Summer Institutes

You are enrolling in a class, but you are also joining a community–the Nebraska Writing Project, a vibrant network of educators dedicated to the teaching of writing across grade levels and content areas. The Nebraska Writing Project offers a variety of programs, workshops, and awards, for teachers, students, and community members, but the Summer Institute is our signature program. We follow the summer institute model developed by the National Writing Project in the late 1970’s, now offered by over 150 writing project sites across the country and validated by many research studies as an impactful model of professional development. The model is focused on developing teachers as writers, facilitating inquiry, and inviting teachers to teach other teachers. Rather than a one-way transfer of knowledge, we center collaborative inquiry and practice, and therefore the class is always co-facilitated by an English faculty member, an Education faculty member, and a local teacher.

You can attend in-person on UNL’s City Campus, live via Zoom, or a mixture of the two.

1. You’ll write! One goal of the Summer Institute is nurturing teachers’ own writing practice, as we believe the best teachers of writing are writers themselves. You’ll have the opportunity to practice writing for your own meaningful purposes, and you will be placed in a supportive writing group.
2. You’ll participate in shared inquiry by reading and discussing. The form of this shifts year-by-year, but often, there is a shared book that the whole institute reads and discusses, in addition to smaller inquiry groups shaped by participant interest.
3. You’ll facilitate, as each participant develops an EQUIP, an interactive workshop that invites peers to engage in a problem, issue, or approach to teaching writing. You are not expected to arrive as an expert in your EQUIP topic–often teachers identify an area in which they want to grow, and you will receive individualized coaching from a facilitator as you develop your workshop.

The Summer Institute is cross-listed with the TLTE (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education), and you can receive either English credit or TLTE credit. To take the class, you need to apply to the university, but you do not need to choose a particular academic program. If you do choose a particular related program in the future, these credits can often by applied toward that program.

The summer institute is part of a variety of UNL programs, such as the Certificate in Teaching Writing, the MA in English, the online MA in Teaching Learning and Teacher Education, and more. Teachers have also successfully transferred their summer institute credits into a variety of programs at other universities. If you have questions about transferring, we recommend contacting your particular program to verify that they will accept these credits.

Graduate tuition at UNL is $353.00 per credit hour. The Summer Institute is 6 graduate credits, but is the same cost as 3 graduate credits, making the class $1059.00 plus fees. Depending on if you take other courses during summer, your total fee cost may differ. The fees for this course are estimated to be approximately $400.00, but may be higher if you take additional courses at UNL during the summer session. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions!

No, the Nebraska Writing Project Summer Institute is for teachers of all grade levels K-16 and all content areas. In the past, we’ve had everyone from high school math teachers to first grade elementary teachers participate and do exciting work within the institute. Teachers have an opportunity to focus their major project on an approach to teaching writing that fits their particular context, and they also benefit from exchanging ideas across areas and levels in our group activities and discussions.

Definitely not! We welcome teachers who have any kind of relationship with writing, and our goal is not professional publication. One of our beliefs is that all teachers and students can see themselves as writers–and something powerful happens when they do.

You will have a 15-20 minute phone conversation with one of this year’s facilitators. They will share additional information about the summer institute and the Nebraska Writing Project, ask you a few questions about your interest in the institute and your classroom, and then give you a chance to ask any questions you have.

You are welcome to explore our website, subscribe to our newsletter, attend any events that are open to the broader community, and/or reach out to the director, Rachael Shah (rshah@unl.edu).