Project Initiation Proposal

1997 ReachOut Program

Statement of Need and Identification of Target Audience

A recent call from the department head asking faculty members in English to identify the outreach efforts in which they were involved this past year revealed the surprising number of individuals involved in this kind of scholarship. The surprise was both gratifying (because we were already accomplishing a great deal) and distressing (because this work was not well integrated or very visible to us as an intellectual community). Our stated mission to "enhance the appreciation of language as an art that provides aesthetic pleasure and as a cultural document that reflects individual and social values" makes us natural partners with the public schools, but thus far we have had no easy way to connect with them. To be sure, our creative writers are often asked to read, and those of us who are parents frequently volunteer in the schools in ways that tap our professional expertise, but apart from the "articulation" efforts of the First Year Writing Program to communicate expectations to high school teachers, we have not coordinated or fully explored the possibilities for creative interaction across the K-16 continuum.

By the same token, teachers and curriculum directors in the schools have been only intermittently successful in connecting with us--but good luck and personal acquaintance are too often the determinants. Someone's mother is a poet, or a children's literature expert. Someone's father might be a good consultant on a language arts grant proposal. In the meantime, many needs go unmet, and many faculty members in the English department who might thrive on collaboration never get the opportunity.

Clearly, we need each other. As a first step toward achieving a coordinated approach to outreach with the public schools, the English Department proposes working with grades K-8 in the Montgomery County school system to establish an interactive web page and electronic newsmagazine designed to facilitate and showcase collaborations on a variety of educational projects and, over the long term, to build sustained partnerships among English faculty, public school teachers and the students we each serve. The web page will match needs and expertise via continually updated "classifieds" and profile successful teachers and their projects. Although we may in time expand our program to include at least one remote locality, it seems best to begin close to home on a small scale, for the following reasons:

Description of the Overall Project Proposal

The short-term goal of establishing internet pages sets the stage for the more ambitious longer term aims of our proposal:

Phase 1:

The English Department's relationship to the public schools will be built out of its unique teaching, research and service missions. We do not claim the same kind of expertise, for example, that could be offered by the Department of Teaching and Learning. But our professional interest in literature, in advanced composition, and in creative writing, together with our need to provide a variety of ways for our undergraduates to learn, create a domain of shared interest. Montgomery County teachers have identified the following ways in which we could help them meet their needs:

The web pages will make these kinds of contacts possible on relatively short notice and, we hope, generate possibilities for many other kinds of short-term collaborations. We will measure the success of this first phase of the project by comparing the number and range of outreach activities undertaken by the English department before and after the web pages were been established. Interviews with participating teachers and students will provide the basis for a qualitative evaluation. If these results are favorable, we will ask the English department to absorb the cost of maintaining the pages out of operating expenses.

Description of the Activities to be Undertaken During the Project Initiation Year

Dr. Larry Arrington, Technology Supervisor for MCPs, will assist in interviewing and selecting the technical support graduate student and help in supervising the creation of the web pages. The MCPS Technology Department will assist in posting of web pages on the MCPS intranet server.

MCPS grant writers, Cindy Martin and Laura Williams, will present this grant to the School Board and keep the administration current on its status during the implementation.

Tamra Oliver (Specialist for the Gifted) and Nancy Ballinger (Supervisor of Gifted and Fine Arts) will coordinate the MCPS portion of the grant. Although our program potentially reaches all MCPS teachers and their students in grades K-8, it makes sense to use the Gifted Department to funnel needs requests from the public schools, since teachers look to Gifted Consultants for help with out-of-the-ordinary projects. Tamra Oliver and Nancy Ballinger will post needs to the Web site and disseminate information about the clearinghouse to teachers and administrators. Participation in the project will be encouraged through publicity in:

Tamra Oliver will collect information needed for reports and final evaluation from the MCPS participants as well as participate in writing these reports.

On the English Department side, the same kinds of functions will be performed by Nancy Metz, who will channel requests to the Web site, and advertise its availability through department meetings, department listserv, web links with the English department homepage, the ReachOUT homepage, and the Service-Learning homepage, and by co-presenting our program at professional conferences such as the South-Atlantic Conference for Computers and Writing. Nancy Metz will work with Tamra Oliver on the evaluation of the project and the report to sponsors.

Qualifications of the Applicants

The idea for this project was generated out of a successful three-year collaboration between Nancy Metz, an Associate Professor in the English Department and Tamra Oliver, formerly a second-grade teacher at Margaret Beeks, now Instructional Consultant for the Gifted Department, MCPs. (See attachment for full description of our project, which can serve as an example of the kinds of projects this proposal might generate.) This classroom partnership was selected for an Excellence in Education award in fall 1997, in a competition sponsored by the College of Human Resources and Education, designed to "recognize innovative approaches to teaching and learning in Virginia's public schools and community colleges." Our labor to build this partnership and to work through the institutional barriers that divided us convinced us that with a little coordination and encouragement many others could do the same thing.

Other teaching awards are listed on our resumes. We wish to point out as well that we are both experienced in teacher-training and in program development. Tamra Oliver has extensive experience as a Conference/Inservice Presenter and Teacher Training Instructor. Her considerable work with technology has been supported by successful grant proposals and has led to such innovations as a Girls Computer Club at Margaret Beeks Elementary. Her current job as a Consultant for the Gifted Department keeps her well-tuned to teachers' needs and gives her expertise beyond the classroom or the individual school. In addition to many years of experience working with GTAs in the English department, Nancy Metz directed the University Writing Program during its first years, developing a series of faculty workshops and seminars and making presentations across campus on how university teaching can successfully incorporate writing across disciplines, even in tight economic times.