Fairfield University Partners With Local Farm For Writing Program

WILTON, CT — For five years now, the Weir Farm National Park in Wilton has been providing the beautiful bucolic backdrop to an ongoing series of workshops aimed at inspiring and teaching area educators.

A partnership between the farm and the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University, it is a grant-funded professional development opportunity that includes a virtual program and in-person sessions that focus on the theme of nature in relation to language arts.

“The idea originated when National Park Services and the National Writing Project formed a partnership,” explained Bryan Ripley Crandall, program director and associate professor at Fairfield University’s School of Education and Human Development.

The resulting WriteOut program is a virtual arm of the collaboration, available to everyone online, but locally the program also includes an in-person group of workshops for several weekends in the fall at Weir Farm for 10 to 15 area educators through an application process.

“This year I had the pleasure to experience WriteOut at the historic Weir Farm,” said Sharon Bunyan, a special education middle school teacher in Bridgeport and 2019 NWP fellow.

While she has long used the online program in working with her students, she was excited to have the firsthand experience this year, which included a special focus on water and its myriad related issues — everything from cycles and science, to poetics and politics.

She’s thrilled to be taking part in the in-person workshops, but Bunyan said the online version of the program remains of great value to her, and has for years.

“WriteOut is valuable to teachers because it actively and creatively engages students in the world around them,” she said, noting that the learning practices they get as teachers can easily be utilized in both urban and suburban settings.

The National Writing Project itself is a professional development network that serves writing teachers at all grade levels, primary through various universities.

According to its website, “The mission of the NWP is to improve student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and improving learning in the nation’s schools.”

“This year teachers need something like this, for sure,” said Rich Novack, an English teacher at Fairfield Warde High School and a co-leading professor of the workshop.

He said that researchers have found that experiences relating to nature actually boost academic learning.

“We ultimately hope that rich and meaningful learning is happening through the strategies we are engaging with and decimating through outdoor classrooms with teachers and students,” he said. “In these workshops and social media events, we share and celebrate those kinds of outdoor classroom activities, often in National Parks.”

Crandall said the goal is to connect teachers with the outdoors and explore the various ways to connect it with reading and writing.

“Weir Farm is unique because it features a beautiful landscape that has attracted impressionist painters for hundreds of years,” he said, praising what has become an excellent partnership.

Novack concurred, pointing out that the teachers who take time to participate are clearly driven to be the best they can be.

“While I don’t want to speak for any educator who has joined our workshops at Weir Farm NHP over these past five years, I can say that teachers are truly looking to improve the art and craft of their profession when they attend this workshop,” he said.