Diane Waff, C’76, GRD’07

Diane Waff speaking at a podium

Diane Waff

Reading/Writing/Literacy Ed.D.

Part of our Share Your Story Campaign

"Having supported local teachers and students for more than 30 years, PhilWP, based at Penn GSE, has moved quickly to support these communities during challenging times."

During the pandemic, “we’ve integrated synchronous and asynchronous learning to bring all of our summer programs online: the Invitational Summer Institute for teachers and Project Write, Journalism Writing Camp, and Humor Writing Camp for students, all listed at https://philwp.gse.upenn.edu,” says Diane Waff, C’76, GRD’07, director of the Philadelphia Writing Project, Penn GSE faculty member, and alumna. "The Summer Institute is an opportunity to join our network of more than 800 teacher consultants who enhance the teaching of writing in their schools. This year we’ve partnered with Neighborhood Networks 2 and 11 in The School District of Philadelphia to build a community of teacher consultants across those schools. We’ve always had a focus on social justice and equity, and when we held our orientation for the Institute recently, we began by naming African Americans who have lost their lives to police violence. It set a tone for people to think about their responsibility to keep these issues visible in their work with students. We had really good conversations about that and are being very intentional about addressing anti-racism across our programs, for example, through discussion topics like the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. In addition, we’ve undertaken new initiatives to meet the needs of educators and children. One is a study group for teachers to share their successes and grapple with questions related to teaching writing online. We’ve also been working with National Writing Project and Read by 4 partners to develop six weeks of online summer lessons. Kids are stuck in the house, so we want to give them as many exciting learning experiences as possible. All of us involved with that effort are volunteers, and it’s been a labor of love.” Having supported local teachers and students for more than 30 years, PhilWP, based at Penn GSE, has moved quickly to support these communities during challenging times.