HIstory

In 1973, the Bay Area Writing Project was born. It soon expanded to include the sites of the California Writing Project and then the National Writing Project. Much of the growth of the writing project was intertwined with the growth of a new field—writing and composition. Writing project sites and writing teachers were developing new practices: process approaches to teaching writing, peer response strategies for feedback and revision, holistic writing assessment, classrooms as communities of writers, just to name a few.

Forty years later, writing project sites and writing teachers are developing practices for today’s priorities: writing for college and workplace readiness, technology-mediated writing, formative writing assessment, writing in and beyond the classroom, writing as participation and civic engagement. “Today, in the 21st century, people write as never before—in print and online. We thus face three challenges that are also opportunities:

developing new models of writing; designing a new curriculum supporting those models; and creating models for teaching that curriculum.”

(Kathleen Yancey, Writing in the 21st Century)