History of UIWP
In
1974, James Gray founded the Bay Area Writing Project
with
the goal of creating a different form of professional development
for
teachers, emphasizing the knowledge, leadership, and best practices of
effective teachers, and promoting the sharing of that knowledge with
other teachers.
By 1976 the NWP had grown to fourteen sites in six states.In 1991, NWP was authorized as a federal education program, allowing the network to expand to previously underserved areas. Today the NWP comprises more than 200 sites in all 50 states with $23 million in federal funding matched by host universities and local school districts.
In November 2007, the University of Illinois was
named a new site of
the National Writing Project with the support of Unit 4, Unit 116, ROE
SchoolWorks, and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). It
was one of three new sites in Illinois, along with Eastern Illinois
University and Southern Illinois University, joining existing sites at
Illinois State University, the University of Illinois in Chicago, and
National-Louis University.
In June 2008, we hosted our first Summer
Institute. Sixteen teachers from a variety of grades,
disciplines, and schools participated.
