History

From the outset, WEX founders focused on engaging students and generating results

The Writers’ Express was founded in 1994 by two middle school history teachers 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.

Arthur Unobskey and Deborah Reck had graduated from Yale, studied at Brown’s school of education, taught in schools ranging from Baltimore’s inner-city to Boston’s wealthy suburbs, read everything they could find—and hadn’t found any sure, straightforward answers to questions ranging from 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—letting the data lead them, even when it meant letting go of their favorite teaching methods.

Over the next 10 years, they continued to develop their approach as they grew the summer camps, expanded into after-school programs, and started to offer professional development to teachers throughout the Boston area. All the while, they steadily refined the method as they saw what was working most effectively for kids—and for teachers.

In the last six years, The Writers’ Express has partnered with districts, charter organizations, and educational networks to bring this results-driven method to teachers across the country, generating significant performance gains for inner-city youth from New York to San Francisco.