The Power of Collaboration and Workshopping - Teachers and Youth Together @CWPFairfield and @FairfieldU

In the 2nd year of reconfiguring the Invitational Summer Institute in collaboration with Young Adult Literacy Labs, we've met often to discuss stronger ways for teachers to work with youth attending our programs so they have more hands-on experience implementing the effective conferencing skills for writers that we've addressed in our own class. The old model saw the programs as separate and deliberately kept summering teachers away from kids...

...but we rethought this. We're invested in kids and that is why we are here.

So, yesterday, each teacher signed up to work with four young novelists and today we will meet with three young(er) writers in the Big Imaginations labs. The opportunities for sharing are plentiful and both the kids and educators have given us a thumbs up for the partnering work.

Ah, but it's time for us to attend to our own writing projects and to focus beyond teaching and into the writers' identities we're here to explore.

We need to find our voice(s) and develop the leadership we signed up for.

But I have to say...as I walk around campus and see my teachers and the students signed up for the labs collaborating with each other, a tremendous smile crosses my face. It doesn't get more authentic than this.