As staff developers, we’re driven by one overarching goal: to help teachers become better at teaching writing.
This goal animates our work in many ways. It’s why we’ve written multiple professional books, including the one we’ve co-authored, How to Become a Better Writing Teacher. It’s why we co-lead professional development, including a multi-day virtual PD event we’re doing with Heinemann Professional Learning July 16, 2024 – July 17, 2024. And it’s why, individually, and together, we visit schools and districts all over the world and work side-by-side with teachers and literacy coaches, helping them improve their practice.
This work has never been more vital. In the wake of the global pandemic, children need their teachers to be the best they can be to help them move past the recent disruptions to their educations—and thrive. Yet, at the same time, teachers everywhere are overwhelmed, and want support with rising to this challenging occasion.
Just like our work with students begins with noticing their existing strengths as writers so that we can build on them, when we visit schools, we look for what teachers already have going in their classrooms. These are some of the things we find are usually in place:
With these things already in place, what, then, is the journey forward for teachers? How do writing teachers become better writing teachers?
We suggest taking these two steps:
To show you how these steps work, we’ll discuss one of the most important principles of teaching writing:
Student engagement is crucial for students to learn to write well.
And we’ll describe some of the actions we suggest teachers take to further align their day-to-day practice to this principle.
Engagement
When students are engaged, they’re more likely to learn (Crouch and Cambourne, 2020). Writes Ellin Keene (2018), “We need to increase the amount of time kids spend deeply engaged because it proves intoxicating and has a real impact on whether children retain and reapply what they’ve learned.”
Student engagement happens by design, because teachers make deliberate decisions that lead to engagement (Crouch and Cambourne, 2020). Writes Cornelius Minor (2019), “A kid can’t be successful in my classroom if I have not created the opportunities for that child to be successful.”
When our work with teachers is focused on student engagement, we discuss kinds of actions they can take and the teaching they can do that will lead to more engagement:
In our work with teachers, the engagement principle is just one of many principles we discuss. And just like we’ve described actions in this blog post that help teachers align the engagement principle with their teaching practice, we talk about many other actions teachers can take to further align their practice to the other principles.
We hope you’ll join our multi-day virtual PD event July 16, 2024 – July 17, 2024 and check out our new book, How to Become a Better Writing Teacher!
Carl Anderson is an internationally recognized expert in writing instruction for grades K-8. He works as a consultant in schools and districts around the world. Carl is the bestselling author of A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences and How’s It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers.
Matt Glover has been a teacher, principal, author, and consultant for over 30 years. His latest book is Craft and Process Studies: Units that Provide Writers with Choice of Genre. He is the coauthor with Kathy Collins of I Am Reading, the author of Engaging Young Writers, coauthor with Mary Alice Berry of Projecting Possibilities for Writers, and coauthor with Katie Wood Ray of Already Ready and Watch Katie and Matt…Sit Down and Teach Up, a video-enhanced ebook that combines video and text to examine conferring with young writers. Along with Ellin Keene, Matt is the coeditor of The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching. An internationally known literacy consultant, Matt frequently speaks on topics related to nurturing writers including engagement, choice, conferring, unit design, and oral language composition.
WORKS CITED
Anderson, Carl. 2022. A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts K-5. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Anderson, Carl and Matt Glover. 2023. How to Become a Better Writing Teacher. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bishop, Rudine Sims. 1990. “Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives, 1(3), pp ix – xi.
Cherry-Paul, Sonja. 2021. “We need books that center Black joy.” Chalkbeat, February 5. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/2/5/22267415/black-joy-books.
Crouch, Debra and Brian Cambourne. 2020. Made for Learning: How the Conditions of Learning Guide Teaching Decisions. Katonah, NH: Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc.
Ebarvia, Tricia. 2017. “Tricia Ebarvia: How Inclusive Is Your Literacy Classroom Really?” Heinemann Blog, December 12. https://blog.heinemann.com/heinemann-fellow-tricia-ebavaria-inclusive-literacy-classroom-really.
Fletcher, Ralph, Peter Johnston and Katie Wood Ray. 2007. “Where Has All the Real Choice Gone? Revisiting an Essential Element of Writing Instruction.” NCTE Annual Convention, New York City.
Glover, Matt. 2019. Craft and Process Studies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Keene, Ellin. 2018. Engaging Children: Igniting a Drive for Deeper Learning K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Minor, Cornelius. 2018. We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students
Need Us to Be. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.