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Welcome to PhilWP’s 2023 Celebration !

Welcome to the Philadelphia Writing Project’s Annual Celebration! It is so good to see all of you this evening.

My name is Diane Waff and I’m having a hard time believing that tonight marks my last official event for PhilWP. 2023 marks my 31st year with PhilWP and my 15th as Director.

As I wrote earlier this year, the Penn and PhilWP communities mean so much to me. I came to Penn as a high school student and took a creative writing class that was held in the Penn Museum. I fell in love with the University of Pennsylvania! Through a Mayor’s Scholarship, I matriculated as an undergrad, and after graduation worked as a high school English teacher in the School District of Philadelphia, and later went on to earn my doctorate at Penn GSE.

In March, I was awarded the Helen O. Dickens Award for Lifetime Achievement from Women of Color at Penn. Winning this award would not have been possible without the inspiration and support I have received from my Philadelphia Writing Project and Penn GSE, Reading, Writing & Literacy, and Mid-Career colleagues, and graduate students, for whom I have the deepest respect.

The work of impassioned TCs has never been more essential. Whether it is supporting students and fellow teachers, amplifying voices, or continually pushing us to rethink how we teach, TCs continue to be a force for educational excellence for all learners.

Tonight my colleagues are taking over the mic, but before they do, I am pleased to honor one more long-standing PhilWP tradition, the passing of the white coat.

You may not know that PhilWP held its first Invitational Summer Institute in 1986 and joined the National Writing Project network of 175 local sites serving communities across the country. And since the very beginning, Penn GSE has annually supported a PhilWP Scholar, a teacher enrolled in graduate studies at Penn. Each PhilWP Scholar also helps to support and expand our many programs. It is my pleasure to announce that Latricia Whitfield, PhilWP Scholar from 2019-2021, has graduated, and is now Dr.Whitfield. Congratulations, Latricia!

(Diane helps Latricia into the White Coat.)

Latricia:

Thank you, Diane and to my PhilWP colleagues and friends. My time at Penn was …

and I am honored to be part of the Philadelphia Writing Project community. Thank you to my family and friends and fellow grad students for all of your support.

And now I’m handing the mic to Barrett Rosser, the current PhilWP Scholar, to lead us through the rest of the evening.

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THANK YOU Penn Partners

Welcome to the Philadelphia Writing Project’s Annual Celebration! It is so good to see all of you this evening.

My name is Diane Waff and I’m having a hard time believing that tonight marks my last official event for PhilWP. 2023 marks my 31st year with PhilWP and my 15th as Director.

As I wrote earlier this year, the Penn and PhilWP communities mean so much to me. I came to Penn as a high school student and took a creative writing class that was held in the Penn Museum. I fell in love with the University of Pennsylvania! Through a Mayor’s Scholarship, I matriculated as an undergrad, and after graduation worked as a high school English teacher in the School District of Philadelphia, and later went on to earn my doctorate at Penn GSE.

In March, I was awarded the Helen O. Dickens Award for Lifetime Achievement from Women of Color at Penn. Winning this award would not have been possible without the inspiration and support I have received from my Philadelphia Writing Project and Penn GSE, Reading, Writing & Literacy, and Mid-Career colleagues, and graduate students, for whom I have the deepest respect.

The work of impassioned TCs has never been more essential. Whether it is supporting students and fellow teachers, amplifying voices, or continually pushing us to rethink how we teach, TCs continue to be a force for educational excellence for all learners.

Tonight my colleagues are taking over the mic, but before they do, I am pleased to honor one more long-standing PhilWP tradition, the passing of the white coat.

You may not know that PhilWP held its first Invitational Summer Institute in 1986 and joined the National Writing Project network of 175 local sites serving communities across the country. And since the very beginning, Penn GSE has annually supported a PhilWP Scholar, a teacher enrolled in graduate studies at Penn. Each PhilWP Scholar also helps to support and expand our many programs. It is my pleasure to announce that Latricia Whitfield, PhilWP Scholar from 2019-2021, has graduated, and is now Dr.Whitfield. Congratulations, Latricia!

(Diane helps Latricia into the White Coat.)

Latricia:

Thank you, Diane and to my PhilWP colleagues and friends. My time at Penn was …

and I am honored to be part of the Philadelphia Writing Project community. Thank you to my family and friends and fellow grad students for all of your support.

And now I’m handing the mic to Barrett Rosser, the current PhilWP Scholar, to lead us through the rest of the evening.

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Writing into the Evening

Thank someone who helped you as a writer and learner - a teacher, a young person, a PhilWP colleague, or our very own inspiring leader, Dr. Diane Waff.

Barrett: Thank you, Diane and Latricia. It’s an honor to be your MC for this evening and celebrate Diane and our amazing network. PhilWP gathers as a whole community twice a year - for the October Celebration of Writing & Literacy and for this May Celebration and Fundraiser. So mark your calendars now for October 7, 2023 when PhilWP along with partners- the Teacher Institute of Philadelphia, the Penn GSE Mid-Career Program, and the Penn Museum will host our next event.

Now, I’d like to invite everyone to take the Thank You card that is on your chair and to begin our program by thanking someone who helped you as a writer and learner - a teacher, a young person, a PhilWP colleague, and of course, our very own inspiring leader, Dr. Diane Waff. We’ll take 3 minutes to write and then please save your card for the end of the evening. (After 3 minutes, Barrett moves to next slide.

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Diane, this is your PhilWP Life…

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Barrett will rewrite something to honor Diane

Writing As If Your Life Depended On It

By: Diane Waff�Publication: The Voice, Vol. 8, No. 1�Date: January-February 2003

Summary: In her talk at the NWP Annual Meeting, Diane Waff describes how she learned, through writing and inquiry, to open up her classroom to meaningful exchange...

The title of my talk is taken from a line in an Adrienne Rich poem that boldly asserts, " You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it." These words have special significance for me because the notion that reading and writing is fundamental to creating a life of liberation and self-determination is one that resonates with my view of literacy, particularly writing. I am driven to write from the "textbook" (Style, 1996) of my lived experiences as my observation of the world at large as a way to step outside of myself and listen for both inner and outer understandings. Writing has become a map, an inventory of the road I have traveled so far in life. Capturing my experiences on paper and sharing them with my students and writing project colleagues has helped me to shed light on a host of issues that concern and confront teachers who struggle to make a difference in the lives of poor students of color.

Bearing witness to what Michelle Fine (1992) describes as "institutionalized policies and practices that silence critical talk about the experiential conditions of students' daily lives" (p. 116) creates the possibility for real dialogue about the social inequities in public education. Interrogating standards driven reform efforts that ignore conditions for learning, high stakes testing programs that only punish the students, punitive school accountability indexes, and pedagogically bankrupt scripted programs has expanded my consciousness. It has also heightened my desire to have a hand in transforming the educational landscape so that where you live and who you are in terms of your race, class and ethnicity does not limit the opportunities you have to expand your knowledge and develop as a learner.

A reexamination of my life as a former public school student reveals that my classmates and I were never taught to question what we read, to critically analyze the status quo, or to struggle with questions relating to the inequities we experienced in our everyday lives. Education was presented as the "Great Escape" not as the way to transform the oppressive limitations imposed on us as women and minorities. Writing about my experiences working with girls in my first teacher inquiry piece, helped me to make some important changes in my conceptualization of teaching and learning. An excerpt from that research reads:

I began to realize the reason that the reason I was not successful with my students was largely due to my insulated middle-class life style. I was losing the opportunity to help them because I did not invite their realities, their experiences into my classroom. Every time my students attempted to introduce their private lives into the structure of the classroom, I managed to silence their voices quickly with words such as, "We have a lot to cover, let's get back to work" or "This sounds like something you should discuss with the counselor." My classroom was teacher-centered, and the students had little or no input into what was covered or discussed. Assertions like, "My mom's boyfriend is always... My dad is always... Those people in the shelter always..."made me uncomfortable.

By the end of my inquiry, I had readjusted my perspective on how to help my students become the kind of people who are able imagine and see themselves as capable of contributing to their community and the broader society. Writing up my observations alerted me to the painful fact that I was shutting down meaningful exchange in the classroom and that I was interpreting my students' lives by using my own as a yardstick. As I began to understand my own motivations through inquiry writing, I developed a greater capacity to listen and work with the life stories of my students as a resource in my teaching. Students began to look at their lives in new ways, valuing and sharing their stories within the classroom structure. The inclusion of student voices in the formulation of class curriculum and in actual classroom texts radically transformed my relationship with my students and their relationships with each other. As they wrote and read aloud personal journal entries about their school experiences, I was able to see how my students experienced the teaching and learning process. For the first time I saw my teaching through the eyes of my students. This inevitably began to affect my work with students in the classroom and deepened my commitment to listening to student voices, making myself accountable to my students, and using writing as a way to reflect and learn.

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Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

AS PhilWP Director, Diane has championed many new programs that support writing and learning for all learners and she has worked tirelessly with students, teachers, and Writing Project colleagues both here in Philadelphia and across the country. Under her leadership, PhilWP became the Regional Affiliate for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and Diane has recruited readers for student writers from Penn GSE colleagues and staff and PhilWP TCs to faithfully read and evaluate student submissions each year. WHY? Partly because of her own experience as a young writer many years ago. Writing matters - and being encouraged as a young writer opens doors to new possibilities. Diane has also expanded PhilWP’s work with Poetry thought Moonstone and our ongoing association with both performing poetry and supporting young voices.

Barrett will brainstorm another image + Barrett & Diane in train

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Project Write

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Poetry Inside Out

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Library of Congress

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KID WRITING

Kid Writing is an example of the power of PhilWP TCs to build and sustain ways to teach writing despite many challenges and Diane has championed this work, first begun by TCs Eileen Feldgus and Isabell Cardonick, designers and authors of Kid Writing in the Classroom and Kid Writing in the 21st Century. Since 2017, PhilWP has received funding from the William Penn Foundation to work first in five linguistically diverse SDP elementary schools and currently across classrooms in two different Pre K organizations in Philadelphia serving diverse communities. Supporting writing from our youngest writers brings great joy to all who have worked with this project. And in case you need the current lingo in today’s world - Kid Writing IS Emergent Writing using APPLIED PHONICS. The children’s work with their drawings and writing are powerful.

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National Endowment for the Humanities

Last year, under Diane’s leadership, we received a large grant, in partnership with the African American Museum in Philadelphia, from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant, “‘They Carried Us’: Hidden Histories of African American Women in Philadelphia, Building a More Perfect Union from the 1700s to the present references the book, They Carried Us: The social impact of Philadelphia's Black Women Leaders. (Baker Rogers & Traylor 2020) which highlights the role of African American women and their amazing contributions to Philadelphia. Building on that frame, our inquiry focused on the historic contributions of specific African American women, beginning in the 1700’s. We called these “Hidden Histories” to build on past work undertaken by AAMP and other important scholars and activists in Philadelphia. We will offered four public community events and panel discussions hosted at AAMP throughout the year, an advanced summer institute for Philadelphia teachers hosted at AAMP, and a special one-day summer event for Philadelphia youth participating in various PhilWP youth programs.

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National Endowment for the Humanities

www.philwp.org/hiddenhistories

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Digital Discourse

As literacy teachers and researchers, we know that such discussions are often not easy to facilitate. Diane supported the formation a research group to learn everything we can about having high-quality digital discussions about literature in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms — and we are sharing what we find with educators around the world.

The Digital Discourse community Our work together is guided by the research question: How do secondary ELA teachers learn to facilitate digital discourse in online discussion with students?

8 teachers from PhilWP were invited by Diane to form inquiry groups with teachers from the Denver Writing Project. We are using qualitative, design-based research methods to collect data about teachers' and students' digital discussions of literature. Together, we analyze students' and teachers' digital discourse “moves” and develop a framework for facilitating generative digital discussion about literature. These data inform our production of educational resources and curricular resources for other ELA teachers wordwide.

Now, without further ado, I’d like to invite Dr. Amy Stornaiuolo to the space for a very very special message.

Finally, the PHILWP Advisory Board supports our network and brings the passion, energy, and commitment of PhilWP TCs and community members together. I’m handing the mic to Co-chairs, Tamara Anderson and Trey Smith. (Hands the mic to them).

Trey and Tamara hand the mic back to Barrett after their remarks.

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Writing into the Evening

Thank someone who helped you as a writer and learner - a teacher, a young person, a PhilWP colleague, or our very own inspiring leader, Dr. Diane Waff.

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Text-Rendering

Take a few moments to review your thank you note and identify a phrase or word(s) that you think is particularly significant.
Each person shares a phrase/word(s) that they thinks/feels is particularly significant.

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THANK YOU

Graphic Design

Liz Gilly Sims

PhilWP Advisory Board Members and

Co-Chairs

Tamara Anderson & Trey Smith

2023 Program Planning Team

Judy Buchanan, Kemba Howard, Beth Patten, Alondra Rosales &

Barrett Rosser

AND TO ALL OF YOU FOR ALL YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORT