CWP Leadership Council Minutes
10/6/2009
Present: Jason Courtmanche, Nadine Keane, Jon Andersen, Jane Cook, Betsy Kowal, Monica Giglio, Marcy Rudge, Shawna Lesseur , Kelly Andrews-Babcock
NWP Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on November 19-22
The NWP Annual Meeting and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Conference will be running concurrently from November 19-22, 2009 in Philadelphia. Jason has reserved two hotel rooms for the NWP Meeting. Jason and Jane will be going. There is space for two other people to join them. Monica and Betsy are interested but need to check with their districts. Anyone else who is interested in going, please email Jason ASAP or encourage others who you think might be interested.
Saturday Seminars
The first Saturday Seminar was held last Saturday and only two people came. Jason is encouraging presenters to try to get participants. We all need to work on marketing these seminars. One suggestion was to design fliers and email them to the TC LISTSERV and ask TCs to print and post them in their Faculty Lounges. Shawna said she’d be happy to do design fliers.
Attendance at Leadership Council Meetings
We have a core of people who come but there are many others who don’t come. Jason asked for suggestions to attract more people. One suggestion was to meet every six weeks instead of every month since people have such busy schedules. Another suggestion was that we do professional development during the meetings as an incentive to bring people to the meetings.
Barry Lane Update
Barry Lane has offered to come and present at the next CWP Summer Institute and is willing to negotiate his normal fee. Since we’ve paid keynotes for our conferences approximately $700, we discussed what we could afford and decided that Jason will offer him $700 and cover his overnight at the Nathan Hale Inn, meals, and mileage which would come to approximately $1,000. Jason will contact him and see whether this will work for him.
Aetna Awards Night on October 29, 2009
We will meet at the Stern Lounge for pizza at 5 PM. We’ll walk over to the Dodd Center for socializing and desserts around 6 PM. The awards ceremony starts at 6:30 PM. Everything that Aetna funds is celebrated that night. Everyone who attends the previous Summer Institute is expected to attend and receive their certificates and chapbooks. Last year Jason started a TC Writing Contest to encourage more people to attend. There will be awards for poetry, prose fiction and prose non-fiction. Please encourage everyone to attend.
TC Writing Contest
Jason received pieces in all three categories including the following:
· 17 people submitted Poetry with nearly 50 poems
· 12-13 people submitted Non-fiction pieces
· A few people submitted fiction pieces
There will be a winner in each category. The winner will receive $100 and a certificate. There will also be Honorable Mentions in each category. The winners and Honorable Mentions will be published in the chapbook that is being compiled for the Summer Institute 2009.
The deadline for the readers is Thursday. Sean Forbes has already compiled the poetry winners and honorable mentions. Amber West and Jenny Holley will work on the other two sections, and then Ben Miller will layout the whole. The goal is to have the chapbook ready to hand out at the Aetna Awards night on 10/29/09.
CT Student Writers Magazine
Ben is currently working on the flier to encourage teachers to get their students to submit. It will be mailed to the approximately 2,000 people on the CWP mailing list by around the beginning of November. Jane will also post it on the website as soon as it is ready. Ben has created a separate email account so that students can submit their writing pieces in electronic format.
Jorgenson is doing renovations right after the academic year ends so it will not be available for the Awards Night. Jason looked into von der Mehden Auditorium or the Student Union Auditorium as an alternative venue. Von der Mehden seats 470 people; last year’s count was 430 so it should be large enough. Jason has put in a formal request for von der Mehden.
Nadine has been thinking of Karen Romano Young or Stacey deKeyser as possible keynote speakers. She will contact them in November.
The Reading Day is February 6, 2010. Please encourage people to sign up to read and rate the student pieces.
CWP Writing Retreat
There’s still room in both the November and March retreats at Wisdom House. Please encourage people to sign up. For details, go to: http://cwp.uconn.edu/teachers/retreats.php.
Summer Institute 2010
It’s not too early to start thinking about nominating teachers. Please start recruiting good potential candidates and send names, schools and email addresses to Betsy Kowal (), Kelly Andrews-Babcock (), or Jason (). For information on the SI 2010, go to: http://cwp.uconn.edu/teachers/summerinst.php.
CWP Mini Grants
Jason has money to award mini-grants of up to $500 to TCs. To date he has had no applications. The money can be spent on almost anything as long it informs a TC’s professional development. They need to write up a 5-page report which could be published. For more information, go to: http://cwp.uconn.edu/teachers/minigrants.php.
One suggestion is that we post a sample of a report from a funded mini-grant on the CWP website so that there’s a model. Jason has an example that he can send to Jane to post. Another idea is to have the mini-grants be a two year project – Year 1 is when the project is designed and implemented and the money is spent and Year 2 is when the reflection and write-up of the results is completed.
CWP Newsletter
Ben Miller is soliciting articles for the fall CWP newsletter. Lynn Hoffman is the only person who has responded to his email. Nadine suggested that Saturday Seminar presenters write up informal descriptions for the Saturday Seminars for the second half of the school year. If you send Ben a couple of sentences at , he’ll follow up with questions and he’ll write up a paragraph or two. Jason will send out a reminder on the CWP LISTSERV.
Continued Funding Application (CFA)
The CFA is due 1/8/10 to the National Writing Project (NWP). Jason needs reports from everyone who runs or facilitates a program. It should be a description of the program with data about the program. He’d like to start working on it in October. He requested that the reports from Program Leaders and anyone else who is responsible for CWP activities be emailed to him as a Word document by October 1. THE DEADLINE IS PAST. PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR REPORTS ASAP!
iAnthology
The Hudson Valley Writing Project has created an iAnthology, similar to the eAnthonolgy that the NWP sponsors during the summer institutes except it will be up forever. Jason will send an email to the CWP LISTSERV to promote it. Jane will put something up on the CWP website.
National Writing Gallery
NCTE has created a National Writing Gallery in conjunction with the National Day of Writing on October 20, 2009. For more information, go to: http://www.galleryofwriting.org/#.
Nadine has created the Griswold Mosaic gallery for her Griswold community. Check it out at: http://www.galleryofwriting.org/galleries/298293#.
Writing Center Conference on October 2nd
The Writing Center Conference went very well. Windham Middle School has received an online writing grant which will allow them to set up a Windham Middle School Writing Center. They’ll be working in collaboration with Jason at CWP and Kaylee Czajka and Caitlin Garzi at the UConn Writing Center.
Nadine suggested setting up a Saturday Seminar or a twilight session with Kaylee just for teachers who are running writing centers to teach them how to train tutors. Jason will follow up with Kaylee. It could be set up at the UConn Writing Center so the teachers could see what the University Writing Center looks like.
CWP Leadership Meeting Minutes from 10/6/09 – Page 1