Listen to the silence. That instruction may sound as if it comes from a Zen master, but it also happens to be the advice Katherine Schultz gave to NWP leaders when she addressed the NWP Spring Meeting in Washington, DC, March 25–26. Schultz, who directs the Philadelphia Writing Project and is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, posited that understanding the role of silence for the individual and the class as a whole is a complex process that requires new ways of conceptualizing listening.