Bay Area Writing Project Celebrates Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
The Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), grande dame of California subject-matter projects,
celebrated its 25th anniversary on Saturday, November 14th, 1998, at its home-UC Berkeley. While the Cal
band played "Hail to California" in the autumn sunshine outside Barrows Hall, more than 170 BAWP fellows
gathered to toast James Gray, BAWP founder, to renew old acquaintances, and to reflect on their craft. The Bay
Area Writing Project is a collaborative University/school program designed to improve the teaching and
learning of writing through professional development programs for teachers at all levels and in all content
areas.
Of course no BAWP meeting would be complete without teachers writing, and they did that, too, creating first
drafts of poems and personal essays, to be revised and then published by BAWP during the anniversary year.
Since its inception in 1974, 508 teachers-kindergarten through college-have been named BAWP fellows. With
these men and women serving as BAWP teacher-consultants, an estimated 3,500 teachers annually have
participated in BAWP workshops and programs during the school year, in the summer programs, now at San
Francisco State University as well as at UC Berkeley, and in monthly Saturday morning workshops at Cal that
are offered free to teachers. These teachers touched by a BAWP program have reached tens of thousands of young
California writers.
The teachers attending the event were reminded by a series of speakers that over its 25 year history BAWP
has changed forever the way writing is taught not only in the Bay Area but across the country and in many
parts of the world. Currently university campuses nationally host 160 writing projects similar to BAWP; 11
projects are active internationally in Asia, South America and Europe. Using the best practices of classroom
teachers, BAWP continues to evolve. "The heart of the writing project is the classroom teacher," affirmed
Laury Fischer, former BAWP co-director and now on the Diablo Valley College English faculty, who was the
event's master of ceremonies. That BAWP concept-Teachers Teaching Teachers-was echoed by Gray, who applauded
the projects' exemplary teacher-consultants for their leadership in California public and private schools, as
well as for their achievements as authors, curriculum and staff developers, international educators,
researchers, and lobbyists for education.
Gray reminisced about those days in 1973 and 1974 when he and a small group of other innovators spent hours
inventing BAWP. That group consisted of Mary K. Healy, now director of teacher development at the Puente
Project; Albert 'Cappy' Lavin, retired Sir Francis Drake High School English teacher; and Miles Myers,
former executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English and former Oakland High School
English teacher. Healy, Lavin, and Myers served as co-directors of the the project in the beginning years.
"We have survived because our home is at the University of California-a public school," Gray quipped.
"We would never have made it at Harvard and Yale. Surrounding Berkeley are 176 different school districts.
We would never have made it in Los Angeles which only has one district." Richard Sterling, who succeeded
Gray as National Writing Project Director in 1994, spoke enthusiastically about the writing projects'
increased role in school reform which in turn has won it increased federal funding. He hailed Gray's "vision,
persistence, and dedication and his love and delight for the classroom teacher."
Since 1974 BAWP has had only three directors: Gray, Mary Ann Smith, who now heads the California Writing
Project, and Carol Tateishi, the current director and organizer of the Silver Anniversary party. Tateishi
and her associates, Marty Williams of the San Francisco Unified School District and Helen Ying of Hayward
Unified School District, are already looking to the future of professional development. "I see BAWP energies
directed to technology and writing, writing assessment, reading and writing in the content areas at upper
elementary grades through high school, as well as continued efforts through the Berkeley Pledge and other
UC outreach efforts in partnership schools," Tateishi said. Other special activities will be held this year
to mark the project's work in the Bay Area.
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 BAWP's founder, James Gray, speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration
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