Bread Loaf, 2013, in Asheville, North Carolina, was a rainy affair this summer. For Bread Loafers, however, it meant lots of time to read and write papers. But, wait! That’s the way it is at every Bread Loaf campus whether it rains or not! Forty graduate students gathered for six weeks at the campus of the University of North Carolina–Asheville to study texts and discuss ideas in the unique Bread Loaf academic community. The Bread Loaf Teacher Network added to that mix, sponsoring a lecture by Ohio State Professor Valerie Kinloch called “A Pedagogy of Possibility in Teaching and Learning.” The event was well attended by students and faculty, as well as Dr. Susi Long, a guest from University of South Carolina Department Instruction and Teacher Education. The event began with a supper in the private dining room, and Dr. Kinloch signed books after her lecture. Her books include Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community and Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth. Dr. Kinloch is professor in literacy studies in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University.

Bread Loaf Teacher Network activities on campus this summer focused on recruiting teachers into the network.  Professor Beverly Moss’s class Writing for Publication was instrumental in developing wider interest in the network, as Professor Moss demonstrated how some of her academic work is refined through collaboration with other teachers in the network.  Recruitment meetings for BLTN resulted in collaborative plans among several teachers, using BreadNet as the medium for the planning. Teachers Hillary Seeland (Sitka, AK) and Michael Fulton (Fayetteville, NC) developed a common interest in pursuing a classroom study of Civil Rights. Felicia Baptiste (New Orleans) is developing plans to work on a study of the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake, including the participation of a teacher from Haiti whom she met while studying at Andover Bread Loaf. These kinds of collaborative connections among diverse teachers and classrooms is what makes teaching as a member of BLTN so exciting and sustaining.