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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York City Writing Project Awarded Three Federal Grants for Teacher Professional Learning Opportunities
Bronx, NY. (March 23, 2016) – The New York City Writing Project is pleased to announce it has been awarded three federal SEED (Supporting Effective Educator Development) grants through the National Writing Project to design and extend the opportunities it provides to NYC teachers.
The NWP SEED New Pathways to Teacher Leadership is a nine-month design grant in the amount of $10,000. This grant will support the planning of a new pathway to leadership for teachers of SLIFE (Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education), a group of teachers, and population of students, whose needs are not well understood or addressed by most professional learning opportunities. NYCWP Teacher Consultants, teacher leaders, Lehman faculty and experts in SLIFE education will gather monthly to design programs to meet the needs of this population. This was a highly competitive grant—only 12 were awarded nationwide—and the NYCWP is thrilled to take part in the Design Challenge.
The NWP SEED Advanced Institute to Scale-Up the College Ready Writers Program (CRWP) is a fifteen-month grant in the amount of $15,000 that provides the NYCWP the opportunity to help NWP scale its use of mini-units around argument writing. The work of this grant will be focused within two high-need NYC schools: MS 324 in Washington Heights, and the Brooklyn Secondary School for Collaborative Studies. The grant will support teacher leaders in investigating an authentic writers’ program that meets their and student needs, and in understanding the educational thought and theory that makes such a program effective. Participants will engage with curriculum and theory through in-person and online sessions to share work across the two sites.
The NWP SEED Invitational Leadership Institute to Invest in Developing New Teacher Leadership is a two-year grant in the amount of $15,000 that will be used to revise the NYCWP’s previous Invitational Summer Institute. The new program, now called the Invitational Leadership Institute, will stay true to the NYCWP’s belief in an immersive, intensive summer professional learning experience, while extending the work of the program into the school year for the first time through a hybrid offering to support participants in classroom inquiry. As in years past, the program will admit both a cohort of new participants and a Second Year Fellowship of five past participants who will serve as coaches and mentors within the Institute.
The National Writing Project awards annual and bi-annual grants through a competitive application and review process. These grants are provided by the US Department of Education’s Title II Supporting Effective Educator Development grant program, which provides support for multiple funding streams and opportunities that NWP sites can choose to apply for. These funding streams are distinct and address specific priorities of the SEED program. The receipt of all three SEED grants available for this funding cycle is an exciting opportunity for the NYCWP to design programs that function holistically to address varied and multiple teacher needs.
The New York City Writing Project is a legacy site of the National Writing Project and one of the oldest and most successful sites in this network of over 200 university-based professional development programs. It is also the flagship program of Lehman’s Institute for Literacy Studies (ILS). The NYCWP improves teaching and learning across disciplines and at all grade levels from K-12 by focusing the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of NYC educators on sustained efforts to improve reading andwriting for all learners. Since its inception in 1978, the NYCWP has worked with over 11,000 teachers in every borough of New York City; in turn, those teachers have influenced well over one million students.
