As the sun set on our first day at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, a colleague said over dinner, “If it wasn’t for you I might not still be in teaching.”

Deflecting a little, I said, ” You’ve got to give the Writing Project a little credit for that,” but nothing could make me happier than getting props for mentoring a teacher.  And now that I think of it, the National Writing Project has made a lot of mentors and role models for teachers.  Over its 42-year history, the NWP has made durable writing teachers–80,000 of them–its chief commodity.  Mentoring is the first instinct of a Writing Project teacher.

I could point to Joe Check and Peter Golden, the leaders of my first summer institute at the Boston Writing Project over thirty years ago.   Joe went on to serve on my dissertation committee, and Peter was a welcoming friend at every Annual Meeting after I became a site director.

Cathy Fleischer was director of the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and a member of the search committee that hired me. Then she nudged me along to lead my first Invitational Institute in 1997 and passed the baton of site director along in 2000 after she assumed the role of English Education co-editor.  Every year since then she has been my first source of advice and first string supporter in good times and hard.

So where would I be without these allies and mentors from the National Writing Project? Don’t even want to go there.  There are dead ends and by-passes I might have traveled, but for Writing Project colleagues who wanted me to succeed. Instead I am living the dream.

As I think about retirement, every other thought is about who will carry on the work.  If a site director has handled leadership well, there should be hardly a hiccup as he or she exits the stage. What do they say when a team leader is injured? “Next man [woman] up!” And the work goes seamlessly on.

Mentoring makes it possible. You are always preparing people to make you dispensable or at least to take over some role you don’t need to play. When we plan a summer institute, it is always top heavy with leaders. There would be the co-leader and the “returning fellow,” the tech support and the literacy leader who demonstrates something.   By the time you write checks for the leaders, you are sharing the wealth four different ways.  But it’s more than delegation ad absurdsum, it’s a license to drive future summer institutes.  We have reproductive freedom.