The Mentored Multigenre Project: Fostering Authentic Writing Interactions Between High School Writers and Teacher Candidates

This article describes the Mentored Multigenre Project, a virtual writing collaboration experience between high school writers and teacher candidates. Our goal was to create an authentic opportunity for our high school students to receive writing feedback from virtual writing mentors, while also creating an opportunity for our teacher candidates to practice the craft of teaching writing. In this article, the authors outline the ways in which they prepared and supported the high school students during the project. Then, the authors highlight an emergent case from the project to demonstrate the virtual writing collaboration experience in action and evaluate the extent to which it created an authentic writing experience for one high school writer. Finally, the authors share their reflections on the experience and suggestions for others interested in using a learning management system to connect high school writers with teacher candidates.