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Pat Hunter, one of the founding co-directors of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project and a professional development educator in the Springfield Public Schools, passed away in 1999. Her legacy of guidance and dedication to supporting writers lives on in WMWP's devotion to student-centered teaching and strong teacher leadership. Every year, WMWP gives one of its members the Pat Hunter Award for Outstanding Teacher Leadership for best embodying Pat's values in writing and education. This year, we're honored and delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2021 Pat Hunter Award is Momodou Sarr, Co-Director of Language, Culture, and Diversity at WMWP. A member of the leadership team, Momodou has worked on the revision of the three conceptual frameworks that comprise the Braided Critical Frameworks for Social Justice, led workshop series, and developed courses.

At the 2021 Best Practices conference that took place on October 30th, Momodou discussed teaching and learning as ethical practices, and how students must be the focal point of education. He conveyed that what we teach must be informed by students' backgrounds and the communities that they come from. It's necessary that educators disrupt cycles of ineffective, fragmented knowledge by implementing pedagogy that puts students back at the center, especially as we factor movements like Black Lives Matter and student identity into coursework and subject matter. Curriculum is undoubtedly important, and to make it most effective, study must be restructured around the lives of students—which are paramount—in order for instruction to be most beneficial.

"Teaching is not all about methods and skills," Momodou said in his acceptance speech. "Curriculum is the big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about."