Five Lessons in Teacher Mindfulness

Posted on July 20, 2018 by

The CRWP Teachers As Writers Blog will feature guest posts in July in advance of the National Writing Project Midwest Conference. The NWP Midwest Conference takes place August 3, 4, and 5 in Madison, Wisconsin, and will feature presentations from NWP Teacher Leaders and Site Directors, as well as a keynote and pre-conference from the CRWP’s own Troy Hicks. Today’s post comes from Natalie Owen of the Greater Madison Writing Project in Wisconsin.

Kim’s Cotton Field by Natalie Owen

I began investigating Mindfulness when I realized after a couple years in the classroom that there is always more that could be done. Mindfulness is finding a way to be more present so we can enjoy our time with students more, approach the natural challenges of the profession gracefully, and be a balanced role model for our students. Here are five tips for teachers looking to incorporate mindful habits.

1. Like yourself just the way you are!

I love that as a teacher I am always wanting to get better. I have found many teachers who also share this endless zest to always improve. I am learning that I also need to like exactly where I am right now as a teacher. Appreciating where we are allows us to give ourselves grace in the forever process which is developing mastery. I’ve also determined once and for all that guilt is unproductive. Enjoy the leisure time you give yourself and stop wasting a good night’s sleep over fretting about what is not yet right. Continue reading →

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Who Can You Trust?: Teaching Online Research Literacy

Posted on July 11, 2018 by

The CRWP Teachers As Writers Blog will feature guest posts in July in advance of the National Writing Project Midwest Conference. The NWP Midwest Conference takes place August 3, 4, and 5 in Madison, Wisconsin, and will feature presentations from NWP Teacher Leaders and Site Directors, as well as a keynote and pre-conference from the CRWP’s own Troy Hicks. Today’s post comes from Andrea Marshbank of the Flint Hills Writing Project in Kansas.

Google and I have a complicated relationship.

Image courtesy of Flickr user NDB: www.nextdayblinds.com.

Living in these futuristic times, I turn to Google regularly for my questions. I am no stranger to yelling  “Hey, Google!” at my innocuous Google Home to find out the correct pronunciation of whomst, if it’s supposed to rain today, or prove my partner wrong—or right—over simple controversies.

As a teacher, I struggled with how to approach Google with my students. Is relying on Google for our questions a crutch? Is my refusal to find the thesaurus or watch the weather report a manifestation of my laziness that is enabled by Google’s handiness? After much reflection, I have determined that Google is probably not evil. Or if it is, it’s a necessary evil. Finding information on the internet without Google, or the use of another corporate search engine, would be incredibly difficult. So, out of hope for humanity, I’m going to go ahead and believe that Google is not 100% evil. Continue reading →

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The College, Career, and Community Writers Program in the Middle School

Posted on February 5, 2018 by

Image from Pixabay user Kidaha: https://pixabay.com/en/users/Kidaha-6465786/.

The middle school animal is a breed of its own.  Those who work with students in lower or higher grades look at middle-schoolers and shudder.  One can almost hear the audible ‘Ughhhh’ accompanying that shudder.  Middle-schoolers revel in being loud, verbal, and demonstrative in many shapes and forms.  One often wonders if they are teachable at this age.  After all, one queries, how could a screaming, pushing, fidgeting preteen sit still and be quiet long enough to take anything in?  Well, that’s the in: the College, Career, and Community Writers Program encourages and relies on discourse.  And believe you me, middle schoolers love to talk.

Routine argument writing, a continuous and informal C3WP element, begins with such short, carefully scaffolded lessons that it is accessible to students of all abilities.  Students might participate in “writing sprints,” “loop writing,” or a “human continuum;” or they might identify the argument in an image or complete a checklist.  And then, voila, they get to turn and talk! First with a partner, then with the whole group, where students raise and shake hands violently as they await their turn to verbalize their thinking.  Using sentence stems like “I believe ….,”  “I agree with so-and-so…” and  “I see what so-and-so is saying, but I also think…,” they learn to participate in a civil discourse that even the adults in their lives are often unable to do successfully. Continue reading →

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Write With Them; Write For Them: The Power of Teacher-Created Mentor Texts

Posted on January 16, 2018 by

Spitfire and He 111 during Battle of Britain 1940. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In the April 2014 edition of Educational Leadership, renowned reading and writing teacher Kelly Gallagher writes about the power of mentor texts and how teachers can use them to help students improve their writing.  The article, entitled “Making the Most of Mentor Texts,” begins with an anecdote about how George Lucas and his special effects team solved the issue of how to make the space battles in the Star Wars films more realistic.  To do so, they relied on airborne dogfight footage from WWII documentaries as their ‘mentor text.’  Gallagher goes on to say that this process — the act of watching and analyzing someone or something that already encapsulates the outcomes that we want — is “how we learn how to do something unfamiliar.”

However, Gallagher also notes (and is echoed by many others, including Nancie Atwell, Penny Kittle, Donald Graves, and Lucy Calkins) that when it comes to student writing, we can’t just hand students a mentor text and expect them to know how best to imitate it.  We have to guide them through the process of analyzing those texts multiple times if we want to see the true power that they can have.          

After reading Gallagher’s article for the first time, I sat back in my chair and let his words marinate.  Continue reading →

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Why You Should Do a Writing Institute

Posted on November 7, 2017 by

Thunder rolled.  The lightning stuck.  And I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm was set to go off.  Woke up widely with the same giddiness I feel upon waking on a party/big event day, or a painting/redecorating my house day, or new-project-that-you-know-is-going-to-rock-at-school day.  Why — in the name of Garth Brooks — why?  

I just wanted to sleep for 40 more minutes, but my brain turned on and immediately stopping, planting, and pointing like an Irish Setter, I was focused on the list I had made the previous day…   You are about to read the best top 10 list (This is not the list that woke me up; keep reading.) of reasons why you should take part in any National Writing Project Invitational Institute. (Find one here!)  

10) Remembering what it feels like to be a student.  The chairs are really uncomfortable, sitting still is really hard, and listening and focusing simultaneously for any length of time is also really hard. Continue reading →

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