Through coaching and cohesion of ideas, teachers will design and present a Teacher Inquiry Workshop during the Institute. We are also asked to create handouts of explanation of our methods and purpose of instruction. Participants are encouraged to respond to each others' workshops as well as plan and outline our own revised workshop. At the end of this process, we will be empowered to share our workshop in professional development settings

Teacher participants were engaged in the facilitators' presentations of Summer Institute expectations, core activities, and summer fellow responsibilities. We were informed of the rigors of the institute as well as the end result of publishing professional material of our own. This aspect of the Summer Institute thrilled me intensely. Feelings of cross-disciplinary sharing of ideas, methods and strategies immediately brought forth desires to strengthen my ability to reach students of all levels and learning abilities more so than I have ever before

The end of Orientation day was approaching when the facilitators introduced us to our coaching groups. In this smaller group setting, we were able to each talk about our strategies and lesson hurdles that we've encountered. The coaching group leader/institute facilitator allowed us to work through a workshop each of us have just begun to form the foundations of great pieces of educational pedagogy. We then broke the group down into smaller sections and agreed to meet separate from the Summer Institute schedule

The twenty teachers of the 2008 Maryland Writing Project Summer Institute left the teaching lab that day with a sense of determination to broaden our teaching repertoire, excited energy infused with personal satisfaction of knowing the group will influence and mold each of us into more experienced educators, and a twinge of intrigue into those strategies, scaffolding and "bright ideas" we will be able to take with us as our reward for participating in this amazing opportunity.