Press Releases
College Board Awards Bob Costas Grants for the Teaching of Writing
02/01/08
NEW YORK— Eight teachers have been awarded the third annual College Board Bob Costas Grants for the Teaching of Writing, the College Board announced today. The grants recognize exceptional teachers 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.
Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, said: “It’s an honor to support these extraordinary teachers who are inspiring their students to write. Their highly effective practices are teaching young people both the joy of using words well and the importance of that skill, which will serve them for the rest of their lives.”
One grant recipient or teaching team was selected from each of the College Board’s six regions:
Southwestern Region: Mary Grace Bagaoisan and Roseo T. Caburian Jr. of Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland, Texas, teach English as a second language in an economically and ethnically diverse high school. Eighty-two percent of the students are eligible for Title I services, and there are 17 different first languages spoken within the student body. Bagaoisan and Caburian have succeeded in building writing skills and academic confidence among students whose limited English proficiency threatened to keep them from staying in school or considering college. The grant will support a program for ESL students that offers intensive writing workshops combined with field trips to museums, athletic events, theater performances and other cultural institutions. Students will be given various writing assignments related to the activities, such as news stories, reviews or essays. The project will culminate with the publication of their work in an ESL newsletter and on a related school Web site.
Middle States Region: Beth Breau and Richard Lorenzo of St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, N.J., teach a 10th-grade course called Newark Studies, in which students investigate topics important to their city, including AIDS, race relations, downtown development and Newark’s 1967 civil disorders. During each semester, students conduct interviews and perform extensive research on these issues for Newark InDepth, a student-written magazine. Newark InDepth not only requires students to work in a newsroom-style atmosphere in which they call sources and meet deadlines, but also makes them analyze and discuss actual issues that affect their lives and city. St. Benedict’s Prep is an all-boys school in the city’s Central Ward with the mission of helping their predominantly minority students prepare for college.
Southern Region: Nancy Sladky teachers literature and writing at John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School, an inner-city public school in Augusta, Ga., dedicated to the performing arts. Sladky is committed to making writing an integral part the curriculum. She sponsors an active poetry and fiction writing club, publishes a literary journal, holds events to showcase student writing and has collaborated with the library to establish a creative writing blog for students. With this grant, she plans to help her students publish their writing in a historical style — broadsides. These poster-sized papers, used in the 16th century to publish words and art, were also popular with Harlem Renaissance and Beat writers. Sladky will help her students create original broadsides to be displayed at school and in the surrounding neighborhood. These publications will help students connect to the downtown community and share their ideas and art with a larger audience.
New England Region: B. Lynn Frazier, a reading and language arts consultant at Windham High School in Willimantic, Conn., began a poetry unit focusing on memoirs a few years ago. Her group of students, the self-named Young Poets, responded with passion and skill, performing their work in a local café and publishing it online. “Writing has helped them stay in school, strive for academic success, heal and even make wiser decisions,” she said. Frazier was chosen as one of 150 Freedom Writer Teachers by Erin Gruwell. Her students now participate in Gruwell’s national program that encourages disadvantaged young people to write about the adversity they face in their lives. With this grant, Frazier plans to publish a second book of her students’ poetry and organize a weeklong celebration called “Think and Be Heard: Celebrating Strengths and Creativity,” which will include a poetry slam and a presentation by one of the original Freedom Writers.
Midwestern Region: Katherine Plager of Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Ill., teaches her students how to write formal laboratory reports following the scientific method. Her rubric and step-by-step procedure for constructing laboratory reports has made writing accessible to students previously uncomfortable with writing. “Scientific writing is analytical and naturally provides structure for students to write about ideas using higher-level thinking skills,” Plager said. “It forces students to consider a history of ideas and their time and place in the metamorphosis of those ideas.” With the help of the Costas grant, Plager will create a science writing lab in which students not only will continue to write formal laboratory reports, but also write science articles in the style of the New York Times “Science Times” section. Both types of writing, along with creative and informal science writing, will be included in a science journal the class will publish twice a year.
Western Region: Art Rzasa of Corvallis High School in Corvallis, Mont., founded Classroom Without Walls, where students engage in experiential learning. They embark on educational backpacking trips, then research, write, film and produce short documentaries for classroom use in middle school and high school. Those projects have included learning how a national park operates from officials who run Yellowstone, and performing drills with the Confederate “infantry” at Gettysburg. With this grant, Rzasa plans for his Classroom Without Walls students to produce and present live lessons to young summer school students via a video blog from Wyoming’s Wind River Range. “Writing instruction has never been so easy, so productive or so rewarding,” Rzasa said.
The College Board established the National Commission on Writing in 2002 to create more national support for the teaching of writing. Costas, an eight-time Sportscaster of the Year, has supported the commission’s work by producing a national public service announcement encouraging young people to develop strong writing skills. Teachers of grades 6–12 from any discipline, in both public and nonpublic schools, are eligible for the Bob Costas Grants, as are writing programs that take place within schools or the community. For more details about the annual award program, visit www.collegeboard.com/costasgrants.
CONTACT
Sandra Riley, The College Board, (212) 713-8052 communications@collegeboard.org