirlwind of a week ended with some amazing stories and spoken word poems about what mattered most to these writers. Another successful week of writing in 2019!
CU South Young Writers Camp, Summer 2019
By Elizabeth Maloney
While many kids were swimming, vacationing, and soaking up the beauty of a Colorado summer, approximately forty young writers from second through ninth grade chose another path. For one week in June, writers from all over the state signed up for the DWP CU South Campus Young Writers Camp to grow their writing identities. The instructors consisted of two APS secondary teacher leaders, Jennifer Henderson and Denise Huber, who co-facilitated the older group, while CCSD teachers Elizabeth Maloney, Mary Derbish, and Heidi Huebscher supported the elementary. The CU South location is a favorite among the community and staff alike, and to say they were thrilled to return to this beautiful facility would be an understatement.
Each morning, camp began by focusing on our essential question, “How do writers get inspired?” We used every inch of the incredible CU South campus to collect ideas and to write each and every day. From sensory writing through the world’s biomes to descriptive writing using some of the amazing art hanging throughout the building, young writers grew their creativity and craft. We even had the exciting opportunity to use the Imax Theater (and the smell of fresh popcorn) as further inspiration.
On top of the outstanding location, we welcomed a guest writer who has definitely become a familiar face to our writers. Jovan Mays, a local poet and former Aurora Poet Laureate, worked with our writers both inside and outside the facility, showing them how to find inspiration within themselves and their own experiences.
The final highlight and culminating activity of the week is our annual Writers’ Share, when friends and family are invited to hear the amazing work of our talented young campers. We are in awe every year by the poems, stories, arguments, and art in written from that is produced during this week of fun and exploration. We already can’t wait for next summer.
Cherry Creek Young Writers Camp 2019
By Susan Foster
For a week in mid-July, nearly forty young writers convened at Heritage Elementary in Cherry Creek to write alongside like-minded peers who share a passion for writing. On the first day of the Cherry Creek Young Writers Camp, writers were asked to share their superpower. It didn’t take long to experience the powerful gift of writing within each participant. Through daily openings called “Writing into the Day,” writers allowed themselves to take risks, share thoughts, play with word choice, try a new genre, and learn from one another.
Creating a community of writers happens quickly during Young Writers Camp. Each writer feels free to try something new. Each writer allows themselves to be inspired by mentors’ texts, thought provoking poems, and a featured guest author. The outdoors also provides inspiration. Exploring the greenbelt just beyond the school grounds provides just enough change to create change in what writers notice and capture in their journals.
By the end of the week, writers are ready to share their work with a larger audience. This summer, a gallery walk allowed writers an opportunity to showcase their work. Guests enjoyed walking through the gallery stopping to listen to the carefully crafted pieces. The gallery was the perfect way to bring a powerful week to a close and celebrate the power of writing.
DWP Editorial Staff
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| Editor in Chief: Julie Vick | Copy Editor: Maryann Hoffmann |