Students' Work to be Featured on National Gallery of Writing

English-education student Seth Federman of The Florida State University recently created an online forum that will allow him and his fellow students to share their work in a new National Gallery of Writing.

The National Gallery of Writing is described as “a virtual space -- a Web site -- where people who perhaps have never thought of themselves as writers -- mothers, bus drivers, fathers, veterans, nurses, firefighters, sanitation workers, stockbrokers -- select and post one thing they have written that is important to them. The Gallery accommodates any composition format -- from word processing to photography, audio recording to text messages -- and all types of writing -- from letters to lists, memoirs to memos.”

The National Gallery of Writing initiative is led by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), whose primary goal is improving the teaching and learning of English and language arts at all educational levels.

Federman, a senior from Tampa, and his peers are members of the Florida State Council of Teachers of English (FSUCTE) and are working with the NCTE to promote participation in a National Day on Writing as an opportunity for teachers’ professional growth.

Shelbie Witte, an assistant professor in Florida State’s School of Teacher Education, currently serves on the NCTE executive committee as the Middle Level Representative-at-Large. She credits the FSUCTE as “one of the most active and successful student organizations of the National Council of Teachers of English.”

The National Gallery of Writing will open on Oct. 20, 2009, which also is the date of the inaugural National Day on Writing. On that day, writers from across the country can share their work, celebrate local writing and develop a better understanding of what matters to writers today.

Witte sees the National Day on Writing as an opportunity for teachers to demystify writing for students who may not consider themselves writers, as well as provide an illustration of the diverse ways in which writing is an integral part of life in the 21st century.

“By having FSUCTE participate in this writing project, it shows our commitment to the final stage of the writing process, publishing,” Federman, the English-education student, said. He suggests that too often teachers focus their resources on earlier stages of the process and that as a result, students are not able to celebrate their accomplishments.

FSUCTE members are currently negotiating with leaders of the Orange Avenue Project, a partnership between the College’s Program in English Education and the Tallahassee Housing Authority that provides tutoring and mentorship to children at the Orange Avenue Community Center’s afterschool program, to include their writing in the initiative.

“This will challenge educators to think about how they use the writing process in their classrooms,” Federman said. “It’s all about starting those conversations and trying to ask the education community if we are doing what’s best for the development of our students.”