Berkeley, CA, October 19, 2015 — The National Writing Project (NWP) has received a $1.6M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the Building New Pathways to Leadership (BNPL) program. This multi-year investment will support a design and dissemination effort at the NWP to increase teacher leadership for improved literacy learning across the country. Through a network of diverse local Writing Project sites, the program will test new models that expand NWP communities of practice in order to develop leadership opportunities for under-served teachers.

Sustained access to strong communities of practice and effective teacher networks can help to improve the abilities of teachers to support young people in achieving college, career, and community-ready standards. Building New Pathways to Leadership aims to re-engineer NWP's knowledge-base and produce a micro-credentialing system to ensure that new teacher-leaders attain NWP leadership competencies.

"We are very pleased to be able to initiate this important effort across the NWP network with the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation," said Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, NWP executive director. "The Building New Pathways to Leadership program will help to expand access to teacher leadership opportunities in a sustainable, long-term way and will contribute to ongoing learning opportunities for teachers in communities across the country."