Professional Learning Opportunities

NSTWP partners with the University of North Texas and area districts to sustain a network of teachers, administrators, and professors who focus on improving the teaching of writing and learning throughout North Texas. Our grassroots organization prides itself on being teachers teaching teachers.

UNT Play Day 

Saturday, March 2, 2019
University of North Texas
Jade Ballroom Union 333
9 am – 1 pm
Explore Three Pathways
  • Mindful, Identity-based-Curriculum that Meets the Social and Emotional Needs of Children
  • Design, Invent, and Experiment-Multimodal Literacies across the Disciplines
  • Storytelling: Building on the Cultural Resources of Children

Midway Park ​Play Day 

Explore Three Pathways:
• Mindful, Identity-based Curriculum that Meets the Social and Emotional Needs of Children
• Design, Invent, and Experiment: Multimodal Literacies across the Disciplines
• Storytelling: Building on the Cultural Resources of Children

National Conferences

National Council of Teachers of English
Raising Student Voice

November 14-18, 2018                      Houston, TX
Teachers as First Responders: 911 Students Need Their Voices Heard 
Holly Genova, Rhonda Lemieux, Leslie Patterson, and Carol Wickstrom
As first responders, North Star of Texas Writing Project will share a framework of how to meet and challenge learning through texts such as commercials, news stories, and current events. This framework will help students nd their voices through critically reading and writing about issues relevant to their lives. 
Enlightened Participation: Designing Infographics to “Illuminate” a Bigger Story 
Molly Adams and Whitney Lawrence 
Engagement in academic and civic discourse for students today seems to come at an
even greater price per student. With each passing year, we lose the relevance, rigor, participation, and motivation necessary to promote students’ interest in positive change in education and our world. Perhaps it’s because we take the complex concepts and skills students need to master and either water them down or cut out their innate interestingness in the name of standardized tests and our own fear of change—and in that process diminish the opportunity for students to become better informed and contributing citizens in the process.
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Participants in this workshop can build on their own instructional goals and learning objectives as a foundation for their work, while using creative process worksheets to document their own illuminated infographics, creating a plan for implementation as well as an authentic artifact they can take back to their classrooms/school sites to share with students and colleagues. 
Social-Emotional Learning: The Relationship of Visual Literacy and Student Voices 
Rhonda Lemieux and Tonya Moreland ​

Expanding the Affordances for Children to Find and Use Their Voices through Multimodality
Whitney Lawrence and Josh Hamilton
The presenters share their individual experiences using multimodal approaches in elementary and secondary classrooms. As the world expands its communicative landscape, schools seem to be narrowing theirs, leaving children with fewer affordances to find/use their voices.  The presenters demonstrate the potentials of multimodal approaches in affording students expressive opportunities.

Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning
Learning to Go High: Re-Awakening Hope through Education

June 20 – 24, 2018.                        YMCA of the Rockies                  Estes Park, CO
Tragically, teachers are now joining the ranks of “first responders” on K-12 and university campuses across the
U.S. Too many teachers have been called on to protect students in the face of gunfire. Teachers must also
support students who face physical and emotional violence at home and in their neighborhoods. Others support
refugees and immigrants striving to build new lives in the U.S. Unfortunately, teachers are dealing with these
challenges while also navigating a divisive political and policy environment. As colleagues in the North Star of
Texas Writing Project, we are working together to make sense of these challenges and seek options for action.
We have also become keenly aware of the need to focus on self-care to fight burn out and despair. In this
interactive session, we will describe our own ongoing efforts to identify, understand, and influence patterns
across these complex challenges. And we will facilitate dialogues about all our efforts--past, present, and future-
-to compose new kinds of educational communities in the face of a decomposing social and political fabric.

Inquiry Play Days

Explore Three Pathways:
• Mindful, Identity-based Curriculum that Meets the Social and Emotional Needs of Children
• Design, Invent, and Experiment: Multimodal Literacies across the Disciplines
• Storytelling: Building on the Cultural Resources of Children

Ousley Jr. High Play Day

​Spring 2018 Inquiry Play Day 

Advanced Institutes 

Teachers as First Responders: Uncertainty, Hope, and Healing
Summer 2018

This institute hopes to connect our thoughts, beliefs, values, perceptions, and experiences with the realities of classrooms all over the world. By exploring ways to integrate self care into our work and play, we hope to begin “folding,” or building strength within, in order to ”stretch” and learn to make changes where we can. This institute will explore trauma-informed work with children, adults, and ourselves in a mindful and generative way. We will take on multiple perspectives and build the empathy and compassion to stand with others who are fighting for and imagining a more just world. 

Writing Retreats

Writing in the Wild May 2018

Granbury Weekend Retreat 2018

Leadership Institutes

Summer Institutes 

​North Star Young Writers' Camps 

What Can We Offer?
North Star Writers’ Camps are staffed and planned by highly trained National Writing Project Teacher Consultants. These teachers will facilitate small groups in order to help each individual student improve their writing skills.

​North Star Campers Will…
  • Build confidence as a writer while discovering personal voice
  • Participate in fun activities and strategies to promote creative thinking and growth
  • Brainstorm, draft, revise, and edit in a community of writers
  • Collaborate, share, and receive feedback from peers and instructors
  • Explore creative approaches to Academic Writing that will assist on STAAR and SAT/ACT Writing Tests

2017 Camp Photos

2016 Photos 
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