It changed her life, and everyone – her students and her colleagues – have noticed, said Bowdon Elementary School teacher Shoney Brice of the Walking-Writing Marathon she attended in San Antonio.

“I didn’t want to do it, and it turned out to be my favorite thing that I did in the entire time I was there,” Brice said. “I’ve shared my writing more with (my students) this year, even my poems, which I’ve never done that before, and that was something they encouraged us to do, was to share our writing.”

It was so amazing, she wanted to bring the experience to people in Georgia. Through the marathon she visited the Alamo, toured the Menger Hotel. Then she wrote about it, and shared what she wrote with the other teachers in her group.

The exercise was part of a program of the National Writing Project, a professional development program for teachers started in 1974 and hosted at universities throughout the country. Since 2007, the University of West Georgia has been hosting its own chapter, The Cherokee Rose Writing Project.

The local project was funded by a $30,000 federal grant with matching funds from the university. The grant has been renewed each year, said Tami Ogletree, codirector of the project.

The grant funds a four-week summer institute for teachers that offers intense training for 20 teachers. This year’s program started Monday.

“A lot of writing, a lot of reading – you’re in a classroom from 8 o’clock to 4 o’clock for four weeks,” Ogletree said. “It’s all about helping them discover themselves as writers. When they can discover themselves as writers, that’s when they can take it into the classroom.”

The teachers get training in technology, teaching methods, solving problems and most importantly, they learn it from teachers who are working in the classroom now, she said. The teachers attending the summer institute learn from other teachers who are working in the field what has worked for them, how they’ve handled problems, how they’ve motivated students.

All of the teachers who attend are invited after being nominated by a principal or colleague, Ogletree said.

Carol Lovan, an eighth-grade teacher at Turner Middle School in Douglasville, was honored to be invited.

“I have a diverse group of students in my class and I wanted to learn new ideas and techniques to make everyone feel comfortable with writing,” she said. “I realized that some of my kids, they’re intimidated by writing, but yet they’re always on the computers writing, doing research. But when it comes down to doing it in a formal sense for class, they tend to shy away from it.”

She is learning how to bring that technology into the classroom to make the process of writing less intimidating to the students. Personally, she’s also begun to see that she had shied away from writing as well.

“I’ve always been good at critiquing pieces of work,” Lovan said. “But to sit down and actually write something, I never thought I could really do (that).”

Now that she’s been in the institute, she is shedding that inhibition.

The marathon on Friday was one session of the summer institute. Organized by Brice, the teachers met at Bowdon Coffee Roasters before they set off on their tour through town. Brice had arranged a tour of the First Baptist Church in Bowdon, and announced when artists would be working in the art gallery across the street. Edward Holz, owner of coffee shop, told them a little of the history of Bowdon to give them some inspiration for their writing. The teachers could write about whatever muse they found along the way, and then were instructed to come back to Bowdon Coffee Roasters for lunch and to share their writing.

“It’s all about empowering the teachers,” Ogletree said.

Brice said the marathon did empower her.

“It changed me as a teacher, because I’m more open,” Brice said. “I’ve read authors, like real poets, not just kiddy poets, but like Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes – they loved him. Oh my kids loved him.”