As all of us at NWP look forward to a relaxing holiday week, we wanted to take the time to send you all best wishes as well as one last year end "Weekend Update.”
Looking back
It is, of course, a momentous year to remember. One year ago, on December 23, NWP was comfortably included in the federal budget. But by the end of the day, the Senate had confirmed that they could not pass that budget, punting the budget morass to the new Congress in January. After 112 new members opened Congress by reading the Constitution aloud (and who could forget that?), they got to work on the 2011 budget. And therein hangs the tale of 2011 for the NWP.
But a year later we are all still here. (Ha! So there!)
If you are looking for a few recent items to close the year:
- Check out this excellent episode of NWP Radio where three sites discuss their ideas about scaling up programming for youth – thoughtful and inspirational.
- Or check out some of the great content on NWP Connect. Hard to believe NWP Connect just opened at the start of this school year. Check out, for example, TC Brian Kelly’s December blog marathon or the accumulated set of Teachers-teaching-teachers Google+ hangouts, both in the National Community.
- Finally, you might want to take a last fond look at the archive of over 28,000 tweets from our National Day on Writing campaign: #whyiwrite. The archive, currently at TwapperKeeper, will be visible till January 6, 2012, at which point TwapperKeeper will close it. (TwapperKeeper was bought by Hootsuite and will be closing.)
And then there’s the e-Campaign…a first-ever effort to support sites in their local fundraising. Two appeal letters have gone out to members of NWPi with options for sites to forward the letter to local friends. One more appeal will go out before the end of the year. Anyone who contributes is automatically removed from the e-mail list so as to not receive additional letters.
At this point over 20 writing project sites have received donations. There’s a great story to hear from Barbara Kato in Chicago who put the e-campaign at the center of a local event that featured the Alliance and outstanding student writers. It turned out to be a great fundraiser CAWP. We’ll put more about that story in Connect soon.
Looking forward
In January we will be ramping up to Digital Learning Day on February 1, 2012.
Digital Learning Day is a great opportunity to showcase your site’s tech-savvy TCs and digital writing programs. Look for more information about the day the first week in January, including a webinar at AEE that features Jayne Marlink talking about plans in California.
But of course, the big news we hope for in January is news on our application for a SEED grant, part of Title II funding. In our application we requested funding for sites to continue leadership development through the summer institute and other programs, to offer inservice programs for high needs schools, and to conduct the research that would help sites continue to make the case for funding.
Now, of course, we need to see what we get! The Department of Education could fund all of our request, part of our request, or ask for modifications. We are hopeful that we will learn the results of this competition in January – and of course you will be among the first to know the results.
So until we get back to you, goodbye to 2011 and welcome 2012. See you in the New Year.
