Maplelag again!! Writing and skiing await you.

The Red River Valley Writing Project is pleased to announce that we are sponsoring a Winter Writing Retreat January 24-26, 2014, at Maplelag Resort near Calloway, Minnesota (north of Detroit Lakes off Hwy. 59).

At the Winter Writing Retreat, participants will have a chance to generate new writing as well as work on drafts of previously written pieces if they so choose. Our writing time at Maplelag will feature writing to prompts, draft expansion activities, writing groups, revision time, whole-group sharing, and individual editing/coaching. In addition, participants will have some downtime to try their hand (and feet) at cross-country skiing, skating, snowshoeing, and/or hiking on Maplelag's ponds/lakes and wooded outdoor trails. (For more information on Maplelag Resort, click here.)

A weekend at Maplelag normally would cost $275.00 per person; the RRVWP will pay all but $50.00!

Included in this low $50.00 Writing Retreat fee:

•lodging for two nights/three days,

•all meals (Friday evening meal, three meals on Saturday, and two on Sunday),

•full resort access (NOT including equipment rental: Ski rental is $15 per person; snowshoe rental is $5. Skates are no charge.),

•free wireless internet—bring your own laptop.

Participants must make their own travel arrangements. Once we have our group defined, we will facilitate carpooling for those who wish to do so to cut down on transportation costs.

If you would like to partake of this wonderful opportunity to write, please send a non-refundable deposit of $50.00 by Thursday, Dec. 19, to Pam Fisher at Central High School, 115 N 4th St., Grand Forks, ND 58203. Make your deposit check payable to Maplelag (memo line: RRVWP Writing Retreat). Also, please send Pam an email (pam[dot]fisher[at]gfschools[dot]org) to indicate that a deposit check is on the way. Include in this email a brief explanation of why you would like to attend this writing retreat and what you would like to accomplish there.

We have room for only nine participants at our Winter Writing Retreat. If we have more participants apply than we can accommodate, preference will be given to active TCs and recent "graduates" of the Summer Institute. We will also take into account a participant's reasons for wanting to attend.

If you have any questions about this Writing Retreat, please let Pam know.

Let's write!!

A good resource for thinking about essays

Essay Daily is a space for ongoing conversation about essays & essayists of note, contemporary and not-so-much. We mostly publish critical/creative engagements with interesting essays (text and other), Q&As with essays or essayists, and reviews of essays, essay collections or book length essays, or literary journals that publish essays.

For more on Essay Daily, click the above hyperlinked text. 

The problem with blackface

The nefarious practice of blackface reared its ugly head again this past Halloween in startlingly high-profile incidents. Dancing with the Stars alumna Julianne Hough created an ill-advised costume tribute to a character on HBO’s Orange Is the New Black, complete with blackface. Two coaches at a California high school attended an event dressed as the Jamaican bobsled team. And from across the country, photos of students showing up to parties in blackface popped up all over blogs and other social media outlets. (Jill Solos-Rooney at Teaching Tolerance)

Check out 'Open Culture'

Open Culture is one of those internet hubs, a place to go for interesting things, though you might not know what those interesting things are. To explore Open Culture, click the text below. 


Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best educational media. He finds the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & movies you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

US achievement stagnates

U.S. performance in reading, math, and science has remained stagnant since 2009 as other nations have plowed ahead, according to new results from a prominent international assessment.

Nineteen countries and education systems scored higher than the United States in reading on the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, up from nine systems when the test was last administered in 2009. Germany and Poland, for instance, have seen steady gains on the reading assessment over time, and are now ahead of the United States. (Leilan Heitin at Education Week)

Thoughts on keeping teachers in the teaching profession

So what’s our best advice for improving job quality and retaining teachers? Recognize that everyone, not just children, benefits when anti-bias social justice principles are incorporated into our work as educators, community members and citizens. And the more individuals who recognize this benefit, the more likely it will be that social justice principles escape the domain of classroom extension exercises and special, piecemeal trainings and become part of our school and community cultures. (Adrienne van de Valk  at Teaching Tolerance)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text. 

The debate over CCSS continues

TWO RECENT media dust-ups over Common Core State Standards have underscored just how arrogant and out of touch its cheerleaders are--and just how confusing it can be to navigate the political opposition to these new education standards.

Common Core State Standards set new guidelines for what students should know in English language arts and math. With next-to-no input from actual educators, the standards have been adopted by 45 states and four U.S territories (including the District of Columbia) as of this writing.  (Jeff Bale at SocialistWorker.org)

Writing can be complicated

Self-loathing is in the writer’s blood. When you’re an artist of any kind, there’s no certainty that what you’re working on won’t be a complete failure. But when writers reach a certain level of fame, when they make Oprah’s Book Club or the cover of Time magazine, surely they don’t struggle with the same massive insecurities we lesser known writers face?

The answer, of course, is that it’s human nature to struggle with oneself. That icky feeling of discontent we often experience is what sometimes inspires the best art. (Michele Filgate at Salon)