3 ways to help #blog4nwp

Here are three ways you can help influence our federal government to restore funding for the National Writing Project (NWP) before the next continuing resolution on budget expires on April 8th, 2011.

Post on your elected officials’ Facebook pages.

I’d like to thank Joel Malley for inspiring this suggestion.

I posted this message on Representative Goodlatte (R – VA) and Senator Warner’s (D – VA) pages. I had to leave it as a comment on one of Senator Webb’s (D – VA) posts since his page doesn’t allow readers to comment on his wall. Feel free to copy, paste, and cutomize the message on your officials’ FaceBook pages.

[Representative/Senator] [Name], please support the National Writing Project and work to restore its funding in our next federal budget before the continuing resolution expires on April 8th.

Please visit https://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/blog4nwp and https://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/the-blog4nwp-archive to learn more about this cost-efficient, effective, and transformative educational program from contributing teachers, students, parents, and National Writing Project site leaders and staffers nationwide.

Cut and paste #blog4nwp tweets from Classroots.org.

I put together a 15-day game plan of customizable #blog4nwp easy-tweets and published them on Classroots.org. Feel free to copy and paste a tweet each morning, as well as to suggest your own easy-tweets using the #blog4nwp archive for inspiration.

Send email blasts to people who care deeply about public education.

Site leaders: send an email blast to your alumni and to this year’s institute attendees.

Principals and parents: send an email blast to your PTO mailing list.

Professional organization representatives (e.g. state ASCD reps or local NEA reps): send an email blast to your mailing list and urge your parent organization to do the same.

Describe the NWP, list its contributions to your work, school, and organizations, and suggest ways to help save the project. Ask for posts or offer to publish letters that colleagues are sending to government officials. Share your email blast in a blog post for others to use.

Thank you, Jack King, for suggesting both the easy-tweets and email blasts.

Let’s help one another get this done. If we can encourage one another to take each of these steps over the next fifteen days, we will boost our signal greatly and engage an even broader community in saving the National Writing Project.

And remember: new blog posts for the #blog4nwp archive are always welcome! DM or email links to me.