URBANA — When it's time for writing in Bridgett Laird's sixth-grade classroom, she'll hear a familiar refrain from at least a few of her students — "I don't have anything to write about."

"They groan and sigh," said Laird, who teaches sixth grade language arts and social studies in Yorkville, and is a graduate of Centennial High School. "When kids get that feeling, I can relate to that feeling, and also to overcoming that."

Laird is one of 16 participants in the University of Illinois Writing Project's four-week Summer Institute, which ends today. The institute helps teachers improve their own writing and learn about ways to help their students with writing as well.

Laird has had writer's block several times during the Summer Institute. Each morning, the participants have an hour to write about whatever they choose. On the first day, they were told to work on whatever current writing project they had in the works.

Laird didn't know what to do. "I don't write. I'm not working on anything right now," she said.

Laird only wrote when she needed to. And although she helped create a new writing curriculum for her school district and she's taught writing for seven years, she didn't think of herself as a writer.

"What (the Writing Project) has really taught me is that I am a writer, and everyone is a writer," she said. "Everyone will have those times where they think, 'I don't know what to write,' or 'It's not very good.' But each one of us can be writers.

"Students think they haven't done anything. They think nothing memorable or important has happened in their lives at that young age," Laird continued.

But it's not true. They have many good stories to tell, she said.

On Thursday, Laird led the other teachers through some exercises to get past writer's block. She had the other writers brainstorm ideas by drawing a picture of a place they've spent a lot of time and by constructing a timeline of major events in their lives, then talking with one another about the ideas that came from those exercises.

In addition to time spent writing on their own and demonstrating teaching strategies, the teachers in the Summer Institute share their writing in small groups, read professional literature and have book group discussion.

They also work on writing with digital media, including blogging and creating videos and podcasts. They showcase their work through an online portfolio.

For Laird, the most beneficial part of the institute was the time teachers were given to reflect on what they'd learned and how to use it in the classroom.

"I think what we're trying to do, and what the National Writing Project is trying to do, is we want to give (teachers) confidence to claim their rightful positions as experts in teaching and learning," said Gail Hawisher, the founder of the UI Writing Project.

For example, the teaching demonstrations by each participant are much more than glorified lesson plans, she said, but strategies based on research the teachers have done during the institute.

"This is so much more than what do you do on Monday in your class," Hawisher said. "It has a lot more to do with sharing the intellectual base of teaching and how they can help out one another with that as well."

One of the ideas behind the Summer Institute is that of teachers teaching and learning from each other, said Scott Filkins, a co-director of the UI Writing Project and an English teacher at Central High School, who taught Laird when she was in high school.

"I've definitely learned a lot from her, seeing her take on the identity of writer," Filkins said of Laird.

"It was a little bit unsettling," he admitted. "I was a relatively young teacher when I had her. I think of all the ways I'd teach her differently now."

While it took Laird a while to stop calling her former teacher "Mr. Filkins," she's enjoyed working with him as a colleague.

"I get to see more of how he is as a teacher, the background that you don't see as a student," she said. "Now that I am a teacher and understand more of what it takes, I can see that. What really amazes me is just how passionate he is about literacy. ... He is really still teaching me."