English Education - Volume 39, Issue 2, 2007

As the director of a brand new National Writing Project site, I was apprehensive about what I could expect from myself, the teachers, the co-directors, and from the work we would do together over an intensive five-week writing institute. It was a new venture for us all.While my purpose here is not to chronicle the evolution of our group over the five weeks we were together, I do want to discuss one particular outcome of the Summer Institute because I believe it has implications for all of us who work with teachers. I have come to think of this as the evolution of the politics of voice in the lives of teachers. Through ongoing and sustained collaborative writing, research, and discussion, the fifteen teachers of the Summer Institute called upon funds of knowledge, reclaimed the voices of their teaching lives, and disclaimed the common public sentiment which discredits the role of these very voices in developing an agenda for reforming education.