College Board Awards 2009 Bob Costas Grants for the Teaching of Writing

The Bob Costas Grant winners from the Southwestern Region, Andrea Perrino (at left) of Rio Rancho Mid-High School and Beth Cramer of Mountain View Middle School in Rio Rancho, N.M., with Paul Weaver, district director of counseling and guidance for the Plano Independent School District in Plano, Texas, and a member of the College Board’s Guidance and Admission Assembly Council.

At each regional forum, the College Board presented this year’s Bob Costas Grants for the Teaching of Writing. The grants recognize one exceptional teacher or teaching team per region for using innovative methods to inspire their students to write. The award was created to support teachers and to thank Bob Costas, the Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and author, for his generous public service work on behalf of the National Commission on Writing. Each winner receives a grant
of $3,000.

The Midwestern recipient, Colleen Ruggieri of Canfield High School in Canfield, Ohio, believes in having her students “write for real.” She incorporated a local experimental farm in her teaching. Her students studied the writings of the American Transcendentalists, and she took them on a field trip to the farm to research environmental and agricultural issues. The students researched topics such as global warming, toxic waste and natural remedies, and wrote a persuasive educational campaign for the Metro Parks system that operates the farm. She plans to expand the project by having students write and produce nature videos and a series of nature guides for the public.

In the Middle States, Shannon Handley and Joanne Dineen of Bay Shore High School in Bay Shore, N.Y., coordinate the Ethnic Pen, an annual conference on ethnic writing that has earned local and national recognition for its success in motivating students to find and express their unique voices through writing. The Ethnic Pen, which began 18 years ago, is open to students in grades six-12 across Long Island and currently has a waiting list of more than 1,000. High school students help develop the curriculum, which aims to celebrate the diversity of the school district and prevent racism as students learn to appreciate other cultures.

Andrea Perrino of Rio Rancho Mid-High School and Beth Cramer of Mountain View Middle School in Rio Rancho, N.M., were the winners in the Southwestern Region. They coordinate a Web-based writer’s showcase to publish students’ work and encourage them to submit essays or poetry. Perrino and Cramer are founding members of a task force aimed at aligning the writing curriculum for K-12 in the Rio Rancho district, and they envision the writer’s showcase as a resource for teachers throughout the district. Each submission includes comments from the teacher and student. Perrino and Cramer hope to enhance the site with lesson plans and an interactive blog.

In the West, Teri Klass of Marshall High School in Los Angeles has incorporated special education students into her Humanitas Global Studies small learning community, bringing a population that has often been excluded into a program of rigor. Her students’ assignments include debates, multimedia projects and extracurricular trips. The collaborative approach in the classroom allows students of all abilities to improve their writing skills. One of her recent projects included publishing student work in an anthology that features essays and narratives about life in Los Angeles. The works were produced with the help of 826LA, the nonprofit writing and tutoring center. Klass plans to continue her collaboration with 826LA as students participate in research teams that are studying and writing about global issues.

The winner in the South, Brent Wiley of Brandon Alternative School in Seffner, Fla., challenged his students to take up their pens and create the first student newspaper published in Hillsborough County. The alternative school serves about 300 students in grades six-12 who have been placed there because they haven’t succeeded in traditional schools. Wiley’s students accepted his challenge and published their first issue — complete with fashion tips, reviews of hip-hop and pop music releases, and editorials about school conditions — in time for parents’ night. “For many parents, this was the first opportunity to show pride in their child’s accomplishments. It was a magical evening for all,” Wiley said. This grant will help Wiley purchase supplies and tools to continue to produce the newspaper and help his students express themselves in writing.

In New England, Pascalia Mattioli of South High Community School in Worcester, Mass., has emphasized the arts as her students read and write in her language arts classroom. Using art projects to complement the reading and writing curriculum has helped many students for whom English is not their first language. Her art-making projects have also helped students in special education break the stigma that they sometimes face. Assignments have included creating a fever chart to plot Hamlet’s internal state of mind, and drawing library posters. Sometimes the projects are 3-D, such as a model of a scene from a novel or a collage using newspapers or magazines. The students’ art is displayed in the classroom and school hallways, often sparking other students’ interest in reading.

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