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Teacher Ed Prof Wins Dept. of Education Grant

February 20, 2017

Dr. Marva Solomon of the Angelo State University teacher education faculty has been awarded a $20,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Education through the National Writing Project (NWP) to expand the scope of ASU’s Pearl of the Concho Writing Project.

Dr. Marva Solomon Dr. Marva Solomon Solomon’s new project is titled “2017-2018 Advanced Institute to Scale Up the NWP College-Ready Writers Program” and is designed to provide professional development in argument writing for 12 middle and high school teachers from Concho Valley public schools. This represents a new initiative for ASU’s Pearl of the Concho Writing Project, which has historically focused on general/creative writing professional development for elementary and middle school teachers. 

The Pearl of the Concho Writing Project was created at ASU in 2004 and is one of 10 National Writing Project sites in Texas that train public school teachers to improve writing instruction in their classrooms. It also offers creative writing programs for students in grades 3-8 each summer. Solomon has been the director since 2013. More details are available at www.angelo.edu/dept/education/pearl_concho_writing_proj/.

 An associate professor of teacher education, Solomon teaches courses in reading methods and is a contributing author in “Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change and Assessment in 21st Century Classrooms,” a guide for teachers on student online and multimedia projects. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas. 

Founded in 1973, the National Writing Project provides programs to promote and improve writing and the teaching of writing through a network of nearly 200 sites in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More details are available at www.nwp.org/.