By Meghan Rosenberg, Collaborative Coaching Specialist
In July 2025, I co-facilitated our summer Teacher Institute for twelve educators. In the middle of three wonderful and intensive days of adult learning, I found myself surrounded instead by high school students, waiting with amused patience as I struggled with the Chipotle app. I owed them each a burrito because they had volunteered to spend their lunch hour with our educator participants, sharing their expertise with our eager adult learners.
Summers at WordPowered are full of young people. Our Teens in Print program team leads the Summer Journalism Institute, a six-week full-time program for high school students to write articles and create multimedia projects like a podcast, magazine, or video. For one of these weeks, our Collaborative Coaching team invites educators into this space for their own learning in our Teacher Institute, Empowering Writing Instruction.
Educators from across the Boston area come together to learn, discuss, and share ideas about authentic writing instruction that centers student voice and agency. More than just learning about it in theory, they also get to see it happening in real time, in the classrooms next door. Our participants observed lessons on writing hooks and on choosing topics for news research, chatted with students about what they were working on, and spent time in our own classroom space connecting what they observed to our framework and their own practice.
One educator, when asked about what was most impactful about the Institute, reflected that “a part of it is just being able to see the work. So that I can start to envision, how could these structures look in my own classroom?” Another educator wrote, “The Institute provides a framework, but it also demonstrates the framework in action. Watching the lessons being taught and the students working in real time manifests the power of student-centered writing instruction.”
Over the week of the Institute, teachers are invited to immerse themselves in a student-centered space without the dynamics of being in their own schools with their own students. Our participants competed alongside young people in Mafia and rock, paper, scissors, ate lunch with them, and talked with them informally about their writing, their lives, and their perspectives on teaching and learning. Most of our participants last summer spoke about these genuine interactions as being a high point of the Institute.
One educator wrote, “A highlight for me was meeting with the teens in the program. Listening to them gave me a better understanding of their lives and what they want in the classroom.” Another shared in an interview that they appreciated “the opportunity to hear from actual students in school now and for them to say, ‘Hey, you know, sometimes we get assignments where we’re being told what argument to make. We don’t like that.’ It’s getting us as teachers to think about how we’ve been approaching assignments and how we might be able to modify things to make it more student-friendly.”
This is what makes WordPowered’s Teacher Institute radical: educators and young people alike entering as learners and collaborators. We bridge the gap between theory and practice in real time, every day. Our participants engage in the messy, human, joyful work of teaching and learning alongside students, and leave with energy and hope.
As one educator put it, “I LOVED seeing the SJI students in action. The respect for why they’re here, their kindness towards each other… they know they are empowered and their voice matters!”
Meghan Rosenberg
she/her
Meghan is our Collaborative Coaching Specialist here at WordPowered.
Meghan has spent her career in public education in and around Boston. Most recently, she was an educational consultant and curriculum writer, working on Mass Insight’s School Improvement Team supporting district-wide equity audits around Massachusetts, as well as creating an ongoing curriculum series for The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden. Prior to consulting, Meghan was the founding middle school Humanities teacher and team leader at a Boston K-12 charter school. Meghan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education and Linguistics from Brown University and a Master’s in Teaching Secondary English from Tufts University, as well as active Massachusetts teaching licenses in English, History, and English as a Second Language.
Meghan is passionate about systems changes for equity and wellbeing; she is looking forward to being back in schools and working with educators on a daily basis. In her various roles, she works to create educational spaces where all students can thrive as their individual selves and develop the tools to shape the world around them. At home, Meghan enjoys getting involved with her local community and school system, spending time outside, and reading science fiction, but can realistically be found at a playground with her young daughters or discussing the finer points of Bluey.
Save the Date for Pros&Conversation 2026!
Celebrate amplified voices and powerful impact with WordPowered!
Save the date: Thursday, May 7, 2026, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm at WGBH Studios (located at 1 Guest Street in Boston).
Pros&Conversation is WordPowered’s annual fundraiser and a celebration of the power of youth voice. We bring together a network of readers and writers, educators, and young journalists to celebrate the power of storytelling. The event features a compelling conversation between acclaimed local authors and our own teen journalists in our Teens in Print program.
To learn more about the event or how to sponsor, please email our Development Manager, Katie Grischow, at katiegrischow@wordpowered.org.
WordPowered (formerly WriteBoston) helps teens find the power in their voice. We equip young people with the critical reading and writing skills they need to express themselves—and to be heard. To expand our reach, we partner with schools and educators to create environments where students feel safe to explore their power. Whether they’re dreamers, writers, musicians, athletes, or still exploring, we help teens discover and strengthen their voices to change their worlds for the better. In the coming weeks, our team will be storytelling about the pilot Teacher Institute in collaboration with our Teens in Print’s program, Summer Journalism Institute. We intend to tell dignifying stories about the educators who are finding community with us–grateful for the trust they are given to create, imagine, talk, and share freely; and to understand the change we seek to make in public education by finding allies among educators out there from whom we can learn.