Twenty excited and enthralled teachers entered the lab room in the Benjamin building on the University of Maryland, College Park campus early in the morning on April 26th. This group of educators will now be the newest group of Summer Institute fellows. As a teacher, I say early even though I know everyone in the room was well adjusted to firing with all cylinders at this hour of the day. The electricity in the air was palpable as jovial conversation floated through the room over plates of bagels with cream cheese and fruit, a cup of coffee or juice at the side.

This was a very nice and relaxed atmosphere to get to know these 19 educators. After exchanging short snip-its of our backgrounds in our own education, as well as in the education field, I realized the diversity of each Summer Institute fellow will flourish as we begin to work together to improve the instruction we provide. All of the teachers come from several levels and atmospheres of teaching: elementary, middle school, high school, university; public and private institutions. This eclectic blend sent my mind reeling with endless possibilities of the exchange of ideas, perspectives and approaches to teaching subjects from language arts, to social studies, the sciences, and mathematics.

The fellows were greeted vibrantly by the Maryland Writing Project facilitators. We were all asked to formally introduce ourselves, bringing to light our personal involvement with education and the institutions we teach at. The rich conversations that we exchanged across the table from each other and even across the room reminded me intently about my own students' excitement and thrill of meeting new learners. Our facilitators led us through an overview of the Summer Institute, which will consist of four weeks of sharing ideas and strategies we use in our own classrooms, as well as conversing over texts written about teaching literacy within our content areas. The Summer Institute will also be a community of educators sharing best classroom practices, new ideas, bold approaches to teaching students of all ages, as well as professional collaboration.

Schedules and sign-up sheets were passed through-out the room for the fellows to join Book Groups, Coaching groups, to volunteer to provide food for our engaging mornings, as well as invite the teachers to summarize experiences from each day of the Summer Institute by creating a log of events, as my blog is serving in that capacity.

The Orientation was in full-swing when Sarah Hais introduced the Summer Institute participants to what entails a Teacher Inquire Workshop. Sarah did a fantastic feat of executing her workshop for the Summer Institute fellows. The Teacher Inquiry Workshop was designed as a interactive, reflective and progressive means for teachers to bring forth strategies we have used in classrooms with our students to teach content. The strategies must include elements of teaching literacy. Summer Institute participants are asked to join and collaborate in pre- and post-workshop coaching groups alongside an Institute facilitator.

The next post of the Maryland Writing Project blog will be the poems teachers created during our experience of Sarah Hais' Teacher Inquiry Workshop - "Show, Tell, Compose: Teaching Children to Write Poetry.