Summer Institute

Imagine spending four weeks completely immersed in the teaching of writing and your own development as a writer. Put yourself into an institute classroom one sunny morning, where you find your teacher is one of the metro area’s best writing teachers demonstrating her most successful approach to teaching writing. Then, over lunch, you talk with a fellow teacher and an institute consultant about new approaches to integrating state standards with how you teach writing to your students.

Or put yourself into this scene: as you sit at a picnic table on historic Ninth Street, shaded by a giant elm, munching popcorn, you read a draft of a story you’re working on to three of your institute fellows; they talk with you about their experience of your narrative, and then they read theirs. Finally, see yourself at the Friday afternoon pot lucks, where you and your new professional colleagues break bread and build friendships further.

These scenarios take place every week during the Denver Writing Project Summer Institute. As a member of this exciting and imaginative program, you can earn up to nine University of Colorado graduate credits or none at all--your choice. You are also paid a $700 stipend for active participation. For four weeks in June and July, you and roughly twenty other institute teachers gather on the Auraria Campus to learn proven methods for teaching writing; study research, theory, and pedagogy for teaching writing; and work on your own self-designed writing projects. When you complete the four-week session, you may be selected to become part of the DWP outreach teacher corps who conduct teaching-of-writing workshops, based on their institute experience, in Front Range schools and colleges.

Applications are due February 15, 2010.

A typical week is depicted below:

  Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri.
9:00-12:30 Teacher demonstrations*, usually two @ 90 minutes each. Also time for discussion of demonstrations and readings, examination of student writing samples, and breaks.
12:30-1:30 Lunch (reflection time or informal groups) Open Readings by Fellows and Pot Luck Lunch
1:30-4:00 Writing Groups Guest Speakers, Discussion of Common Readings, Research*** Writing Groups Writing Groups

*Demonstrations, limited to 90 minutes and conducted by individual teachers, engage all fellows and directors in authentic writing activities.

**Institute fellows will complete three pieces of writing centered on a topic of personal significance or a personal experience--e.g., a memoir, an experimental piece arising from the experience (poem, short story, etc.), and a personal essay inspired by the experience or topic.

The concluding assignment will ask fellows to prepare a piece of professional writing such as an article, personal position paper, policy for their school, or script for presentation at a professional meeting.

*** Institute fellows will build a personal reading list of professional materials on the topic of their demonstration, and, by the end of the Institute, provide an annotated bibliography for inclusion in the Project library and for dissemination to other fellows.