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Sep 30

Honoring Hispanic Voices, All Year Long

Hispanic Heritage Month is a natural time to pause and think about the voices we bring into our classrooms. In my classroom, I try to do more than dedicate a few weeks in the fall to Hispanic culture and heritage. Instead, I look for ways to weave Hispanic voices into the curriculum throughout the entire school year—sometimes through a short text or excerpt, and sometimes through longer texts and projects that give students the opportunity to listen, learn, and tell their own stories.

Starting Small by Blending Hispanic Culture into the Curriculum

This year, Hispanic Heritage Month lined up perfectly with our introduction to nonfiction literature. So, I created a text set featuring expository, narrative, and persuasive texts connected to Hispanic culture and heritage in our own community of Kennett Square. The instruction and purpose of the lessons stayed the same; the focus simply shifted to voices and stories that reflect the community around us.

I also look for smaller opportunities to incorporate Hispanic voices into activities that are already part of our curriculum. During an activity in which students travel around the school to practice following directions and learn about the resources in their building, I added two stops: our Hispanic Heritage Month book display in the library and the biographies of Hispanic Kennett graduates displayed throughout the building lobby. Students were practicing the same skills, but they were also learning about the people and stories that are part of their own community.

Going Deeper with Longer Texts and Projects

Sometimes, though, incorporating a voice means giving students more time with it.

Our first book study of the year is Dreams and Nightmares: I Fled Alone to the United States When I Was 14, written by local Hispanic author Liliana Velásquez. This book becomes a starting point for a much larger cultural writing project in which students interview elders in their families and communities to learn about their own cultures and heritages, then use what they discover to create a visual essay. The book also opens the door for students to think about their own stories. After spending time with Velásquez’s experiences, the focus shifts from her voice to theirs.

And this isn’t the only Hispanic literature students encounter during the year as Hispanic voices are woven throughout our curriculum:

  • We read an excerpt from Francisco Jiménez’s The Circuit during our literary elements unit.
  • We study Elizabeth Acevedo’s Unfurling People when we practice analyzing theme.
  • We read short stories by Gary Soto and Meg Medina.
  • We watch the biopic A Million Miles Away.
  • We listen to Romeo y Julieta, a billingual audio play when we study Shakespeare.

These aren’t “Hispanic Heritage Month activities.” They are simply ELA activities that include Hispanic voices.

For me, that’s the bigger goal. Hispanic Heritage Month provides a wonderful opportunity to intentionally look at whose voices are represented in our curriculum, but those voices don’t need to disappear after October 15th.

When the majority of my students have Hispanic heritage, making space for Hispanic authors, stories, experiences, and community voices isn’t an add-on to the curriculum. It is part of building a classroom where students can see their communities, their cultures, and sometimes even themselves reflected in the work we do.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Sep 23

Thinking of Using EdTech AI Inside a Writing Classroom? Focus on Small, Strategic, and Humane

by Mary Ehrenworth and Philip Seyfried; Co-authors of AI & Reading Instruction; AI-Enhanced Literacy; AI- Supported Teaching for Multilingual Learners

There are ways that AI can help you amplify your best writing teaching. It can help you get more feedback to more kids more quickly. It can help you better see your multilingual learners’ gifts. It can help you offer grammar lessons based on kids’ individual writing. It can study kids’ writing and suggest strategic partnerships. These are among the many surprisingly beautiful and helpful ways that AI can extend your powers as a writing teacher. We’ve worked with EdTech AI in many classrooms, and we see kids’ faces when they receive immediate, warm, expert feedback as soon as they write. We’ve seen teachers breathe as they realize their twenty-three fifth graders, or one hundred and twenty-three ninth graders, will each get a personal, specific compliment and a tip, today, as soon as they draft, freeing teachers up to help kids implement that feedback.

We’ve also felt the palpable anxiety of English and ELA teachers as they consider how AI might shift the balance of humanity in their classrooms. It’s good to be cautious, to be careful. After all, school is a place where young people learn to share parts of themselves and deepen their connections with the community of learners around them. Any technology that diminishes our young people misses the mark, but when used well, technology can help them flourish. Focusing here on EdTech AI, that gives kids an AI thought partner and coach, such as Flint, SchoolAI, MagicSchool, here are five practical tips for introducing AI in ways that may deepen the humanity in your classroom.

  • Focus on more strategic technology use, not more screen time. Nobody wants kids on screens more – not parents, not teachers, and (this is less clear), not most kids. So, don’t think about ‘AI class periods.’ Think about short, controlled, strategic doses of high impact feedback and coaching. For example, in a writing unit that spans three weeks, students might get feedback three times across the writing process, from their EdTechAI partner, each time for a five to ten minute session.
  • Set up your EdTech chats to offer thoughtful, manageable, controlled feedback. Remember that AI is programmed to be helpful. That means that it will often do not only what you ask it, but more. If you invite it to offer kids feedback on their work, it will offer a lot of feedback. It may offer to help kids draft. We usually tell our EdTech AI that we want it to focus on feedback that will help kids not only with this piece, but as a writer overall. We suggest that it gives three compliments and three possible next steps. We tell it not to draft for students, with the exception of sometimes giving a one sentence example.
  • Insert AI ‘partner’ chats between peer partnerships. Imagine that Sara and Amber have done a little drafting on their literary essays, and each has spent five or ten minutes getting some compliments and next steps. Now, each of them can jot some notes, and then meet as a peer partnership, to share the feedback they got, and strategize about which of these next steps they want to try. The AI feedback is just a first step in their peer partnership work.
  • Teach kids to negotiate AI feedback, to make their own choices, and to be metacognitive. We usually set our EdTech chats for kids so that their AI partner will give them more than one next step or tip. That way, you teach students to make thoughtful choices and develop agency. They can work with you or a peer partner to negotiate these choices. Partnerships can also study the quality of AI feedback – good EdTech AI will offer feedback that is warm and specific. Students can learn about feedback, so they can strengthen their own abilities to give feedback to peers.
  • Teach kids to come to AI with ‘Brain-first’ work, and to learn to train their AI partner. We’ve written a lot about the idea of brain-first work in our books. The idea is that you teach students to come to AI with notes, ideas, drafts, goals. When students learn to talk to their AI partner about what kind of support they want, they also learn to train their AI partner. They can learn to tell it how much feedback they want, or when it is getting too bossy, or doing too much. EdTech AI use is apprenticeship for the AI use kids will do outside of school, and we want them to develop a sense of agency.

If you’re thinking of introducing AI into your writing classroom, know that you’re teaching kids about AI use as well as about writing. We want to introduce thoughtful, ethical norms. School is the place where all kids get equal access to learning about technology, and where all kids need to grow as writers. We have a technology now that can help more writers get more feedback, more writers get focused tutoring. Let’s work with it carefully, in ways that amplify the best writing teachers.

Sep 16

A Collaborative Approach to Creating Class Expectations

At the beginning of the school year instead of standing in front of my class and telling my new students my rules and expectations for their class behavior, I like to start with a conversation. So rather than handing out a list of rules, I ask students to make their own lists of what respect actually looks and sounds like in a classroom. This activity gives students a voice in creating the expectations we will follow throughout the year, and turns a typical beginning-of-the-year conversation into an opportunity to collaborate, think, and create.

The Bellringer Brainstorm

I continue to establish our daily routines by starting class with a bellringer prompt focused on the topic. Students spend 2 to 3 minutes brainstorming independently in response to the following question: What does respect look like or sound like in the classroom? By phrasing the question this way, students start the class by thinking of tangible (and repeatable) examples. After each student has had some time to create their own lists, they discuss and add to create a table brainstorm.

Carousel Brainstorm

Next students move around the room in small groups or pairs to complete a carousel brainstorm. At each whiteboard, they add three original, specific examples of respect to one of four categories:

  • Respecting each other
  • Respecting the classroom environment
  • The teacher respecting students
  • Respecting the teacher

I like the final category because it makes the conversation reciprocal. Respect isn’t simply something students are expected to give, but it is something we all contribute to creating.

After visiting each station, students take one final walk around the room to read through all of the ideas. They choose their top “rules”—the expectations they think are most important for creating a respectful classroom.

Make a Visual Commitment

Next, students work together to choose one of their ideas to turn it into a respect poster.

This year, I had students create their posters in Canva, which added another layer to the activity. Students could take and upload their own photographs showing what respect looks like in action. It also gave them a low-stress introduction to a digital tool we will use again later in the year to create and publish projects.

The finished posters are printed, laminated, and displayed at the front of the classroom

More Than Just Rules

What I like most about this activity is that the expectations on the wall aren’t simply my rules. They are agreements students generated, discussed, prioritized, and turned into something they can see every day.

And when we need a reminder about classroom expectations later in the year, I can point back to the posters and the conversation that created them.

Instead of beginning the year with “Here are my rules,” we begin with a much more important question: What kind of classroom do we want to create together?

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Sep 9

From Conversation to Creation: A Back-to-School ELA Activity

The first week of school is full of introductions. Students are learning their schedules, figuring out classroom routines, and, most importantly, trying to figure out who they will spend the next year learning alongside and from. I like to use this time to get students talking and collaborating right away, but without putting anyone on the spot.

This low-stakes Venn diagram activity is one of my favorite ways to start the year because it does so much more than help students get to know one another. In one block period, students are talking, listening, taking notes, organizing ideas, collaborating, and presenting. These are all skills we will continue to practice throughout the school year.

Start with What You Know

For the bell ringer, students move around the classroom and respond to five prompts:

  • Favorite food
  • Favorite place
  • Favorite person
  • Favorite activity
  • Favorite entertainment

They can write or draw their responses. This gets students moving and thinking while giving them some personal information to use later in the activity.

Partner Conversation

Next, I assign students a partner. Early in the school year, I intentionally avoid having students choose their own partners. This gives them an opportunity to work with someone they might not otherwise approach and removes the anxiety of figuring out “Who am I going to work with?” I made the pairing random and easy – find the person with the same color dry erase marker as you.

Once they are partnered, students participate in five short, three-minute conversation rounds. Each round focuses on a different topic:

  1. Favorites & Likes
  2. Places
  3. Activities
  4. Family & Friends
  5. Entertainment

Students talk, listen, and take notes about their partner’s responses. I provide question stems and model the conversations before they begin, which gives my English Language Learners a structure for participating in the conversations. These scaffolds can easily be adjusted or removed for more advanced classes. However, I find even higer-level students benefit from clear models and structure early in the school year.

From Conversation to Organization

After the conversations, students use their notes to create a Venn diagram comparing themselves with their partner.

Before they begin, I show them a teacher model so they can see what the finished product might look like. Students then work together to add:

  • 5 unique things they learned about their partner
  • 3 things they have in common

This is also a subtle introduction to an organizational tool that students will use throughout the year. A Venn diagram isn’t just something we complete during the first week, but it becomes a visual way to organize similarities and differences, compare ideas, and prepare for writing in response to literature later in the course.

Collaborate, Create, and Share

Once their Venn diagrams are complete, students present them to the class as a way of introducing their partners. Instead of simply saying their partner’s name and a favorite food, students have something meaningful to share because they have spent time listening and organizing what they learned. To support my English Language Learners, I provide sentence stems, model, and give them teacher-supported time to draft their presentations on a notecard.

The activity mirrors the work we will do all year in ELA: We collaborate, we create, and we share. And because the content is personal but low stakes, students are practicing those skills without worrying about whether their answers are “right.”

End with a Listening Challenge

I like to finish the class with a quick listening quiz. Students have about 30 seconds to write down the name, or names, of classmates who fit descriptions they have just heard:

Who is…

  • from Venezuela?
  • loves cats?
  • plays soccer?
  • works at Walmart?

Suddenly, students are looking around the room and realizing, Oh! I know who that is!

It’s a simple way to reinforce the information they heard during the activity while continuing to build classroom community.

Why I Keep Coming Back to This Activity

By the end of the lesson, students have had multiple opportunities to speak with a classmate, practice active listening, organize information, work collaboratively, and stand in front of the class to share. But perhaps the most important outcome is less academic: students leave knowing a little bit more about the people in the room.

For me, that’s exactly what I want from a first-week activity. We are already doing ELA, just without the pressure of calling it ELA yet.

We talk. We listen. We organize. We create. We share. And along the way, we begin to build a classroom community.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Sep 2

Book Review: Onward: 16 Climate Fiction Short Stories to Inspire Hope

Review by Janice Ewing

For several years, the West Chester Writing Project has run a social justice study group. The group has taken different forms, but we have always turned to shared readings as a focus for our discussions. This summer, we decided to read Onward: 16 Climate Fiction Stories to Inspire Hope, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter. We chose this text for a few reasons.


First, we’re increasingly aware of the role of climate change in our lives. We are inundated with news of catastrophic events that are becoming more the norm than the exception. At the same time, we see the variability of reactions to the issue, from support for scientific research and adjustments to our personal and communal lives, to denial and enactment of policies that exacerbate the problem. Perhaps most concerning is the sense of hopelessness that can spread, especially among young people, when they see climate-related disasters unfold before their eyes. The stories in this book don’t shy away from the harsh realities of water shortages, fires, and floods, but they all contain young adult characters who exhibit agency, creativity, and persistence in the midst of extreme conditions. To me, this was the essence of “hope” in this collection – not that we don’t face enormous challenges, but that our individual and collective actions can still make a difference.


The stories are all fictional, but they include realistic fiction, science-fiction, dystopian, and other genres; individual readers will connect more with some than others, but the variety is an additional strength of the book. For example, in “The Care and Feeding of Mother” by Erin Entrada Kelly, a seventeen year old girl harbors a secret – she has a real plant on a futuristic planet in which nature as we know it has been destroyed. Can she nurture it and spread its roots? In “A Trashy Love Story” by Sara Aronson, the teenage daughter of a rabbi is caught shoplifting. As part of her atonement, she reluctantly joins a community environmental group and finds an unexpected sense of purpose in her life. In Nora Shalaway Carpenter’s “Armadillo by Morning,” a group of teenage friends in North Carolina find their relationships tested when issues of climate change, respect for nature, and economic hardships collide over the sudden appearance of an armadillo.


This element of variety within a common theme was another one of our reasons for choosing this book for summer reading. Our thinking was that it would lend itself to each member sharing a story that especially resonated with them, whether because of subject matter, characterization, or writing style. This same strategy could be adapted by other groups of teachers and students. In addition, the stories in the collection could serve as models for students writing their own climate-related fiction and perhaps creating a class anthology.


If you are interested in our social justice group, please check the West Chester Writing Project website for more information. All are welcome!

Carpenter, Nora Shalaway. (2026). Onward: 16 climate fiction stories to inspire hope.
Charlesbridge, MA

Janice Ewing is a 2004 fellow of the West Chester Writing Project (the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project at that time) and a current member of the advisory board. Her interests include teacher inquiry, collaboration, and mentoring. She and Dr. Mary Buckelew, are the coauthors of Action Research for English Language Arts Teachers: Invitation to Inquiry (Routledge, 2019).

Aug 26

WCWP Summer Camp!

What an incredible summer we had at Young Writers Young Readers! Our campers filled the weeks with creativity, imagination, and unforgettable memories, making this one of our most successful summer camps yet.

One of the biggest highlights was our Camp Carnival, where campers enjoyed exciting games, laughter, and plenty of opportunities to celebrate all of their hard work throughout the summer. We also loved seeing everyone’s creativity shine during Tie-Dye Day, as campers designed colorful shirts that captured the fun and spirit of camp.

We were also thrilled to welcome Looker Books, giving families the opportunity to browse and purchase fantastic books to inspire young readers and writers long after camp ended. It was wonderful to see campers leave with new stories to enjoy at home.

Thank you to all of our campers, families, staff, and supporters who made this summer such a tremendous success. Your enthusiasm, creativity, and love of storytelling are what make our camp so special!

Looking Ahead: Summer Camp 2026–2027

The excitement doesn’t stop here! We’re already preparing for our 2026–2027 Summer Camp, and we can’t wait to reveal our brand-new theme: Broadway!

Get ready for a summer filled with show-stopping stories, dramatic adventures, creative writing, theater-inspired activities, and plenty of opportunities to let your imagination take center stage.

Before summer arrives, be sure to join us for our first event of the 2026–2027 year:

Camp Reunion: Sea Adventure

Reconnect with your camp friends as we set sail on an unforgettable adventure featuring a unique blend of:

  • Dungeons & Dragons-inspired roleplaying
  • Choose Your Own Adventure storytelling
  • Creative writing
  • Hands-on crafts

It’s the perfect way to kick off another exciting year of imagination, creativity, and fun!

Be sure to follow @WCWP_YWYR on social media to stay up to date on camp announcements, upcoming events, registration information, and all the exciting adventures we have planned. We can’t wait to see familiar faces and welcome new campers for another unforgettable year!

Bobby Rea is an ESL teacher at Penn’s Grove Middle School in the Oxford Area School District. He is also the Youth Director for the West Chester Writing Project.

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