by Clarice M. Moran, Appalachian State University
Our National Writing Project (NWP) site was born on the top of a mountain in a place blessed by waterfalls, rugged trails, and music legends. The Appalachian Mountains Writing Project (AMWP) in Boone, NC, at Appalachian State University, is one of three NWP sites in North Carolina and the newest jewel in the crown. We became an official site during the fog of 2020-21 and held our first summer institute in summer 2022 with just three, intrepid participants and me, the intensely nervous Type-A site director.
Situated in small-town Boone — named for Daniel Boone, but known for bluegrass legends Doc and Merle Watson, country singers Eric Church and Luke Combs, and the Blue Ridge Mountains — the AMWP had a previous life as the “Appalachian Writing Project,” but this was a name that earlier site directors had claimed without the official paperwork (or dues) to NWP. So, when I joined App State in 2020 and declared my intent to establish a new WP site, I was met with resistance and skepticism. “We already have a writing project!” colleagues informed me, unaware that there was protocol associated with an “official” site. Yet, I believed so deeply in everything the NWP stood for that I forged ahead in the face of collegial obstacles. Thankfully, I had the full support of the English Department chair, who also was new to App State, and together we moved the mountains of doubters and administrators to secure funding and christen our new site.
The First Year
In that newborn SI in 2022, I was brimming over with plans and ideas. I scheduled a full slate of guest speakers, assigned two books for shared reading discussions, and planned zesty, new activities for the writing classroom. Frankly, I was amazed that anyone actually signed up and paid the registration fee. I was blessed with three, brave teachers, who had no qualms about leading discussions or taking over.
We read, argued, wrote, shared, and cried. At some point during the summer, I realized I had lost complete control of any planned curriculum, so I just let go. It was summer after all. The four of us workshopped our writing daily – one of us sharing chapters from a planned novel, another writing unflinchingly about her failed marriage. We recorded a podcast called, “What We Saw,” about the horrors we witnessed among our students during the pandemic. We decorated a broken bicycle with lines from our poetry as a piece of public art. There were no pretenses and no hierarchy. It was, in the purest sense, teachers teaching each other, connecting through writing. It was part book club, part writing group, part group therapy. But it was completely exhausting. By the end, the three participants declared themselves wrung out. I was wrung out too.
Left: Participants in the first AMWP Summer Institute. Right: A participant writes poetry on a bicycle.
I loved that first summer, but I wanted the second year’s SI to be less intense – something that would attract graduate students at the university as well as teachers in the community. And, I doubted I could sustain a group-therapy-through-writing model over the long haul. I wanted to stay site director for a long while, and that first summer took nearly everything out of me.
After a rest, a trip to Hawaii, and a lot of thought, I considered what I could do for the next summer. One thing had been made clear: the teachers were mad. They were mad about tests and restrictions, mad about legislators with zero educational training devising curriculum, mad about societal ignorance over what actually goes on in a classroom, and mad about the lack of parental and administrative support. So, I devised a second SI that would focus on “writing as resistance.” I knew from my own work and from the conversations with those first participants that teachers shouldn’t focus on coaching students through five-paragraph essays or “argumentative writing” templates. Writing should be a platform, a megaphone, an outlet for our students (and ourselves) to shout about everything that is wrong in the world and in our lives. I wanted to actively encourage inservice and preservice teachers to resist the prescribed curriculum and wage war through writing, using it as a weapon for change. The pen, I reminded myself, is always mightier than the sword.
The Second Year
In the second SI in summer 2023, the “writing as resistance” theme seemed to resonate. Nine participants signed up, including five graduate students, two inservice teachers, an adjunct professor, and a middle school librarian. I cut back to just one (slim) book: Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting With Our Most Vulnerable Students, edited by Stephanie Jones and members of the Red Clay Writing Project at the University of Georgia. Through the book’s lens of classroom-teachers-facing-obstacles, I hoped my participants would be able to view their own successes and failures with students and teaching writing. I reduced the number of guest speakers and penciled in more unstructured writing time.
Lastly, I decided we should interact with the beautiful environment in which we were situated. So, on the second day of SI 23, we headed up the mountain into the woods to sit by a cold stream as it cascaded from a waterfall. Perched on flat rocks in the streambed, we wrote. I did not coach or lecture, peer onto their pages, or even speak. I remained quiet and wrote too.
We wrote for nearly two hours, some of us using the environment as a place-based writing prompt and others leaning on the white noise of the rushing water as a way to quiet everyday thoughts and dive deep into the unconscious mind. When we finished and headed back down the mountain, the experience lingered. One participant even declared that we should write up at the waterfall every day. “That was the most transformative writing experience of my life,” she said.
AMWP Summer Institute 2023 participants write atop rocks at Hebron Falls in Boone, NC.
I turned to the metaphor of the waterfall frequently throughout the rest of that summer’s SI, and we often referred to “up at the falls” in our discussions. The phrase came to mean writing that was unhurried and unscripted – writing that fell away from prescribed curriculum. The “writing as resistance” theme took a new shape in me: sometimes, doing nothing more than “just” writing is an act of resistance. I realized that participants wanted some new ideas for teaching writing, but they also just wanted space and time to write. Snazzy classroom activities, book discussions, teaching demonstrations, and all the other trademark tools of a SI could be set aside for time to simply write.
The Coming Summer
This summer, I have a better understanding of what participants want and which writing experiences are important to them. I plan to take some of the therapy-style sharing that occurred in the first SI and pair it with more trips into nature. Most of all, I want to allow more time to “just write.” Prescribed curriculum can get in the way of the simple – and transformative – experience of taking time to write. Although I will still adhere to a theme (this year, we are focusing on memoir), and I will make time for shared reading discussions, teaching demonstrations, a couple of guest speakers, and a few snazzy classroom activities, I will schedule in more time for simply writing. We will go up to the falls again and to another beautiful spot I know at the top of a stunning valley. I will “invite” and “suggest” some place-based writing prompts, but, mostly, I will shut up and let them write. In the quiet, I am hoping they will find their own voice.
Writers Who Care 