Co-Directors
Bronwyn LaMay
Bronwyn has been a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator for over 20 years in the Bay Area. She has taught middle and high school in Oakland, Hayward, East Side Union, East Palo Alto, and Santa Clara. She has her PhD from Stanford in English and Literacy Curriculum, her MA from Mills College in Educational Leadership, and her BA in English from UCLA. A few years ago, she published what began as a literacy curriculum that she co-created with her students; it revolved around their self-narratives on the topic of love. The book, Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom, was awarded NCTE’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for 2017. Bronwyn currently lectures in the Departments of English and Teacher Education at San José State, and has worked with the Writing Project as a teacher consultant and participant for many years prior to becoming a director.
Faculty Director
Scott Jarvie
Scott is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State, where he teaches courses in English Education for graduate students pursuing a teaching credential. A former director of the San Jose Area Writing Project, Scott joined the faculty at SJSU after receiving his Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University, where he helped with the Red Cedar Writing Project. He is the author of Affect, Learning, and Teacher Education: Getting Stuck in Social Justice, written with Erica Colmenares. Prior to graduate study, Scott taught high school literature and creative writing courses in the Rio Grande Valley and in the city of Chicago.
Associate Director
Andy Robinson
For the past 17 years, Andy Joseph “A.J.” Robinson has been a teacher at Title I public high schools in the Bay Area, creating and implementing primarily English/Language Arts & Performing Arts curricula, but also developing courses in Restorative Justice (as featured on the PBS Nova Documentary “School of the Future”), Ethnic Studies, Advisory, Film, and Media Arts. He has directed, produced, and co-written seven full-length hip-hop and poetry-based plays with high school students and has been a guest teacher in courses at Stanford, San José State, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State. The chapter of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World which includes research and analysis of the impact of Robinson’s work argues that in an educational environment that consistently alienates low-income youth of color, his classroom is “giving students a place to engage and belong.” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 130) More recently, his writing, curricula, and extracurricular programs were featured in the book Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures with his chapter “Hip Hop, Whiteness, & Critical Pedagogies in the Context of Black Lives Matter” (Alim, Chang, & Wong, 2023, p. 322). Currently both a classroom teacher and mentor coaching other teachers, the focus of his current work is to impact schools, teacher development, and community arts spaces so more young people can experience the healing, communal, metamorphic power of culturally sustaining, trauma-informed writing and arts education.
Associate Director
Our administrative assistants, Arlene B. and Marie S., work behind the scenes to assist the writing project! If you ever need anything, just send the writing project an email and they'll be happy to assist!