Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project

The Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (PAWLP) is one of the oldest sites of the National Writing Project (NWP). PAWLP follows NWP's guiding principles and provides professional development, develops resources, generates research, and acts on knowledge to improve the teaching of writing and learning in schools and communities. PAWLP believes that access to high-quality educational experiences is a basic right of all learners and a cornerstone of equity. We work in partnership with institutions, organizations, and communities to develop and support leadership for educational improvement.

PAWLP offers summer and school-year courses and workshops in teaching writing, teaching literature, writing-reading connections, authentic assessment, and special topics of interest to educators. For information on how to bring a course or professional development program to your district

email Director Dr. Pauline Schmidt

or call 610-436-2202.

 

Virtual Writing Group Sessions: 9-10am

Please join us on the first Saturday of the month, when we come together to talk about our current projects.  Some members are working on picture books, novels in verse, and even books for 'grown-ups'!

Facilitators offer prompts, ideas, and feedback and even provide the luxury of some writing time.

 

Click here for the Zoom Link. 

 

Continuity Sessions

Our 2020-2021 Continuity Sessions have come to an end. Be on the lookout for announcements about the 2021-2022 series of meetings that will start in the fall!

 

Anti-Bias/Social Justice Inquiry Group: 9-10:30am

Please join us on the third Saturday of the month, when we come together to discuss anti-racist education. 

 

The next meeting of PAWLP’s Social Justice Inquiry Group will be on Saturday, May 15, from 9AM-10:30AM ET. This month, we’re wrapping up Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s edited anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color: Please plan to read through Section VI “El Mundo Zurdo” as well as the Appendix material. For the past three months, we’ve used a set of guiding inquiries to ground our examination of This Bridge Called My Back, identifying themes and further areas for examination. In May, I invite you to bring one or two inquiries of your own that you’d like to pose collectively as we explore the end of the book and reflect further on its project as a whole. 

We’ll continue to apply the guiding inquiries we’ve generated for this text as well as more deeply consider questions of time/historicity, contexts, audience, and intersectionality. Our inquiries for this text include (but are not limited to) the following:

How am I challenged by this text, and what do the authors affirm?
What do I learn from these texts and authors? What gaps in my knowledge and/or experience are revealed by this text? What else may I need to learn or transform to better appreciate the authors’ work, voice, and/or intentions?
What vision of a liberated future do the authors of this text present, and how do they contribute to our collective envisioning for the future?
How am I supporting and/or not supporting the authors’ visions?
What histories are revealed by this text?
How do we come to understand “women” from this text? What narratives and/or counternarratives about feminism occur in this text?
How will we utilize what we learn to move forward, for other women especially, including beyond this group?
Who do you think is the intended audience for a particular text in the collection and/or for the entirety of the collection?
What histories are cited or drawn upon in this work? What knowledge do I bring when contextualizing this text, and what more do I need to learn?
How is intersectionality constructed or embodied in this work? How does that shape or influence the authors’ as well as our own responsibilities to act and/or respond?

  

Around the Table with PAWLP
View our Fall 2019 Edition HERE

PAWLP's literary magazine is accepting personal narratives, poems, memoirs and fiction.  Also to be submitted are photos, artwork, royalty-free images from Google or other sources, drawings, sketches and music to be included with your writing. Please keep the word count under 2000. Send writings and any questions to aroundthetablewithpawlp@gmail.com.