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Summer Writing Institute

In early spring the AWP identifies and recruits exemplary teachers for the annual invitational writing institute. The participants are selected from a pool of applicants who provide a writing sample, a professional profile, and a personal interview. The 15 - 20 Fellows accepted into the program are master teachers who have a successful teaching career in progress.

For five weeks during the summer they work to improve their own writing and their teaching of writing. Throughout that time they are given opportunities to demonstrate and examine their approaches to teaching writing, consider strategies for using writing as a tool in all subject areas, learn about how to teach writing by writing themselves, study theory and research underpinning best practices in the teaching of writing, and prepare themselves to lead professional development programs in the schools during the academic year. Typical activities include participation in reading-response groups, discussion of recent composition research, and presentation of a 1 ½ hour demonstration of their best classroom practice. At the end of the five weeks they publish an anthology of their work.