The College-Ready Writers Program at the Chippewa River Writing Project

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For the 2016-17 school year, teacher consultants from the Chippewa River Writing Project have been involved in the national scale-up of the College-Ready Writers Program. This is the first in a series of posts about our experiences implementing this powerful program.

The Chippewa River Writing Project will host an open institute from June 19-23 for any teachers in grades 6-12 who would like to learn how to implement the College-Ready Writers Program in their classes. The $100 registration fee includes three days with a continental breakfast and boxed lunch, as well as a copy of Joseph Harris’s book, Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. All sessions will be facilitated by K-12 teacher consultants affiliated with the Chippewa River Writing Project.  Learn more here.

The College-Ready Writers Program

In 2012, the National Writing Project was awarded an Investing in Innovation grant to provide professional development to teachers in rural schools in ten states. The PD was designed with an end in mind of improving students’ college- and career-ready writing. The initial launch of the program yielded significant improvements in student writing. In 2015, SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research center, reported that students in the districts where the College-Ready Writers Program had been implemented outperformed students in control districts on four attributes of their writing: content, structure, stance, and conventions. In 2016, then, the National Writing Project decided to scale up the College-Ready Writers Program to 50 new sites for the 2016-17 school year. The Chippewa River Writing Project was selected to be one of those sites.

Components of the College-Ready Writers Program

Routine Argument Writing

The College-Ready Writers Program is built upon some core principles and shifts in thinking about the teaching of argument writing. First, teachers are taught to meet students where they are in implementing routine argument writing activities that help students redefine argument and recognize the ways in which they encounter arguments every day. For example, an early lesson in routine argument writing asks students to record a daily agenda for themselves starting with when they awake and proceeding through all of the activities of their day. Students then look at their daily schedule and ask themselves where in the day they might find something to argue, coding those times with an A. Teachers model the process for students in their own daily schedule. Here is a portion of my daily schedule that I modeled for students on the document camera during this activity.  Continue reading The College-Ready Writers Program at the Chippewa River Writing Project →

New Role New Audience: My Experience of Moving from the High School to the College Classroom

Reflections

This is the second in a series of posts by Angie Reid. You can read her first post here.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

William Shakespeare famously penned, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” in his famous poem, “The Seven Ages of Man.” So what happens to a woman on the cusp of middle age who wants to abandon her acclaimed role as English teacher but still wishes to remain on the grand stage of academia? This was the question that was on my mind as I wholeheartedly packed up my high school classroom and exited stage left in hopes of a less stressful, simpler life.

If you were to ask William Shakespeare, or at least read the poem, you might reflect on the subsequent line, “One man in his time plays many parts.” What was to be my part now? I had just said goodbye to my high school classroom, but I was unsure what to do next. It seems that as the years go by there are many teachers who leave the profession either because of burn-out or because they seek a career change, but many of them find that there are few employment positions for education majors outside teaching.

www.cmich.edu

I began to weigh my options. I still wanted to play a role in education, but I was confused as to what that would be. It was in my soul-searching and contemplation that I decided to pursue my MA in English at Central Michigan University. I had always wanted to earn my masters, but I had been unwilling to take on additional student loan debt. A graduate assistantship seemed to be a good solution. In the English Department at CMU, graduate assistants play quite a few roles in the department, including teaching English 101 and working in the writing center. In return, the university pays the GA a small stipend and waives tuition. It was a perfect fit for me, and when I got my letter of hire in early spring of my final year of teaching high school, I felt as if I’d been cast in the role of a lifetime. I would teach English 101 in the mornings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I would be free in the afternoon to pursue my degree. Continue reading New Role New Audience: My Experience of Moving from the High School to the College Classroom →

Passions Are Powerful Conductors of the Future

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After a tumultuous semester battling pneumonia and the recurrence of my mother’s cancerous tumor, I packed up my Hope College memorabilia and returned to my hometown, parental rules, and the familiar pink shag carpet my eleven-year-old self had loved.  I wasn’t really  bitter about my homecoming, as one might think. I was plagued with confusion:  about life, myself, and the future–and not necessarily in that order. After a semester internship back at a middle school near Hope College, I had doubts on whether teaching was the right career path for me.  During my observation days in the classroom, I barely stayed awake. I couldn’t imagine doing this every day, let alone the rest of my life. To complicate matters, my mother was not getting any better. The latest oncology report detailed something about metastasized cells and radiation with chemotherapy. I was uncertain what it all meant, but the fragile lines on my dad’s face told me it was as serious as the words sounded. By the time the snow fell in December, the beautiful Hope College campus with its lakeshore view no longer held any allure. I came home at the semester end with a big sigh, hoping to exhale the deeper emotions of uncertainty and ambivalence.  Home felt like a reprieve from the disorder of my life.

Image from MRA’s Twitter page. Click to visit the site.

Aquinas College is located in my hometown, so it made sense to resume my junior year there.  My first course was taught by a middle-aged woman with bleach blonde hair, a love for the Cardinals (the baseball team–not the bird), and a fake bake that would have shamed any native Floridian.  Her name was Merri Warren, and she was a past president of the Michigan Reading Association (MRA).  Because of her MRA association, I was recruited during the semester to work at the annual conference as a student volunteer.   Even now, I can recall the impressive scope and scale of the conference with flocks of teachers converging around the registration area.  I was electrified by their chatter of books and speakers and ideas and possibilities. Their anticipation was intoxicating as I eavesdropped on folks waiting for badges and bags.  Never before had I been among so many whose love for books paralleled my own. As the throngs dispersed to their speakers and sessions, I felt a stirring toward the classroom once again.  There was a kindred exhilaration in the air, and I felt inspired that these people might just be my people too.  For the first time, I felt the “calling” that many describe when becoming a teacher. I had found my way amidst the crowded concourse of conferees, and I was excited about all the possibilities–all thanks to Merri Warren and the Michigan Reading Association. Continue reading Passions Are Powerful Conductors of the Future →

The Beaver Island Institute 2016

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I was reminded again this past summer that Michigan is truly one of the most beautiful places on this planet …

img_1536At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, a unique opportunity was presented to my science colleague Jeremy Winsor and me to apply for a week-long science literacy professional development at the Central Michigan University Biological Center located on Beaver Island, Michigan. The event was led by the Center for Excellence in STEM Education and the Chippewa River Writing Project. Several schools from the middle of the state were represented by a team of teachers looking to improve the relationship between science and literacy within their school districts. It was a week promising instruction on how to implement reading and writing strategies into the already complex subject of science.

Fast forward several months to August, and my colleague and I were watching the waves crash on the side of the Beaver Island Ferry while we crossed Lake Michigan along with colleagues from other schools. Schools included: Fulton, Central Montcalm, St. Louis, Carlton, Saginaw Township, and Bridgeport. Though all of us had a basic idea of what we were about to do for the week, we weren’t prepared to begin what would be one of the best professional development experiences of our teaching careers. Continue reading The Beaver Island Institute 2016 →

Reigniting the Fire: Why Teacher Burnout Doesn’t Have to Be Forever

Reflections

This blog is the first in a series of writings that will chronicle Angela Reid’s decision and subsequent experience of leaving the high school classroom to become a graduate teaching assistant in the English Department at Central Michigan University, only to unexpectedly return to the very same high school classroom one year later.

Image from Pixabay user MasaHu
Image from Pixabay user MasaHu

When I turned my keys in to my former principal on that warm summer morning of 2013, I had no intention of ever teaching high school English again. I felt it in my bones. My soul was exhausted, my body defeated. I felt a bit like Bilbo Baggins when he remarked to Gandalf, “I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.” Yes, in my “heart of hearts,” I felt exhausted, unproductive, and uninspired.

In addition, I felt something else even more damning and downright terrifying. I began to feel what teachers fear the most, that perhaps my teaching was becoming ineffective. The characters of my beloved novels, such as Catcher in the Rye and O Pioneers, who had once leapt off the pages, heartily introduced themselves to my students, and pirouetted and pranced around my room now suddenly felt cold and flat. I felt like a fraud, and I could not in good conscience stand before a class of students and feel as if I wasn’t giving them the education they deserved. Continue reading Reigniting the Fire: Why Teacher Burnout Doesn’t Have to Be Forever →