Summer time is here and...

More than 3,000 kindergarten-through-college teachers across the country will dedicate four weeks this summer to learning new strategies to improve their students' writing skills. (from the National Writing Project website)

Monday morning, the Red River Valley Writing Project will begin its invitational summer institute in Fargo, North Dakota. The hope is that the summer institute can alternate between Fargo and Grand Forks, thus extending the reach of RRVWP.

It's powerful to think of teachers all across the country engaged in the same kind of professional development and writing. Teachers in the SI will be in writing groups, they will present demos of best practices in writing instruction, they will engage in professional reading....maybe they will even eat pastries and coffee in the morning and laugh at running jokes that develop as summer fellows get to know one another.