The central signature program of BSWP is the Invitational Institute, a five week summer institute and year-long fellowship.   The fellowship is free to invited fellows and earns 6 graduate credits and membership as a BSWP Teacher-Consultant.  The Invitational Institute involves teachers in 1) articulating and demonstrating their own expertise through a teaching demonstration, 2) their own creative and professional writing agendas, and 3) reading, composing and researching in an area of interest involving literacy and literacy education.  The Invitational institute involves a retreat, reading and writing groups, coaching for the teaching demonstration, lots of food and fun. 

We sponsor three strands of programs: 

Inservice programs for local schools and the public that feature advanced institutes, open institutes, courses and workshops.   We also offer book clubs, reading groups and writing groups, both on-line and through face-to-face meetings, around various issues.  We offer workshop series that are open to the public and that often feature national level experts.   We offer a fall conference co-sponsored with the Idaho Council of Teachers of English, and a spring conference around one of our site initatives. We offer writing retreats at least twice a year.

Continuation programs for our own teacher consultants involve all of the above and quarterly leadership meetings, resource development (including the writing of curricula, professional books, and books for students), liaison activities with other professional organizations, concerts, poetry readings, writing workshops, etc.

Site Initiatives are issues that our site fellowship has decided to address through education and public service. Current iniatives include our Inquiry Initiative for fostering inquiry oriented instruction in schools; our Teaching for Social Justice and Democracy initiative for creating more democratic classrooms, and literacy instruction that fosters democracy and social action; Teaching Students in Poverty; and an initiative for Mentoring Student Taechers and Early Career Teachers into the Profession. 

We also sponsor Special Interests Groups on Assessment, and on the Teaching and Writing of Poetry.

We are involved locally, regionally and nationally in the Teacher Inquiry Community Network, English Language Learners Network, Rural Sites Network, and the Urban Sites Network.  We have regional cohorts in both Southern Idaho (Twin Falls) and Eastern Idaho (Idaho Falls and Pocatello).