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Gain 12 hours of professional development credit focused on engaging across difference.

The Winter Institute
Teaching, Writing, and Acting across Difference
Bread Loaf Campus, Ripton, Vermont
February 16–18, 2024
Accepting registrations through January 15, 2024
The Bread Loaf Winter Institute is a weekend professional development workshop led by renowned Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English (BLSE) faculty.
Deepen your teaching practice while earning meaningful professional development hours along with other passionate educators. BLSE has over a century of experience delivering innovative, relevant, interdisciplinary course content ideal for teachers of English and language arts, and its impact on K–12 classrooms is bolstered by the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), a nationally visible network of teachers and youth committed to using literacy to foster social justice.
Cost: $1,000 with on-campus housing, $820 without housing
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Expand your multimodal toolkit as you explore the power of creative and critical storytelling. -
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Collaborate with a multigenerational cohort of educational leaders and peers on reimagining your courses, curriculum, and pedagogical strategies. -
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Engage in energizing self-work, expressive writing, and critical reflection.
Weekend Offerings
Full-Group Sessions
Warm-Up Exercise: Who Invited Your Spirit to Come Out to Play?
Led by Craig Maravich
Actor, Teaching Artist, and Director, Beyond the Page, BLSE and Middlebury College
Roundtable: Naming Our Terms
Keynote Address: Teaching and Learning across Difference: Students as Cultural Guides
Speaker: David Wandera
Associate Professor of Special Education, Language, and Literacy, The College of New Jersey
Group Sharing: Writing and Reflecting
BLTN Presentation: What’s Writing Got to Do with It? Youth-Led Networking and Community
Led by Tom McKenna
Director, BLTN Next Generation Youth Leadership Network; Communications Director, BLTN
Final Debrief: Sharing and Applying What We’ve Learned
Led by Beverly Moss
Professor of English and Director of Second-Year Writing, The Ohio State University; Director, BLTN
Workshops
Engaging Community Literacy Practices in Our Classrooms
Led by Beverly Moss
Professor of English and Director of Second-Year Writing, The Ohio State University; Director, BLTN
This workshop will focus on designing research and writing projects that ask students to identify, document, and contextualize literacy practices in their community spaces. It will explore ways to engage students in primary and secondary research and will underscore the value of literacies that occur within the community.
Immigrant Youth Doing School: Teachers’ Self-Work
Led by David Wandera
Associate Professor of Special Education, Language, and Literacy, The College of New Jersey
When teaching is devoid of reflexivity, it can reproduce inequalities and uphold power hierarchies. Through activities and discussion, this workshop provides participants with opportunities to develop reflexive pedagogies that support a diverse student population in the contemporary classroom. Specifically, we will explore ways to reimagine classroom life and purposefully respond to the needs of immigrant students.
Photos, Voices, and Histories: Telling Our Stories
Led by Michelle Bachelor Robinson
Professor of English, Director of Comprehensive Writing, Spelman College
This workshop will demonstrate how to use images to bridge gaps and tell stories across difference, drawing on research methods involving PhotoVoice and oral history-making. These strategies will translate into activities that will resonate with your students and engage them in inquiry, analysis, community-building, and expressive writing.
Writing Then, Reading and Acting Now
Led by Lyndon Dominique
Associate Professor of English, Lehigh University; Director, BLSE
How do we, as teachers, make historically distant literary content relevant for contemporary student readers? Using Aphra Behn’s 6-page novel The Adventure of the Black Lady (1698) as a model, this workshop explores effective strategies for bringing early texts into the present and creating an engaging literary experience that fosters student writing and action.
Writing to Witness
Led by Brenda Brueggemann
Professor of English and Aetna Endowed Chair of Writing, University of Connecticut
How can we write about difficult things that have happened to us or that we’ve seen happen to others – in our personal lives and in our professional work? Why should we do so? This session will guide participants through brainstorming and preliminary composing while we explore questions of genre, modality, ethics, tone, and audience when writing about difficult things and/or bearing witness.
This workshop is inspired by Sakinah Hofler’s TED-IDEA piece on How to Write about Difficult Things and Take Back your Power and Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic, alongside some brave and breathtaking written witnessing work by BLSE comrades in my “writing and/about teaching” classes.
Awakening Creativity: The “Who” in the Classroom
Led by Craig Maravich
Actor, Teaching Artist, and Director, Beyond the Page, BLSE and Middlebury College
This workshop will invite us to experience the unlocking of our creativity and its ability to build inclusive learning communities. Using embodiment and theater practices, we will explore creative pedagogy, reflecting on how these practices can transform our teaching and empower us as teachers.
Additional Information
- Each participant will take two different workshops.
- Participants will be invited to bring a text, a lesson or curricular plan, or other teaching materials they plan to use in their classroom, and they will have the opportunity to work with institute peers on (re)imagining those in light of the institute discussions.
- The institute will be held on the historic Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, Vermont, in the Green Mountain National Forest.
- The event includes opportunities to come early or stay late for cross-country skiing at the Rikert Outdoor Center (on the Bread Loaf campus) and downhill skiing at the Middlebury Snowbowl (minutes away); discounted tickets are available.
What to Expect
- Keynote Address
- Faculty Roundtable
- Workshops
- Film Screening and Discussion
- Interactive Performance-Based Exercises
- Presentation of Youth-Led Community-Based Learning
- Group Writing and Sharing Sessions
Weekend Schedule
Friday, February 16
- 3:30 - 5 pm Arrival and Check-in
- Reception and dinner
- Interactive theater workshop and entertainment
Saturday, February 17
- Breakfast
- Keynote address, discussion, and group activity
- Lunch
- Workshops and group writing
- Dinner
- Performance and discussion
- Social time
Sunday, February 18
- Breakfast
- Wrap-up and action plans
- 11 am departure or skiing at Rikert or Snowbowl