What SCWP is About

"The best teachers of teachers are other teachers.
The best teachers of writing are writers themselves."
-Writing Project Saying

I realized that, while I make mention of the SCWP (Southern Colorado Writing Project) here and there, I have never actually said what it was. Oops. The jist: The Writing Project got started in Berkeley in the 70's. It emphasizes that learning any subject will be helped by writing. The idea is to gather together local K-16 teachers to get them writing and thinking about how to use writing in their classes. It's a neat idea, and I believe it really works - and I've seen some evidence, too. The SCWP is a relatively new pranch of the National Writing Project. If you're still curious, here's the website http://www.scwponline.org

My part in it is as Katherine's assistant. The particulars of my job vary quite a bit, but focus on peripherals - like making copies, creating lists and documents, or sending out mailings. The real fun/challenge comes from the anthologies. SCWP does two types of anthology: an essay anthology which comes out of writing produced during the Institute, and a Writing Marathon anthology which comes out of writing produced by Marathon participants. So far I've done editing work on both types of anthology, and now I'm working on publishing the 2006 essay anthology. It's scary, because I'm more or less doing it all: formatting, design, layout, etc.

The bonus of being the SCWP assistant is that I get to pick up a lot via osmosis. Transcribing feedback sheets tells me about what's going on in teachers' heads. Copying hand outs gives me an idea of general discussions. Going to meetings gives me gossip on local school politics. The list goes on. The osmosis has been helpful for me in terms of thinking on how I ought to run my own class - assuming I'm accepted for a TA this coming fall.