CRWP Teacher Shannon Powell Hosts Middle School Writing Camp

Taking writers’ walks on shaded nature trails. Writing digital stories. Sharing writing pieces out loud. Learning how to revise without fear. Giggling with new friends. Proclaiming “I am a writer. We are all writers!” This is how six middle school girls, one high school helper, and two teachers spent their last week of June, 2011.

Founded by Central Montcalm Middle School teacher Shannon Powell and her colleague Kresta Train, an English major at Ferris State University, this new writer’s camp for middle school students was held at Montcalm Community College as part of their summer day camp series. Powell, 2009 participant in the Chippewa River Writing Project, was invited to attend the “Powerful Voices for Kids Program” held by Temple University Media Education Lab in Philadelphia in 2010 based on her writing project experience. Upon returning from the conference, Powell approached MCC with her idea to hold a summer writing camp for local young writers.

“I came out of the Powerful Voices program starry-eyed and thought, oh, I want to run a camp like that!” Powell explains. “The kids were so energized and having fun learning so much about writing.”

Powell knew she had some students in her ELA classes at Central Montcalm Middle School who were hungry for more writing experiences than she could provide in a classroom situation, so she designed her camp’s format after the Chippewa River Writing Project’s summer institute.

“I hoped they would feel like I did after I first attended the Writing Project,” Powell explains. “I wanted them to feel that writing was fun—that you could do it on your own, share it with others, and not be embarrassed. Even though our camp was only a week, we definitely got the Writing Project feel—we got such a cohesive group. We were sharing our writing all the time.”

Powell structured her daily camp activities using the National Writing Project Summer Institute format. Young writers began with a “writing into the day” project, which tied into teacher-led demonstrations in a computer lab. Writers then had a chance to work on the day’s writing idea, along with an on-going digital story project. Students took daily writers’ walks along the college’s nature trails and spent time writing in an adjacent historical village. The day ended with students sharing their writing, then having fun swimming in the college’s pool facilities.

CRWP Teacher Consultant Shannon Powell, co-founder of the Montcalm Community College Middle School Writing Camp, held in June, 2011.

The last day of camp featured a writing showcase, where students shared and performed their writing for invited friends and family. “Every friend who came to the showcase wants to come back for next year’s camp,” Powell notes. “I think the [Chippewa River] Writing Project completely influenced the whole structure of the camp—even to the point where we walked away with an anthology at the end, so that what we wrote could live on even after the camp ended.”

According to Powell, students who attended the camp came away with a sense of how powerful their own writing voices could be. “Girls who already wrote for fun developed new voices and fresh perspectives,” she explains. “And for one girl who was a reluctant writer, the camp gave her an engagement in writing and a belief in herself.”

In conjunction with MCC and the CRWP, Powell plans to offer the summer writer’s camp next year as well. “We have so many ideas for how to expand and grow the program,” Powell says. “We even want to design different writing camps for other people to implement.”

Along with her work in the summer, Powell is currently developing a professional development program for K-5 narrative writing and has presented sessions for the Clare-Gladwin RESD. For more information, contact Shannon Powell at spowell@central-montcalm.org.