The National Writing Project: Creating a Professional Learning Community That Supports the Teaching of Writing

This article describes an effort to create a teacher learning community in which university and local school teachers worked together to improve the teaching of writing at elementary and secondary levels. I describe how a university's National Writing Project (NWP) engaged in developing a cadre of selected teachers to share understandings about the theory and practice of writing instruction. The specific focus is on the NWP summer institute and the effort of its leaders, the director, the codirector, and the teacher consultants, to increase understanding among participating teachers through conversations that shape relationships among members of the educational community and various constituent groups. Practical examples of how the NWP facilitators fostered writing instruction to benefit students and colleagues are detailed in the context of theoretical understandings about the nature and development of learning communities devoted to the teaching of writing.