PhilWP Summer Institute gives teachers space to write, reflect, and reimagine learning
The Philadelphia Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institute helps teachers rediscover curiosity, creativity, and the power of learning together.
2 min. read
In an era of AI-assisted assignments, scripted curricula, and relentless pressure to do more with less, a group of educators gathered at Penn’s Graduate School of Education this summer to do something increasingly rare: slow down.
“This year’s focus on inquiry-based writing pedagogies felt like an invitation for teachers to slow down, ask meaningful questions, write alongside one another, and reimagine what writing instruction can look like across disciplines and grade levels,” says Jen Freed, an Ed.D. candidate in Penn GSE’s Literacy Studies program and a PhilWP teacher consultant who has helped facilitate the Institute for the last three years. “Even more than that, writing became both the method and the artifact of reflection, a way of capturing teaching reflections and the method for engaging young people.”
PhilWP’s ISI serves educators across grade levels, disciplines, and career stages. It also creates opportunities for elementary, middle, and high school teachers to learn along with—and from—one another.
“A valuable part was getting to converse with and write alongside a pool of dedicated educators at a range of stages in their careers across private, charter, and public schools,” says Kyle Layne-Allen, a 2019 graduate of Penn GSE’s Independent School Teaching Residency program who attended ISI this year and teaches English at Abington Friends School. “I don’t often get to converse with teachers beyond the independent school world, so this program helped me go beyond my perspective to find overlapping experiences in our school systems. Being in conversation with my cohort also widened my scope of education and the teacher’s role in collaborating with other teachers to challenge, question, and ultimately uproot our U.S. education system’s specific drawbacks.”
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