Rebecca McKay Director, Literacy and Professional Development
	Nereida Morales Literacy Fellow
	Elaine Olive Educator

We cannot build a nation of educated people who can communicate effectively without teachers and administrators who value, understand, and practice writing themselves. (National Writing Project and Carl Nagin, 2003)

 

And the children shall lead them, kept coming to my mind as a way of describing the staff development experienced at the Cornerstone Summer Institute, July 2006.  The more I pondered, the more I realized that the phrase painted a vivid picture of what happened during this retreat involving representatives from seven school districts spread across the United States.

By the end of the third day on a hot July afternoon, 110 educators had experienced another example of children leading adults that would change their views of how professional development should be conducted, how traditional classroom writing instruction and practice should look, and how teacher preparation for writing instruction must involve and engage teachers as writers.

After the Summer Institute, the Cornerstone Staff and Literacy Fellows spent weeks reflecting on the professional development delivered, reading participants’ feedback, and dreaming about the upcoming Winter Conference to be held in Stamford, Connecticut.  Now, we offer our reflections on what happened as participants engaged in staff development sessions based on the writing and video-taped Lesson Study lead by fourth grade students from Waccamaw Elementary.

Cornerstone staff developers who had worked a few months prior with the children in a unit of study on the American Revolution and Francis Marion were confident the young writers would inspire and lead the adult learners at the Summer Institute.  The true test came when the adults were asked to engage in the same writing exercises that the children had completed.  The schools in the Cornerstone School Initiative that converged across time and space became a community of writers that week.  What did the Cornerstone community do for the school participants, and what is the Cornerstone community doing with and for the writing produced at the Summer Institute?

Let’s use the Cornerstone Continuous Professional Development model (used to monitor the planning and delivery of work) to reflect on their experience. 

 

Cornerstone Continuous Professional Development Model

 

Stage 1: What is our focus? Why is this focus?

The Summer Institute focus on writing, historical fiction in the narrative mode, was designed to inspire Cornerstone schools to “Write the World: Spread the Word.”   The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges (2004) declared that writing is not a curriculum choice for a few of the brightest students but an essential skill for all students.  An April 2003 benchmark report, The Neglected “R”: The Need for a Writing Revolution, called for the following in relation to teachers and professional development:

• Writing should be required across the curriculum at all grade levels.
• Developmentally appropriate writing opportunities should span the ages for every student.
• In-service workshops should develop common expectations that aid teachers in agreement on what constitutes good writing and to develop themselves as writers.
• Universities should require all pre-service teachers to take courses on writing instruction. Professional development for all faculties across disciplines should aid in the improvement of student writing.
• Schools and universities should partner in the development of model programs to improve teaching and learning for English-language learners.

Writing is an important component of a balanced literacy program which is often the last content chosen when looking at school reform efforts. This happens for many reasons, the major one being that reading is an integral part of the national push in the No Child Left Behind legislation and writing was not a part of the research synthesis conducted by the National Reading Panel Report.  The panel’s report Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks of Reading Instruction, Kindergarten through 3rd Grade (2ND edition, June 2003) includes the components of phonemic awareness instruction, phonics instruction, fluency instruction, vocabulary instruction, and text comprehension instruction.

Yet many researchers point out the strong evidence that writing helps children’s reading development.   Writing helps children to develop as readers in numerous ways:

• Organizing, questioning, monitoring and revision for meaning are the same intellectual strategies in reading and writing. The use of these strategies through reading and writing provides multiple opportunities to practice these strategies.
• The first steps of reading and writing processes are the same activation of prior knowledge and setting a purpose. One process feeds the other.
• The skills in reading and writing are the same in many instances. For example, phonics provides a transfer opportunity as children use their segmenting skills to spell for written compositions and then use the same skills for blending while reading their writing or other texts.

Knowing the power that written composition plays in successful school experiences leaves us no option other than to follow the call of the research. We must make certain we continue the work that insures high expectations for our Cornerstone children.

 

Stage 2:  What does it feel like? Adult Learning Experience

Elaine Olive

My new friend, teacher and experienced writer Elaine Olive and I have developed our own writing community of two over the past two months. 

What I gleaned from Elaine about her experience of the Summer Institute has been her genuine connection to the children of Waccamaw Elementary. Hearing her speak of the children as writers and the respect she holds for them as risk takers has convinced me that following the lead of these student writers was an interesting authentic manner to engage Elaine and other adults in a writing community.

Quick writes to develop setting in historical fiction were repeatedly composed by the Waccamaw fourth-grade children in preparation for the Summer Institute videotaping. The Cornerstone staff knew we could catapult adults into a writing community if we borrowed this quick write technique from the students. As we filtered through the yellow legal pads full of students’ quick writes, we were convinced that we must borrow this as a way to engage Cornerstone school leadership teams as writers.

As we pondered the notions of teachers as writers sparked by those fourth grade students and their Cornerstone coach, Andrea Frasier, a small nagging voice continued to edge its way into my psyche…”I’m not sure this will happen and I don’t have a clue how that might look.” However, the idea of free imagery and experience started the adult quick writes and was just the stimulus to bring out the writer’s voice in all of us.

 

Stage Three:  See it. Try it. Again and again

The video depicted a hot-seating, so they had experienced also playing the different characters, gotten to be in the role of the character, using the language that had been in the text. 

After the hot-seating, they were to sit and write and continue the writing that they had started previously.  The part that was most impressive was how the teacher got to conference with each child.  It made me think of how I, as a young person, never had that opportunity.  If I would have had someone to sit next to me and ask questions and conference with me, I wouldn’t be so terrified now to write.

"Every teacher in that room, their heart must have been open to the possibility of becoming a writer.” 

Nereida Morales

Nereida Morales, a recently appointed Literacy Fellow, joined the writing work as a newcomer to the Cornerstone community. Sara Schwabacher and Nereida Morales became writing and reflection partners after the Summer Institute.  Nereida’s words vividly relate the power she experienced at the Institute.

The use of Video Lesson Study to research the writing lesson and observe the student writers provided the adult participants the opportunity to borrow more techniques for their personal writing from the children. The classroom context was studied, reviewed, and critiqued thoroughly, but the one thing that surprised everyone was the amount and quality of the writing in the students’ completed historical fiction narratives. Many felt a bit uncomfortable about their earlier attempts at the quick writes. There seemed to develop within the room a resolve to try again and add more to the writing attempts.

 

Stage 4:  What now? What next?

This final stage of the cycle of professional learning poses the right questions for our writing community.

Are there reciprocal relationships between Cornerstone writers and communities? If so, what are the relationships?  I know that 110 educators from very different settings built a writing community and came to know one another as adults who share similar struggles as writers. These reciprocal relationships developed into friendships and connections that continue to feed the learning that was started in July. The give and take, risk and risk taking that the group undertook during the sessions created a self understanding of what it takes to compose written texts, the same situations that we ask of students. Those bonds created within those teachers a deep sense of obligation to make the same opportunity available for all student writers. Living the experience and the relationships made it impossible for any to deny students the opportunity to feel the power, the connection, and the stimulation of being asked to do challenging work that we were not even sure we could do on those July days.  So, yes, we see that there are effective and supportive reciprocal relationships between Cornerstone writers and communities.

I am still pondering another question: Does the Cornerstone community of writers suggest changes in traditional classroom practice, teacher preparation, and professional development?  The multimodal methods that were used in the student and adult writing sessions demonstrated the power of video, drama, music, photography and painting and how these multimodal resources lend themselves to the composition of written messages. Traveling to the schools at the beginning of the school year, I have witnessed the use of these strategies in abundance. Coaches are leading the work and students are writing across modes and genres for content subjects.

Carolyn Wilson-Elliott (2006), a free lance writer and coach of writing, refers to children as spiritual mirrors and states that children reflect the light in adults as well as the shadows. Wilson-Elliot posits that by honoring what children have to teach us, adults travel a spiritual journey at lightening speeds. The fourth grade children who participated in the video-taped Lesson Study and shared their learning and writing were mirrors for the adults at the Summer Institute. These children led adult learners through a cycle of professional development that built a community of writers in less than four hours!  Adult learning holds an important place in the Continuous Professional Development Model.  Reading through the adult writing from the summer sessions, I have not doubt that something magnificent happened between six children and 110 adults last July.

 

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References

Allington, R. (2002). Big brother and the National Reading Curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2003). Put reading first: The research building blocks of reading instruction, Kindergarten through 3rd grade. CIERA: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Langer, J. A. (1997). Thinking and doing literature: An 8-Year Study. English Journal, 87, 2, 16-22.

National Writing Project & Nagin, C. (2003). Because writing matters: Improving student writing in our schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
    
Tompkins, G. (2005). Literacy for the Twenty-First Century: A balanced approach. Prentice Hall.

Wilson-Elliot, C. (2006). http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-20-2006-106044.asp.