Writing Today Is Everybody's Business
Today people write as never before—texting, on blogs, with video cameras and cell phones, and, yes, even with traditional pen and paper. People write at home, at work, inside and out of school.
On Monday, February 23, 2009, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. EST, the National Council of Teachers of English, representing 50,000 members worldwide, will release the report Writing in the 21st Century. At the same time, to celebrate writing, NCTE also will announce the National Day on Writing (), the National Gallery of Writing, and the inception of the annual National High School, College and University Writing Awards in partnership with The Norman Mailer Writers Colony (http://www.nmwcolony.org/mailerAwards/nationalAcademic/).
Attend this event at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW, 13th Floor, Zenger Room, Washington, D.C. Please RSVP to Stacey Novelli at snovelli@ncte.org by February 20.
Bestselling author Gay Talese; Thomas F. Staley, the director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; teacher Dan Brown and student Mansur Muhammad, from SEED Public Charter School, Washington, D.C.; and NCTE Executive Director Kent Williamson will join report author Kathleen Blake Yancey, NCTE Past President and writing researcher and writing faculty member, Florida State University, to discuss the centrality of writing in school, the workplace, and civic society.
To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing we engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft, NCTE is working to establish October 20, 2009, as the National Day on Writing. To celebrate composition in all its forms, we are inviting diverse participants—students, teachers, parents, grandparents, service and industrial workers, managers, business owners, legislators, retirees, and many more—to submit a piece of writing to the National Gallery of Writing.
Today as people continue to write using new and old tools, we need to develop new models of writing; design a new curriculum supporting those models; and create models for teaching that curriculum. Our schools and our nation need to recognize and validate the many ways we all are writing.
“By capturing a portrait of how writing happens today—who writes and for what purposes,” Kent Williamson notes, “teachers can better prepare the next generation for success across the full range of 21st century literacies. Our hope is that everyone who participates in this initiative will better understand writing as a valuable lifelong practice rather than as something that is done only in school or only by a select group of people.”