Writing for publication can create awareness, raise social consciousness, and provide students with essential life skills.
When a student writes for publication, there is a shift in the dynamic between the student and their work. Picture yourself asking a student whether or not they spent a significant amount of time on their writing, only to have them respond, “Why would I spend time on it? It’s just for you.” In contrast, consider a student, who previously considered himself anonymous, telling his teacher, “Mr. Nick, I’m famous now!” after the book he co-authored with his classmates was published. Two very different reactions to a writing experience. How do we understand these two contrasting responses from young writers?
Founded in 2002, the Student Press Initiative (SPI) was designed to develop, foster, and promote writing across the curriculum through student publication, and revolutionize education by advancing teacher leadership in reading and writing instruction. Students transition from “writing for their teacher” to writing for an audience of their choice. To date, SPI has published over 850 books representing the original writing of over 12,000 students. SPI’s core values — project-based instruction, real-world authorship, community of learners, and celebrating student voice — resonate throughout these books. The grounding of these values raise the bar for what, how, and why students write.
Project-based instruction
We believe in using publishing for a real-world audience as a means to design and shape curriculum and expectations, as well as promote student engagement. We employ a backwards-planning model, where a final product is used to form an infrastructure for classroom instruction and activities. Through inquiry of the specific requirements and expectations of each project, teachers and students can better articulate the behaviors, artifacts, and customs necessary for the successful completion of the project — and being that publishing a book is a shared experience, students work together to support and encourage one another in new and powerful ways. Publication projects help to shape the culture, rituals, and routines that take place in the classroom. At the start of a project, a large calendar often overtakes the walls of a classroom, and teachers and students work together to identify the genre, audience, and purpose of their project, as well as establish details and deadlines. This helps establish a strong sense of community and collaboration. This is project-based learning at its best!
Real-world authorship
Real-world authorship shapes our approach to teaching and learning. Whether the audience is a class of incoming freshmen or first-year teachers in training, we work to connect young writers with actual readers. In the SPI model, classrooms become publishing houses in which teachers and students collectively shape an editorial vision. By exploring questions, issues, or concerns that exist in the world, their community, or within a specific content area, teachers and students collaborate to define a meaningful genre, theme, and audience. Writers then work to understand the expectations of their audience as they craft pieces with real readers in mind. No matter the content, there is always a real-world model that can demonstrate student learning with panache and voice that will engage readers. Through participation in a publication project, students develop skills and processes similar to those of professional authors. Students are supported through pre-writing and a gathering of ideas, drafting while consistently revising and editing, and finally, publishing, where they format and polish their writing to prepare for publication. Students experience “real” expectations and deadlines for publishing their book. Through these experiences, a strong sense of excitement, energy and urgency emerges.
Community of learners
SPI challenges traditional notions of “experts” in the classroom. Inspired by the work of Lave and Wenger (1996) and what they call “communities of practice,” we aim to cultivate students’ sense of expertise as writers by engaging in processes such as thoughtful inquiry of mentor texts, peer review, and peer editing. Through such processes, teachers and students work to establish a community of writers, consisting of many experts and many resources for learning and growing as authors. We encourage teachers and students to engage with a variety of texts as they begin to define qualities and attributes of powerful writing. As students learn the skills needed to write successfully, they also become experts in the project’s central theme as they read mentor texts, break genres down into smaller components, and ultimately, craft pieces that represent their learning and culminate in a final publication. A project designed around an in-depth genre study and inquiry invites students into a shared experience, and allows teachers to craft a thoughtful curriculum that addresses specific content and skills.
Celebrating student voice
Every student has a unique voice. Rather than celebrate the work of select students, we aim to celebrate the work of all students, using publication and celebration as a way to leverage and encourage participation. We believe every project should culminate in celebration — whether teachers and students decide to host a large-scale public reading at a local bookstore, smaller readings at locations such as their own school auditorium or classroom, or virtually with classmates, families, and friends. Celebrations — no matter their size or format — are powerful and rewarding experiences, and allow students to proudly share their writing with their community.
Writing can serve as a tool for creating awareness, raising social consciousness, and providing students with essential life skills. Our core values change the perspective and perception of writing for students around the world. These values, deeply embedded in our publications, reflect best practices for teaching writing in the 21st century, and help prepare students to succeed in lifelong learning.
To learn how you can partner with the Student Press Initiative and bring your students' writing to life, please reach out to us here. Shakira Mejia & Iris Torres both participated in a SPI book publishing project as students at the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem. The project culminated in the publication of Listen Up, Teachers in 2010.
Shakira Mejia is one of our June interns from the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, a longtime CPET partner school. What do you hope to get out of this internship? Becoming part of the Center for Professional Education of Teacher (CPET) community is a fun and educational learning experience for me. With this internship I want to gain an insight of what each of the three sections of CPET are about and how all three of them work together to achieve something even greater. Although this is not my first job in which I had to be professional, I still want to learn more about how to conduct myself in different workplaces and how to become even more of a team player. Lastly I will want to have a little insight of the impact CPET has on students and teachers, since most of their work is more in the background of schools. Iris Torres is one of our June interns from the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, a longtime CPET partner school. What do you hope to get out of this internship? I want to gain experience because this is like my first real job. I say that this is a job because I take this internship seriously and conduct myself as I would in the workplace. Although this is a little different from a job, I still have to be professional and be mindful that I’m working amongst adults and not my friends like I’m accustomed to. With my internship with CPET, I want to always be mindful of the importance of taking initiative and helping others, which are are so crucial since I eventually want to be an active leader and help others. I also want to have a better understanding of writing, editing, and publishing since I plan on majoring in Journalism in college. What sparked your interest in education? How did you end up working with CPET? After being a high school classroom teacher for 15 years in my native South Africa and then coming to the USA, I was struck by the similar struggles teachers experienced. I started working at a non-profit as the Youth Coordinator; which took me back into the public schools. I watched as teachers were challenged by a host of scenarios, not the least including classroom management and adequate curriculum and lesson planning. I decided to go back to school to pursue a PhD. I stayed in my discipline of teaching English and as my degree progressed I was offered opportunities through my program to do professional development with CPET. It's the proverbial match made in Heaven for me, which is an ability to grow as an educator, to help teachers grow in their own practices and together to tackle challenges that is faced by the teaching corps with the parameters set out by local and national government. What sparked your interest in education? How did you end up working with CPET? I was dissatisfied with my stint in the corporate world. I wanted to do something more meaningful and impactful. Fortunately, I found the NYC Teaching Fellows, an alternative certification program, which allowed me to pursue a teaching career while getting my masters. It was in my 5th year of teaching when I was introduced to the Student Press Initiative. With their support, my class of third grade students published a book of personal narratives. The people whom I met, and the idea of pursuing another degree, particularly in literacy, sparked my desire to attend Teachers College, where I was fortunate enough to get involved with CPET as a professional development coach. This weekend, CPET team members Marcelle Mentor, Brice Particelli, Cristina Romeo and Alexandra Thomas successfully presented their work on Project-Based Pedagogies: Ethnographies of Classroom Publishing, as part of the Ethnography and Education Conference at UPenn. Their presentation included a discussion of multi-modal work & the intersection of art, writing and culture currently taking place at The Young Women's Leadership School, as well as a touching piece on the topic of self-inquiry, based on work with the GED+ program in New York City. Each presenter focused on ways that these projects ask students to use ethnographic approaches in their writing, and to inquire critically into their own culture. Sarah Montgomery-Glinski, a CPET Lead Professional Development Coach, also presented her work on Forget About the Test: Facilitating Senior Performance Based Assessments at a South Bronx Consortium High School.
Congratulations everyone! SPI connects young people to real-world audiences by tackling real-world issues. This year, SPI educators are facilitating rigorous literacy projects at fifteen schools, each resulting in digital or print publication. While it’s hard to pick favorites, here are just three recent projects: Unsung Heroines: Profiles of Exceptional Women: The 11th grade class at an all-girls school in Harlem focused their research skills on their own community, exploring how women have influenced their lives. Along with writing, students engaged in the business of publishing--handling marketing, sales, design, and production to turn their book into a financially sustainable project with deep interdisciplinary roots. Harlem Ivy After-School Literacy Project: This year, SPI began working with four elementary schools helping students explore their community through writing. Students interview parents, write about family tradition, and write toward the publication of a 4-school anthology of a hundred Harlem-area students. Speaking Worlds: Working with four GED Plus schools that serve recent immigrants from around the world--Bangladesh, Guatemala, China, Zaire, and more--SPI is helping build a curriculum where students write about personal experiences during their first year in the United States. During our eight-year partnership with District 79* (D79), we’ve sent teams of educators, volunteers and visiting artists to work in Horizon Academy at Rikers Island Prison and Community Prep, which serve students that are currently incarcerated or recently released from juvenile detention centers, as well as Bronx Regional High School, which serves recently immigrated English Language Learners (ELLs). This year, we launched Speaking Worlds 3; the third edition to two previous, successful Speaking Worlds book projects. Speaking Worlds 3, like all of the 120 SPI published projects over the past 12 years, shows us the power of an 'authentic', real-world audience—and the promise of a published book—in motivating students to recognize the benefits of strengthening their writing skills. This focus on direct application of skills in a real world context is an area of curricula that, in an assessment-driven era, aims uniquely to engage student-to-community partnerships through authorship and agency. These ‘real world’ ways of working are too often divorced from the writing process in an educational system where the student-writer’s audience is generally an audience of one--the teacher or the test. Publishing goal histories with incarcerated students leaves indelible mark on all involved “We are working against three simultaneous hourglasses: students’ release from incarceration, students’ education, and the psychological time it takes for the students to understand their life history and where they want to go. In this specific way, we are seeking to improve the lives of students, the schools they attend, and society through publication of unheard voices. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this program; it has been such an affirmation for me.” -Jondou Chen, Project Coordinator, Rikers Island Oral Histories Project By the end of his first year at Teachers College, Columbia University (TC) Jondou Chen found himself wrestling with the provider/researcher divide. “I enjoyed learning about and practicing large-scale, quantitative social science research,” he remembered. “Yet I found myself also missing the day-to-day encounters with the individuals whose agency I sought to support.” When his advisor, Dr. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, suggested he apply for a Zankel Fellowship to work with the Rikers Island Oral Histories Project, Chen didn’t realize how much it would change him as a person. Now, three years later, as Project Coordinator of the Student Press Initiative’s Rikers Island program, Chen isn’t looking back. When most people think about the rapport between high school sophomores and freshmen, they may not conceive it as protective or nurturing. But, the 10th graders of the Institute for Media and Writing at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex are looking out for their 9th grade peers with the publication of their new SPI-sponsored book, Confessions of an Ex-Freshman: A Survival Guide for Freshmen by Sophomores Who Made It Through. The book features eighteen chapters of student-chosen topics describing their experience during that intimidating first year of high school, ranging from “Staying Out of Trouble,” to “Making the Grade,” and “Gossip, Drama & Popularity.” With its universal themes, edgy design, and idiosyncratic writing style, the book rings with a sense of authenticity. “We wanted the students to maintain their personalities throughout the pieces,” says Erin Quigley, SPI curriculum consultant and former teacher at the Institute. In order to achieve this effect, the students spent a great deal of time focusing on voice in their writing. “Creating I Know I’m Not Me brought new surprises and discoveries every step of the way. I imagined that this book would be life-changing for certain students-the strongest writers, and those who had faced the most discrimination and homophobia. Yes, the experience was powerful for them, but the students who really came to life during the publishing process were some I wouldn’t have predicted: a straight student who was brought to tears realizing some of the common challenges she and her classmates faced, an English language learner who used up all the space on my tape recorder exploring his past, and many students who weren’t even in my class but who put in the extra time and effort to share their stories." -Nicole Dixon, M.A. Student in the Teaching of English Program, Teachers College, Columbia University When Nicole Dixon began student teaching at Harvey Milk High School, a public transfer school originally conceived as a safe space for LGBTQ students, she had no doubt that her semester would be unique. At Harvey Milk, she found, identity and self-discovery were explicitly at the heart of her English classroom curriculum. “You realize quickly that students just don’t have the mental space to think about metaphors and similes until they start to feel comfortable in their own skins,” Dixon said. Publication: National Writing Project
Date: July 2009 Summary: Working to turn a broad range of students into published authors, the Student Press Initiative deepens the learning experience for thousands of young writers. Excerpt: Read the full article at National Writing Project. Brooklyn students take action through words and images Inspired by the 2008 election season, Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School’s (BCAM) publication Take a Position, Create a Vision is an impressive collection of persuasive speeches and campaign posters by 11th grade students. The students encouraged themselves and one another to get up and make a difference through writing, speaking and action. Emerging from a year of energetic political discourse and dynamic campaign art following the 2008 elections, BCAM English Chair Kevin Greer expanded his rhetorical essay writing unit to a multi-layered project featuring published student speeches. Giving new spirit to SPI’s concept of citizen journalists, Greer motivated his students to passionately articulate their interests and opinions through careful study and mastery of the formal qualities of rhetoric. These students used their visions and words to present strong statements on issues such as global warming, their school’s uniform policy, love and sex, the importance of basketball, and the “American Dream.” Publication: The Muslim Observer
Date: March 5, 2009 Summary: Faculty at Teachers College have developed a curriculum guide for public school teachers designed to enhance understanding of Islam and promote tolerance of Muslim students. Excerpt: "As educators in the era of globalization, we need to ensure that students are learning about one another from one another—especially in one of the most diverse cities in the world. However, any teacher in a multicultural setting regardless of location could use these curricula and implement it easily into their classroom,” says Teachers College faculty member Erick Gordon, who directs the Student Press Initiative." Read the full article on The Muslim Observer. You don’t have to search further than its name to know the importance the Academy for Young Writers places on the authorship of its students. Founded in 2006, the young Brooklyn high school is already a model Student Press Initiative school. The Academy began working with SPI before the school even opened its doors to any students. Three short years later, Academy students already produced five inspiring books, including two published this spring: the 10th grade’s The Truth Unfolded: Young Writers Explore the Crucible and the 9th grade’s Your Life, My Eyes: Poems & Student Profiles. Founding Principal Carolyn Yaffe said, “When the name Academy for Young Writers was still just a name, and not a physical or emotional reality in any way, I could not have imagined the amazing products that my students and teachers would be able to create in partnership with the Student Press Initiative.” Erick Gordon is the founding director of the Student Press Initiative at Teachers College, Columbia University where he is also a full-time instructor in the Teaching of English Masters Program. He comes from a background in small press publication that later led to classroom teaching, first in Northern California and then New York City. What does “publication” mean to you? Publication, in its most basic form, means making ideas public. It’s the act of communicating through the written, the spoken, or even, the sung. And my firm belief is that everyone deserves a right to both communicate their ideas and to be received by an audience. Every student—not just the kids writing for the school news or literary magazine. And that’s why SPI is classroom based—and embedded in the curriculum. Those who have experienced publication—really experienced the thrill of seeing what words can do in the world—know the potential of publication as a tool to motivate the most rigorous learning. To me, student publication means preparing kids to be active citizens, teaching them necessary content, skills and strategies to take productive actions in the world. Publication: Columbia Spectator
Date: April 25, 2008 Summary: Founded by Gordon six years ago, the SPI starts curriculum-based publications at city schools, often targeting the “neediest” classrooms. The program has worked with students in grade school and high school and with prison inmates. Excerpt: "SPI allows students to produce a range of projects. Last year, one school published a book profiling social activism, where each student studied current social causes in the city and wrote a profile on a particular activist, acquiring the chance to learn journalistic basics. In another school, students worked with a group of senior citizens for a year in the Bronx, recording and printing the seniors’ oral histories. Last year, the program published 23 books, and this year Gordon expects to put out 30 or more." Read the full article on Columbia Spectator. Publication: Teachers College
Date: July 22, 2007 Summary: TC’s Student Press Initiative expands from classroom writing projects to helping special interest public high schools flesh out their missions. Excerpt: Read the full article on Teachers College. Publication: The Village Voice
Date: June 22, 2007 Summary: The Student Press Initiative works with young inmates on Rikers Island to record Excerpt: "Gordon says the process wasn't an easy one. "The association most of these guys have with interviewing is the DA," he says. "We have to develop a lot of trust." The logistics were also tough. His authors were often at court, talking with their attorneys, transferred to other facilities, put in solitary, and a few fortunate ones were released. By the time of the book launch, only one of the 18 authors, 21-year-old Trevor Cole, was actually on hand to read what he'd written." Read the full article at The Village Voice. |
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