About GNOWP

For 35 years, the Greater New Orleans Writing Project at the University of New Orleans has been a site of the National Writing Project, an organization dedicated to improving writing and the teaching of writing throughout the Greater New Orleans area and the nation. We achieve our goals through teacher collaboration, inquiry into best practices, and support of teacher-writers and student-writers in New Orleans area classrooms.
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IMG_5060 June 10 – July 12, 2013
M-Th, 8:30-3:00
The University of New Orleans

Summer Institute

The Greater New Orleans Writing Project Summer Institute is a five week, full day professional development course where teachers learn how to strengthen their own writing and the teaching of writing. During the five week course, teachers will engage in writing workshops, pursue an inquiry-based research project, present a successful classroom lesson grounded in best practices, and publish their research and their own writing online.

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GNOWP BLOG

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May There Be Pens, May There Be Paper

Sarah DeBacher | May 21, 2013

“Writing is both a challenge and an extreme exigency—that is, it is both called forth by and constitutes the trauma. But writing both exceeds and is inadequate to the task; it is both unavoidable and impossible.”— Peter and Maureen Daly Goggin, Trauma and the Teaching of Writing (2005).

In my attic there is box containing hundreds of magnets I collected from curb-side refrigerators after Hurricane Katrina. I’d been fortunate enough to have a home to return to, but when I was allowed to return to New Orleans in October of 2005, the city was virtually unrecognizable. The visual landscape was so disrupted, so disruptive, that it made its way into horrifying underwater nightmares I couldn’t shake. Even when I dreamt lucidly, I was unable to wake myself, my subconscious seemingly aware that the waking-world would provide no comfort. What on earth was this? How on earth could this have happened? I spent my days in a kind of stupor, and yet the collection of refrigerator magnets and documentation of their sites gave me a kind of purpose. I had no idea what I would do with the magnets. I still don’t. I just needed to do something.

School began. I got busy with the work of teaching—an immense comfort and immense burden, both. My classes took place online, but internet connectivity was spotty, at best. Regular power outages plunged us into darkness and we shuffled out onto stoops to visit with others who’d returned, to share stories about how we’d “made out in the storm.”

My students had it much worse than I did. Before that semester began, I’d grown accustomed to the usual range of excuses for late work: dead grandmothers (so many dead grandmothers!), flat tires, printers without ink, etc. But this semester the excuses punched me in the gut. “I lost my job, my home, everything. Can I please have an extension on Essay 2?” Yes. Yes! I remember feeling like my every teacherly choice that semester was Really Effing Important. What would I assign? How could I respond ethically and empathetically to students whose lives had been—like mine—upended entirely? (I wrote about the experience of teaching after Hurricane Katrina in an article that appeared in Reflections in 2007.)

Today I’ve been thinking about the texts I produced in the immediate aftermath of Katrina (although I’ve learned that a more accurate way of putting it is “in the aftermath of the failure of the federal levees.) I’ve been thinking about that box of magnets and the blogging I did and the writing I assigned, and the emails I sent, and how my words helped me heal but also plunged me right back into the depths of despair, too.

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Teaching Children(,) Grazed by Bullets

Sarah DeBacher | May 13, 2013

This weekend was intense in ways expected and not. The expected territory came on Saturday, when GNOWP welcomed ten of the twelve teachers who will be joining us during this year’s Summer Institute. We gathered in the Liberal Arts building on the campus of the University of New Orleans to write together, to build some community.
Early on, two of our teachers—Jeanne Patrick and Allison Lowe—shared a standout moment from the written conversation they’d just had. Jeanne had written about the importance of finding ways to make her students feel safe so they could then take brave risks in their writing. We all nodded in agreement. For risky writing to take place, there must be safety.

Risky writing is the brave, truth-telling stuff through which we do more than poke dead things with sticks—we wrestle with why they died; we take a good, close look at the effed-up fact that we will all, someday, (today, maybe,) die too; we lay them to rest, eulogizing worms and birds, and the dark stuff bubbling up in the children who abuse them, with an empathy achievable only through deep consideration and an acknowledgement that the First Thought might not be the right one. Risky writing does not pose easy questions or provide simple answers. It plows past platitudes and kisses complexity. It dives right into the depths of “I don’t know,” the only sure thing being that some discovery will be made, that the heart of the writer will be changed.

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Toward a Radical Writing Pedagogy, or, How a Bunch of Armadillos and a Pair of Scissors Reminded Me of the Important Stuff in Writing Instruction

Sarah DeBacher | April 26, 2013

“Revision—re-seeing, is how the writer sees the world and understands its meaning.” –Donald Murray
I spent last weekend blowing bubbles with armadillos and getting in touch with my student-heart.

Allow me to explain.
Last weekend, GNOWP wrapped a year-long series of workshops at Carolyn Park Middle School. Saturday’s goal: revising and reflecting. To launch, we closed our eyes and imagined our yards covered in armadillos. Yes, armadillos.

When we opened our eyes, we listed five things we’d do with the armadillos. Next, we listed five more. And then five more again.

Our first lists had us shooting, shooing, cooking, and otherwise ridding the yard of armadillos. By the third go-around, we were doing yoga with the armadillos, conducting food-preference experiments, calling in a team of consultants to conduct a thorough armadillo-analysis. It was good, giggly fun, this armadillo exercise. And through it, we saw how the first thought may not always be the most imaginative one. In debriefing, we agreed that our students would love the activity. They, like us, love the fun stuff, if not armadillos.

Soon, however, things got decidedly dark. I asked the teachers to get out a piece of writing they’d been working on over the past several weeks and months. I handed out scissors. The teachers knew what was coming next, and they didn’t like it. Not one bit.

The Latest

Greater New Orleans Writing Project

Fun! http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=50698

38 Wonderful Foreign Words We Could Use in English

m.mentalfloss.com

Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are a whole bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

May 22nd 6:40am • No Comments

Greater New Orleans Writing Project posted a link to National Writing Project's timeline.

May 21st 4:20pm • No Comments

There's a new post up on the GNOWP blog--this one about teaching writing after a trauma (with love to Moore, Oklahoma).
http://gnowp.org/may-there-be-pens-may-there-be-paper/

May There Be Pens, May There Be Paper

gnowp.org

“Writing is both a challenge and an extreme exigency—that is, it is both called forth by and constitutes the trauma. But writing both exceeds and is inadequate to the task; it is both unavoidable and impossible.”— Peter and Maureen Daly Goggin, Trauma and the Teaching of Writing (2005). In my attic…

May 21st 4:18pm • No Comments

Anne Lamott on just doing it ("it" being writing.)
https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/323559014440415

Anne Lamott

A typical Sunday morning: my associate and I are up early. I read the Times, Jax plays with Legos for an hour. (Jax said last Sunday that the NY Times is the World painting pictures with the alphabet, to show to Nana.) Then we fight over who gets the TV. I almost always eventually prevail and get to watch Meet the Press, because I weigh 100 pounds. But guess who is on MTP? The incomparable Donald Rumsfeld! Divine intervention.

So we turned off the TV and went outside for an owl Prowl. We've been having owl prowls since he could walk, and have never once seen an owl, but we often run into a pal who can imitate several owls, which is just as good. Jax rides his bike; I think my thinky thoughts.

Today I was thinking how high my hopes had been last Sunday for a great writing week. Then I ended up at a funeral, then had a very long, extremely stressful but fun interview. Then I had to go to LA for two days, which meant that my traffic needs have been met for at least the next sixty days. So, no writing.

But you know what? This is all bullshit, to use the theological term. You just do it. Period. You grab an hour here, 45 minutes there. You steal Wednesday morning back. You write on the plane. No one is making you do it; no one cares if you write. So you'd damn well better.

Last night I saw a great play by the 90 year old playwright Ann Brebner. She wrote AND directed it. It was stunning. She was at my house for Sam's birthday two years ago, and shared with us the very first vision of what would become the play we saw last night. This was all she had to go on--one vision. She sat down almost every day for a year, with commitment and discipline, the only path to artistic freedom. She just did it.

She wrote no matter whether or not she was in the mood, or whether she had good excuses to get out of that day's writing, or whether she had physical and creative energy that day. (Although let's not make too big a deal of this, as she was still a spring chicken at that point--only 88 years old. So not really that big a deal.)

She wrote a shitty first draft; then she took out a lot of stuff out, because half of creativity is taking stuff out. She pulled it into a 2nd draft, and a 3rd. Then colleagues critiqued it and made suggestions, some of which she took, and she created a gorgeous, magical play.

On our owl prowl this morning, I savored the play's most inspired moments, the four fine actors, the astonished audience, and Ann's shy, proud face. This is how I want to be when I grow up--a working writer! It's a great honor, to be one of the artists or story tellers for the culture, like getting one of the 5 golden tickets in Willy Wonka. Don't squander it. We get to start our new 24 hours as soon as we remember to. We get to stop hitting the snooze button. So I'm back in the saddle--got a pen and an index card in my back pocket, and one corner of a vision, all my own. And that's all it takes.

May 19th 12:06pm • No Comments