A Love Letter to OWP

I'm sitting in my soon-to-be-someone-else's office today working while my 10-year old twins are at Youth Writing Camp. That feels like a full-circle kind of thing, since I started working at the Ohio Writing Project right after those big kids were born, when I needed still to be connected to education.

And so I came home, back to the place where I learned how to be a teacher. To the place where really, I grew up. To where I learned to see myself as an Educator, a Writer, a Collaborator, a Researcher. Back to the place that taught me to take risks, and honored my voice and path.

I came back to OWP. And now, as I take a step away from my role here to try something new, I can't help but think of all the ways this house has built me.

OWP: Where We're From

We are from the first day of class, pulling desks into U-shapes,
making name tags and introductions,
pulling out Writer's Notebooks, waiting to be filled.

We are from writing beside students, reading with them,
making our learning visible,
unpacking what we do every step of the way.

We are from exit slips and one-word notecards,
from Heart Maps and quickwrites,
from finding our querencia and taking Writer's Dates.

We are from Mary Fuller and Max Morenberg,
visionaries, lighthouses, nudgers,
whose long gone voices I hear echoing through us all.

We are from the teachers who led the way --
Romano and Daiker, Holly and Jean,
Linda and Beth and Helane,
We are from Monica: the heartbeat of it all.

We are from Anderson and Kittle,
from Marchetti and Heard,
Lyon, Lane and Glover.
From Fletcher and Wilhelm,
all who came to our home, filling our toolboxes.

We are from
skype chats and twitter chats,
a library brimming with resources
with too many authors to list,
whose shoulders are broad and strong.

We are from the words on the page,
the whispers in the conferences,
the digital posts and the post-it notes.
We are from notes after every single presentation,
slips of treasure.

We are from mentor texts, grammar lessons,
and too many ideas to ever actually implement.
We are from reflection, and action research ,
from "yeah-buts" and "you should write about that".

We are from summers spent driving the long roads to Oxford,
and walks to the Duck Pond.
We are from Bachelor Hall and the VOA,
from weekend workshops and Saturday treasures.
We are from classrooms and listservs,
and tweets and hugs.

We are from being teachers,
to teachers who write,
to writers who teach.

* with many thanks to George Ella Lyon, one of my first writing mentors,
in a looooooong line of mentors I've met since 2001.