NWP Radio

An excerpt from the original NWP Radio episode, "Why School? A Conversation with Mike Rose."

With so many policy prescriptions pointing to alternatives to the model of public education, it is a good time to ask the question: Why School? Scholar and author Mike Rose responds to this and other questions at the heart of his book, Why School: Reclaiming Education for All of Us.

What does it look like, sound like, feel like to teach for a “living democracy”? This episode of NWP Radio features Philadelphia educator Joshua Block talking about his book Teaching for a Living Democracy: Project-Based Learning in the English and History Classroom.

In this episode of NWP Radio, Rob Shetterly and Connie Carter talk about the role of art in truth-telling, the resources Americans Who Tell the Truth have amassed for educators, and how teachers can get involved in the Samantha Smith Challenge.

Kwame Alexander’s newest novel Becoming Muhammad Ali, co-authored with the best-selling novelist, James Patterson, is about the childhood of Cassius Clay, and therefore set in Louisville, Kentucky. This episode of The Write Time features Tyler Jones, a teacher-consultant with the Louisville Writing Project, interviewing Kwame about this knockout novel.

Our Adapting Instruction series continues with four NWP teachers, working in different contexts and with different designs for virtual and hybrid learning. They share the tools and strategies they have found most useful in adapting their instruction for young writers.

This episode of The Write Time features educator and author Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad. Dr. Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. She works with teachers and young people across the United States and South Afric...

In this episode of The Write Time we visit with award-winning author Lamar Giles and middle-school educator Kearstin Jacobs. Lamar writes for teens and adults across multiple genres, with work appearing on many “Best Of” lists every year. He is the author of the acclaimed novels Fake ID, Endangered, Overturned, Spin, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, and The Last Mirror on the L...

In the second of two NWP CoLabs with Katherine Schulten of the New York Times Learning Network, four fabulous National Writing Project teachers discuss how their students responded to the editorial contest-winning argument essays. The arguments are from Student Voice, a new collection of student writing published by Norton and edited by Schulten. This show is a treasure chest of compelling and rel...

Celebrate powerful student argument writing in this NWP Radio CoLab featuring contest-winning student arguments. Katherine Schulten—a former a high school English teacher, New York City Writing Project teacher-leader, and the editor of the New York Times Learning Network— collected one hundred essays that were winners or runners up in the New York Times Learning Network’s argument writing contest....

Join teacher, author, and NWP Writers Council member Kim Culbertson, along with fellow educators, for a dive into 100-word stories. Kim will share how she has found short-form work a great test for herself as a writer and its applications for her work with students. Related handout: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zszv938igls0yil/100WSintheLAclassroom.pdf?dl=0

In 2014, in partnership with The Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley, we launched the NWP Archives Project to ensure preservation and accessibility of NWP organizational records, publications, and resources, including more than 100 oral history interviews from founding Writing Project site directors, scholars, teacher-leaders, and funders. Hear about the archives' grand openi...

Candace Fleming is the versatile and acclaimed author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize honored The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of the Russian Empire; Boston Globe/Horn Book Award-winning biography, The Lincolns; the bestselling picture book, Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!; the Sibert-Award-winning Giant Squid; and the b...

On this episode we will talk about why and how working educators should take a more active role in thinking about retirement funding. Listen in to a conversation about the relationship between underfunded pensions and school quality and climate. And learn about resources available if you want to learn more or get involved in the conversation in your school or district. For more info, visit: http:/...

Join Writing Project colleagues and educators associated with the National Geographic Educator Network to learn about the Geo-Inquiry process developed to support students in developing the skills, knowledge, and tools of a geographer and provide pathways for investigating, understanding, and taking action through a geographic lens. We will hear from teachers who have explored geo-inquiry with the...

Mike Caulfield and NWP teacher-leaders using the SIFT curriculum approach have had their eyes out for electoral misinformation. See this wrap-up of Mike’s October look at electoral misinformation and find resources for better information for your students. Learn more and see resources at Write Now, our publication at Medium: https://writenow.nwp.org/media-literacy-week-and-election-2020-7b2affdf10...

Check out this NWP CoLab with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Program Director Marya Brennan and high school teacher Sean Krazit for an orientation to NaNoWriMo, tips and strategies for making it work in the classroom or online, and pointers to resource collections covering everything from curriculum ideas to approaches to assessment. Read more info and resources at: https://educatorinnov...

About the Guests in this Show Jacob Kramer grew up in Providence, RI and studied film-making and writing at Harvard. Like Noodlephant, he loves hunting for mushrooms, eating noodles, and organizing with friends in pursuit of justice. K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She illustrated Okapi Tale an...

A writing marathon is an opportunity for writers to gather, write, walk, talk, explore, and grow through shared experience. It is a beloved practice of many Writing Project teachers, whether face-to-face or online, and has spread to classrooms and national parks across the country. Join Morehead Writing Project teachers and National Park Service colleagues for this discussion about the possibiliti...

In this episode of The Write Time, we visit with author/illustrator Jerry Craft and eighth-grade student, Dereje Tarrant. Dereje's favorite subjects include creative writing, Latin, art, and biology. He is also a professional actor and enjoys playing soccer, doing hip-hop dance, practicing piano, spray-painting murals, or working at his latest craft—DJ-ing. Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestse...

As schools work through reopening plans and teachers reframe curricula for hybrid learning and policy-makers talk of "learning loss," it might be easy to forget the impact of the pandemic on children's opportunity to play and to learn through play. Playworks, a national non-profit that helps schools maximize the potential of recess and play for children's social and emotional growth, immediately s...

For years, award-winning National Geographic photographer Andrea Bruce traveled the world, documenting life in international conflict zones. Wherever she went, people asked her “what is democracy?” When she returned home, she wanted to make it possible for all of us to explore the question through the “Our Democracy” project. Created by Bruce, with the support of the National Geographic Society an...

Martin Brandt is a high-school English teacher in San Jose, CA and a teacher-consultant with the San Jose Area Writing Project, as well as the author of Between the Commas: Sentence Instruction That builds Confident Writers (and Writing Teachers). In this episode we discuss Martin’s book, instructional strategies from the book, how he has developed as a teacher over the last 30 years, and teaching...

The educator-founders of Equity Unbound, Maha Bali, of the American University in Cairo, Egypt; Catherine Cronin of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education in Ireland; and Mia Zamora, director of the Kean University Writing Project; saw the need to assist their fellow faculty in practices for equity-focused open learning. Working with another colleague, Au...

We are honored to feature three debut Penguin Random House authors for a special back-to-school series of The Write Time. For our third and final episode of this mini-series, we will visit with author Kim Johnson and educator Synthia Shelby leads the discussion. Kim Johnson held leadership positions in social justice organizations as a teen. She’s now a college administrator who maintains civic en...