Front Row from left to right; Austin Morris, Angela Victory, Bethany Poppelreiter and Karen Nichols. Second Row; LaShana Middleton, Alice Myatt and Glenda Holland. Third Row; Kim Bridges, Nancy Logan, Susan Martin, Melonie Goolsby and Michelle McLeod. Back Row; Ellen Shelton, Brittany Boggan-Moore, Sydney McGaha, Hason Jones and Shari Chumley were all participants in the Writing Project Summer Institute.
OXFORD, Miss. – Teachers from 19 Mississippi counties recently enjoyed the experience of playing a different role in the classroom – that of a student – thanks to the Summer Institute for Teachers at the University of Mississippi.
“The main purpose of the Summer Institute is to provide a program that works with teachers to develop themselves as writers,” said Ellen Shelton, director of pre-college programs and the UM Writing Project.
Teachers play the role of students during the institute, which runs throughout the month of June, and the educators share their experiences and information on making writing in the classroom more efficient.
No matter where or which subject they teach, each teacher has something different to bring to the table during the Summer Institute, Shelton said.
“Through strategies, presentations and research, this program has taught me how to achieve what I am supposed to in the classroom,” said Nancy Logan, a social studies teacher at Bruce Upper Elementary in Bruce. “We have all gained endless amounts of valuable information through this process.”
Each day, participants reflect on the previous day with a daily log and take part in presentations as well as reading, writing and revising exercises.
“My favorite part has been being able to explore my own personal writing, and then thinking about how that will affect my students’ work in the classroom from last year,” said Austin Morris, a teacher at Delta Street Academy in Greenwood.
Blogging has helped the teachers share online information about what works best in their own classroom, and being able to access that information online once they get home helps them return to ideas and things they learned at the Summer Institute.
“The most challenging part has been being able to get back in the mindset of a student,” said Melonie Goolsby, a teacher at Southaven Intermediate School in Southaven. “We tend to forget what it feels like to be a student, and this program has helped me understand what it feels like to be a young writer again.”
“As teachers, we are trained to look for what is wrong and how to help the child fix it, versus just praising the child for trying something new,” Shelton said.
This six-hour program is by invitation only. The selection process starts with interviews and meet-and-greets in February. Selection of program participants is based on diversity in gender, race, teaching location, and the grade levels and subjects taught.
“We really try to select the teachers that are compatible and teachers we think can work together in a classroom setting,” Shelton said.
Once teachers have applied and been accepted, they start preparing information from their own classrooms to bring to pre-Institute meetings in February and April. On May 29, the 15-day program begins, and participants teach one another with the knowledge they bring from their own classrooms.
The Summer Institute is funded in part by a Seed II Teacher Leadership grant from the National Writing Project.
For more information on the Summer Institute, click here.