History

Summer Ink Carries on the mission of the Writers' Express Summer Program

Summer Ink was founded in 1994 by Deborah Reck and Arthur Unobskey, who were looking for a way to make sure that every one of their students could use writing to discover, develop, and communicate their own ideas. Both were history teachers who had not found any straightforward answers to questions including, How do you start teaching kids to write? and Which skill should come next? to How can you tell that your students have truly mastered the skills that matter?

So they started a summer writing camp with 15 kids from Boston’s inner-city and began trying to figure out a way of teaching writing that would really work. The camp functioned as a kind of laboratory, a controlled environment where Arthur, Debbie, and their staff could try out a range of techniques and keep close track of the impact created by each move they made. They designed easy-to-use assessment tools that would let them check a wide range of discrete sub-skills several times a day. And they used the data they gathered to refine their approach continuously keeping whichever techniques worked and cutting those that didn’t.

The summer program Debbie and Arthur created is now called Summer Ink. Summer Ink, which is licensing the WEX Method, will give educators a focused environment in which to practice the method directly with students. Summer Ink will also be sharing its feedback and results with WEX at the end of each summer, so that the WEX Method™ can continue to be refined. AND, students will continue to learn the fundamental literacy and expressive skills that many are unable to learn during the school year. Summer Ink will continue to serve as a national model for how student can learn outside the classroom in an engaging and academically rigorous way.