Looking Forward to Providing PD Today: Conferencing with Student Writers

I pulled this one out of the files from a few moons ago. Why? My colleague Beth Boquet was invited to do PD in Darien today and she, in return, wondered if I wanted to join forces. Beth coordinates our Writing Center and is a go-to expert on peer-to-peer writing, conferencing, and writing instruction. I was honored to be asked to join her (as we also think about regional writing center support).

Our workshop today is on initiating practices with young people that encourage them as writers, beyond the actual writing that is handed in for this or that assessment. Interesting to the two of us is the fact that in Best Practices or Handbooks of research on writing, scant attention has been paid to the ins and outs of a writing conference. Anyone in a classroom knows their importance, but what is to be said on what works best (and why).

Lucky for us, we have the National Writing Project and much foundation provided during the great surge of writing research in the 80s. Since then, across the nation, so many have been able to build wonderful programs. Alas, in the time of NCLB and Race to the top, the nation has somewhat lost its way in K-12 writing instruction. I'm thankful to my colleagues and especially to Kelly Gallagher. Ah, but how do we know what works best with one-on-one conferencing. Better yet, how do we train students to be good readers of each others writing so that they build a community of writers where the teacher is lead mentor helping to build the written outcomes they want?

That's what we've been thinking about for a few weeks and this afternoon we will share our thinking with 20 educators who teach high school - some with tremendous expertise and a few just beginning their careers.

Linda Darling Hammond has just announced NWP work as exemplar professional development, and that is our aim for today's workshop....to build a foundation of trust between teachers, University scholars, research, and practice.

Ha! About the picture above. I knew I wanted to a photo of me conferencing with a student and lo and behold, look what I found. A conference with Chitunga during first semester of his senior year. Time flies (and look at those dreads!)

I am hoping his conferences served him well as he's taking a literature course this semester that (cough cough) looks to be challenging on all levels. Let his writing mentorship come through!