Teaching English teachers to teach writing

We had a big project with the English department this week. The department chair, Sheila Zachry, and I have been wanting to get a better writing curriculum in place with our English teachers. To be honest, the writing instruction is pretty haphazard. The teachers are pretty good about assigning writing, but very few of them actually teach writing.

Sheila and I met last week for a half day and again this week for a full day with Linda Vanderford, a very sharp consultant from our ESD. (Linda is my boss when I do the writing scoring work for the state - she's really good.) Then on Thursday, we met with most of the English teachers for the full day, and had Linda facilitate our work to get everyone truly on board with what it takes to actually teach writing in our classrooms.

It's hard work, because all of us were English majors, which meant (as you know) that we were trained in literature response, but not in how to teach writing. We are beginning to get our heads around this. The group worked well--even a couple of folks who sometimes tend to derail conversations--and we got quite a bit accomplished. Now we'll have to see if we can put this all in place, and if it will make a difference in how well our students can write.