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National Writing Project Corporation

Berkeley, California

Grants

2023 ( 6 months)
$25,000

The National Writing Project (NWP), located at the University of California, Berkeley, is a national network of 175 local Writing Project sites, housed at universities that serve educators across all disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. It provides professional development and creates resources to improve the teaching of writing in schools and communities across the country. This X-Grant supports NWP’s Bonus Chapter, a project exploring the opportunity of using long-form narrative podcasting techniques to adapt and expand nonfiction audiobooks to reach new audiences, amplify diverse voices, and explore humanizing themes that are vital to a vibrant public sphere. The project also will include a scan of the audio storytelling ecosystem with an eye toward identifying new opportunities in a rapidly evolving field.

2022 (2 years)
$500,000

The National Writing Project (NWP), located at the University of California, Berkeley, is a national network of 175 local Writing Project sites, housed at universities that serve educators across all disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. It provides professional development and creates resources to improve the teaching of writing in schools and communities across the country. This renewal of project support enables NWP to prepare modular curricular offerings and develop an online platform to scale its Civic Journalism Initiative to other rural areas across the country. Launched four years ago to improve the media literacies of youth in rural “news deserts,” the NWP Civic Journalism Initiative is designed to engage young people in writing and media-making that promotes the values and ethics of responsible public engagement, amplifies the voices of youth in high-need rural communities, and provides new models for meeting local news and information needs in rural areas.

2020 (2 years)
$500,000

The National Writing Project (NWP), located at the University of California, Berkeley, is a national network of 175 local Writing Project sites, housed at universities that serve educators across all disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. It provides professional development and creates resources to improve the teaching of writing in schools and communities across the country. This renewal of project support enables NWP to expand its Civic Journalism Initiative, which was launched with MacArthur support two years ago. With sites in eight rural “news deserts” across the country, local NWP educators will design and implement an intensive youth media summer camp that serves up to 15-20 high school youth every summer. Each camp will be tailored to local conditions and will partner with a local media outlet that can provide real-world reporting opportunities to participating youth. Camps will engage young people in writing and media-making that promotes the values and ethics of responsible public engagement, amplifies the voices of youth in high-need rural communities, and provides new models for meeting local news and information needs in rural areas.

2018 ( 1 month)
$1,000

The National Writing Project (NWP) focuses the knowledge of our nation's educators on efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners, through a network of sites anchored at colleges and universities working in partnership with school districts to offer professional development programs for educators. This grant supports NWP to participate in a national convening of participatory civic media organizations supported through MacArthur’s Journalism and Media program. The meeting is designed to help coalesce the emerging field of participatory civic media, of which NWP is part, by facilitating new connections and collaborations and building a shared sense of identity among a new breed of media and culture organizations using participatory media to amplify historically marginalized voices and strengthen American democracy.

2018 (2 years)
$450,000

The National Writing Project (NWP), located at the University of California, Berkeley, is a national network of 180 local Writing Project sites, housed at universities that serve educators across all disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. It provides professional development and creates resources to improve the teaching of writing in schools and communities across the country. This grant supports NWP to launch a network of media summer camps, led by teachers in its network, to improve media literacy and expand civic engagement of youth in rural “news deserts.” NWP is also using grant funds to facilitate partnerships between the sites and local and national media outlets to promote the publishing of writing and media by rural youth. The project is designed to build student capacity as writers and media makers able to contribute to and nurture a healthy news and civic information culture, and will result in a model that can be scaled through the NWP network.

2015 (3 years)
$1,500,000

The National Writing Project (NWP) is a professional development network that reaches more than 100,000 teachers of writing at all grade levels, and in nearly all subjects, in states across the country. It is one of several networks through which the Digital Media and Learning initiative has disseminated new tools and ideas emerging from its grantmaking. In 2013, NWP launched Educator Innovator to facilitate the spread of Connected Learning practices among teachers and other educators. Today, Educator Innovator has grown into a network of 52 organizations that provides professional development offerings to engage thousands of formal and informal educators in the practices of Connected Learning. NWP is using grant funds to enhance and expand the Educator Innovator online platform, to grow the number of Connected Learning professional development opportunities available through the site, and to oversee two rounds of a competition to identify and showcase innovative Connected Learning practices. In doing so, NWP is consolidating a number of resources for practitioners under the banner of Educator Innovator, creating a single portal through which practitioners can access resources, collaborate with colleagues, and engage in professional development related to Connected Learning.

2014 (3 years)
$1,525,000

The National Writing Project, a professional development network that serves teachers of writing at all grade levels and subjects, will use this grant to help spread the ideas and practices of Connected Learning by expanding and strengthening three components of the Educator Innovator Initiative: the Digital Is online teacher community site; the Learning Labs community site; and LRNG, which identifies and showcases teacher-designed solutions to address the challenges to implementing Connected Learning. These efforts will help create more interest-driven, peer-supported and outcome-oriented learning experiences for more youth, and lead to a reimagined system of learning that meets the needs of youth growing up in the digital age.

2013 (2 years)
$1,300,000

The National Writing Project is a professional development network that reaches more than 100,000 teachers of writing at all grade levels, and teachers in nearly all subjects, in most states across the country. With this grant, NWP will help build a community of educators around the country committed to adapting, extending, and contributing to the curricula, program models, digital tools, and other prototypes that have been incubated in MacArthur-supported learning innovation sites, including the Hive Learning Network, YOUmedia/Learning Labs, and Quest schools.

2013 (2 years)
$250,000

The National Writing Project is a professional development network of more than 100,000 teachers across the country. It will use this grant to develop, test, and study new models of civics learning designed for the digital era in the Oakland, California, school system. New models will be based on research and hypotheses emerging from the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. This work provides an important opportunity to re-think what civics education looks like in American high schools.

2012 (2 years)
$400,000

The National Writing Project is a professional development network that helps teachers at all grade levels, nationwide, develop their skills in the teaching of writing. With past support, the Project developed an array of resources and products that are available to educators through the Digital Is initiative and website. It will use this grant to engage educators, in schools and elsewhere, with new ways to design learning environments across in-and out-of-school settings, and to expand awareness and understanding of the promise of digital media and learning and the research that underlies its principles and practices.

2011 (3 years)
$1,300,000

The National Writing Project, a professional development network that serves writing teachers of writing at all grade levels and subjects, will use this grant to create professional development opportunities for additional YOUmedia sites nationwide, including new YOUmedia sites slated to launch by end of 2011: the Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshhorn Museum; Hartford Public Library; Miami-Dade Public Library; three Chicago branch libraries ; and Dreamyard, a community-based project in the Bronx. The Project will partner with Urban Libraries Council to provide technical assistance to the 25 sites jointly funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Foundation.

2010 (1 year)
$75,000

To support a summer institute for leadership development in learning networks in Chicago and New York City.

2009 (2 years)
$800,000

To disseminate and ensure widespread use of new learning environments and research findings among more than 100,000 teachers across the United States (over two years).

2008 (1 year)
$300,000

To build the field of digital media and learning through engagement with teachers.