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.

WCWP Summer Camp!

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.

Demo Lesson – Using Museums to Compare Nonfiction Texts

As we gear up for a new school year and classrooms begin to buzz with the energy of back-to-school in-service days, I’m excited to share the final lesson demo from this summer’s West Chester Writing Project Summer Institute. This lesson, created by Abby Boquist, invites students to use museum exhibits and artifacts as nonfiction texts, encouraging them to compare perspectives, analyze multimodal sources, and think critically about how information is presented. It’s the perfect reminder that meaningful literacy experiences can extend far beyond the pages of a book—and a timely dose of inspiration as we begin imagining the possibilities for the year ahead.

And stay tuned to the West Chester Writing Project for an exciting opportunity this year! Through a Library of Congress grant, teachers will have the chance to visit local museums and develop primary source-based lessons to bring back to their classrooms. More details coming soon!

Abby Boquist is an 8th-grade English teacher at Charles F. Patton Middle School in Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. She is also pursuing her Masters in English on the Writing, Teaching, & Criticism track at West Chester University. If she’s not visiting a museum, she is probably writing about a museum, talking about a museum, or figuring out how to incorporate museums into her teaching.

Book Review: The Confidence to Write

Overview

Writer’s Block. Imposter syndrome. Fear of simply being perceived as a writer. The roller coaster of emotions that can spiral through all students, teachers, and writers alike are unpacked authentically in Liz Prather’s third book, The Confidence to Write: A Guide for Overcoming Fear and Developing Identity as a Writer. Throughout, she pulls from her personal experience as a high school creative writing teacher in a gifted program at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. 

While many pedagogical books approach writing in a way that seems methodical, what I appreciated most about this book is the colloquial voice that Prather took when writing it. This book felt less like a “how to” from an expert, and more like a conversation between teachers of writing. In it, she unpacks her own personal fears as a writer and teacher of writing, and offers a plethora of tools, metawrites, and techniques to try out in your classroom to help students grow as writers. 

Big Ideas 

While highlighting the importance of writing overall, Prather clearly defines writing identity with precision and unpacks the fears of being vulnerable as a writer. Throughout the book, overcoming the fears that accompany writing, discussing healthy modes of communication, and understanding where procrastination and perfectionism stem from within a writer are unpacked. In this, she discusses how a writer’s self identity and social identity both influence and feed into the formulation of one’s writing identity. Since writing is such a personal and vulnerable experience, writing identity has to be closely defined and developed by the writer’s experiences themself. 

Pedagogical Tools

This book is constantly acting as an applicable tool for the writing teacher. Whether it’s presenting techniques to break down student walls and apprehensiveness toward writing, connecting with students, building up their writing autonomy, and so forth, Prather gives a litany of resources for teachers. Something as simple and applicable as her metawrites that have students reflect on themselves as a writer while actively engaging in the writing practice is something that all educators can easily adapt into their classroom practices. Establishing routines for writers and bringing to light the overarching anxieties that come with writing so that students don’t feel alone and are willing to challenge themselves are constantly put into practice throughout this book. Overall, one thing stood out: for a writing teacher to be effective, they have to be authentic and vulnerable with their students as well. 

Throughout the entire book, Prather provides a wide range of resources for teachers to pull and immediately embed into their lessons when appropriate. Her metawrite prompts and anchor charts are embedded throughout all chapters, varying based on the general goal or focus for writing itself. The metawrites are constructed in such a way that it pushes students as writers, while also making them aware of their own writing habits and purpose as a writer. All of the metawrites brought higher-level thinking to the writing process as a whole for students in a way that was attainable for a wide range of ages. 

Recommended! 

Personally, as a middle school writing teacher, I found this book to be both comforting and helpful. I saw many of the anchor charts and metawrite prompts as tools that I could immediately incorporate into my own classroom. For the metawrite prompts in particular, they felt attainable for a wide range of ages and ability levels while still reaping the full span of benefits. For my seventh graders, these prompts felt very attainable, but I could see the same prompts being applied to a high school English classroom and continuing to bring an awareness and new depth of understanding of the process of writing itself to all students. I especially liked the way the prompts pushed students’ writing abilities, while also making them aware of their own choices and thought processes as a writer. 

The same struggles I face everyday as a writing teacher, and the struggles that I watch my students face every day were brought to light and were normalized. I think as teachers, we strive for perfectionism with our students out of love, but that puts an incredible weight on our own shoulders. I think this book is a great resource and tool for all writing teachers to see easy ways that they can debunk writing anxieties for students, while also providing themselves with tools and the realization that their experiences are universal when teaching and writing in the classroom. 

Lauren Durante is a seventh grade writing teacher in the Avon Grove School District and a graduate student at West Chester University.