Piedmont Voices Writing Project
In 2017, Alamance Community College, in partnership with UNC-Greensboro, founded a National Writing Project site called the Piedmont Voices Writing Project. The NWP site continues the commitment to a culture of writing on our campus that was made when the college began the “Write to Succeed” Quality Enhancement Project in 2012. The national organization started in 1974 when one teacher wanted to learn from other teachers about how they teach writing in their classroom. A NWP site follows a national program model of “improving the teaching of writing and improving the use of writing across the disciplines by offering high-quality professional development programs for educators in their service areas, at all grade levels, K-16 and across the curriculum.” A NWP site has two main areas of work: professional development and community programming.
Each summer, the Piedmont Voices Writing Project convenes a summer institute where teachers from both the Alamance Burlington School System and Guilford County Schools write, research, and teach one another what best practices look like in their classrooms. Teachers earn either CEUs or graduate school credit and take a renewed sense of writing back to their classrooms and schools where their students have likewise taken up writing with purpose and passion. Summer Institute aims to empower teachers as professionals and as writers and uncover new ways to use writing in the classroom. Piedmont Voices Writing Project also holds summer writing camps for local youth where students write everything from poetry to songwriting to fantasy to mystery. Camp ends with a day on revising and preparing for a parent showcase.