The Nebraska Writing Project honors Sarah Essay with the 2025 Administrative Leadership Award. A 2019 graduate of our Summer Institute, Sarah is a Teaching and Learning Coordinator with Education Service Unit #10 in Kearney, Nebraska. In this role, she offers a variety of professional development, including a Writing 101 series that embodies the writing project beliefs that everyone is a writer, and writing should be a freeing, self-discovery experience. She joined the Nebraska Writing Project board last year, and aligned with this role, she has worked to cultivate supportive communities for teaching writing, especially as she has successfully revived the ESU ELA cadre after COVID.
Recently, she arranged for NeWP teacher consultant Rachel Jank to host a professional development on writing for 36 ESU 10 teachers. The nature of Sarah’s leadership style and the tenor of the community she has built were unmistakable at the event.
In Rachel’s words, “While there, it was evident the group of teachers were eager to learn new skills to become better teachers of writing. Sarah talked with teachers about the challenges they faced in their districts and classrooms and worked to build a collegial spirit during the professional development. In this way, she uplifted the teachers in ESU 10 as professionals and lived out the NeWP best practice of "teachers teaching teachers.” We are thrilled to honor Sarah Essay with this award.
