National Writing Project Jobs in California

Company:
National Writing Project
Current Opportunities (0)
Company Website
Location(s):
2105 Bancroft Way
#1042
Berkeley,  CA
94720
Map Location
Phone:
(510) 642-0963
Industry:
Non-Profit
Size:
50-99

Company Overview

The National Writing Project (NWP) is a professional development network that serves teachers of writing at all grade levels, primary through university, and in all subjects. The mission of the NWP is to improve student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and improving learning in the nation’s schools.

NWP began in 1974 in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where, James Gray and his colleagues established a university-based program for K–16 teachers called the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP).

Gray, a teacher educator and former high school English teacher, was motivated to create a different form of professional development for teachers, one that made central the knowledge, leadership, and best practices of effective teachers, and that promoted the sharing of that knowledge with other teachers.

In partnership with Bay Area school districts, BAWP created a range of professional development services for teachers and schools interested in improving the teaching of writing and the use of writing as a learning tool across the curriculum. The structure of this first writing project site’s programs formed the basis of NWP’s “teachers-teaching-teachers” model of professional development.

By 1976, the NWP had grown to 14 sites in six states. Over the next 15 years, the network continued to grow, with funding for writing project sites made possible by foundation grants and matching funds from local sources. In 1991 NWP was authorized as a federal education program, allowing the network to expand to previously underserved areas.

Today, with its core grant from the U.S. Department of Education, supplemented by local, state, and private funds, the NWP comprises nearly 200 sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A goal of the NWP is to place a writing project site within reach of every teacher in the nation.