A Learner or A Teacher?

The idea for my sabbatical project came during the fall semester of 2008, when I was teaching language arts methods. Throughout the course I gave my usual presentation of various writing samples I had collected from my classroom teaching days. As I was explaining the samples and what the students did, I noticed the dates on the students’ writing – 1989, 1992, 1994. Even though it didn’t seem that long ago to me (a sign that I am getting old?), I could tell that examples didn’t have as much credibility with the students as I would hope. Also, each semester I try to give a vivid explanation of writing workshop to the students, the structure I had used in my classroom for teaching writing. Unfortunately, only about ¼ of my students reported seeing writing workshop, and of those, the quality of the workshop varied greatly. So I thought I would go out in search of teachers who are using writing workshop and video/audio tape them to bring back to my students.

A difficulty I encountered early on was identifying teachers who use writing workshop and even teachers who teach writing at all. My years of networking came in handy as I contacted colleagues in various districts asking if they knew of teachers who used writing workshop. These teachers were difficult to find! I began to wonder if writing workshop is a dying art. If teachers aren’t teaching writing in a workshop approach, how are they teaching writing? Or maybe a better questions is, are they teaching writing?

Also, I had a profound experience in the grocery store (isn’t that a good place for a profound experience?!). I met up with one of the interns I supervised for her year placement at an elementary school and who was an outstanding student in both the reading and language arts classes I teach. Now this was not just any intern, this young woman was recently named as one of the outstanding new teachers in the state. I told her of my sabbatical project and had a thought that maybe I could visit her classroom. When I asked her if she used writing workshop, she gave me a blank stare, like she had never heard of it! Then she said that she does teach some writing, but not as much as she would like. She didn’t really know about teaching it in a workshop form though. I was stunned! Here I had thought that describing writing workshop was an integral part of my instruction. I had hoped that I would be inspiring new teachers to value writing workshop, and the opportunities to write daily, to the point that they would make time for these things in their hectic school schedule. I was crushed by the reaction from a teacher who was only in her second year of teaching.

Then I had the opportunity to visit Turning Point Learning Center for a day last October. I saw kids writing for the purpose of sharing with others through podcasts, tweets, new articles, annotations of websites, wikis, and much more! And that planted a seed that germinated and is now sprouting. Maybe I shouldn’t be lamenting the loss of writing workshop. Maybe I should be exploring the ways we teach students to create messages in all kinds of formats. There is a set of skills needed to write a 140 character tweet that may be a bit different than those skills needed to write a business-like email or those skills needed to write an eloquent poem. All are ways we share what is important to us with others and all rely on some foundational knowledge about spelling, grammar, punctuation.

Now I am not exactly sure where my project is headed, but I am sure having a good time figuring it out. At Turning Point, I watched students and teachers acting as co-learners (a clumsy term). I feel more like a learner than a teacher right now, and it’s a good feeling!