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Author: Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen Summary: Who is an expert teacher? Who is a novice? This article will be of interest to teacher educators and to experienced teachers working with colleagues who are new to the profession. The authors describe the ways in which teachers who appear “expert” to their newer colleagues “move from novice to expert to novice again as new challenges arise” and argue for the value of making these moments transparent. The article starts with a recreated dialogue and reflection about how and why a pair of facilitators – the authors – make themselves vulnerable as a way to open a conversation with new and preservice teachers about race, whiteness, and positionality.
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Summary: This collection of readings is intended to inform the thinking and practice of teacher leaders and teacher researchers interested in addressing the racial gap in achievement by expanding their own knowledge base as they seek to enhance the academic performance of African American learners. These texts have supported the contributors as they have examined the history and status of African American education in our nation in the context of the landmark decision rendered in Brown v. Board of Education (1954; 1955). If you desire inspiring readings to further knowledge of social justice or culturally relevant pedagogy, this bibliography offers a place to begin and to build from, adding resources that go beyond its publication date of 2008.
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Author: Milbrey McLaughlin, Joan E. Talbert Summary: This book chapter investigates what it takes to make teacher learning communities within schools successful, identifying strong design, skilled facilitation, broadly shared teacher leadership, and school culture as significant factors.
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Author: Patricia Averette Summary: This protocol is designed for participants to clarify and deepen thinking about readings groups may engage with as part of an institute, teacher study group, or professional meeting. It provides a structure that enables group participants to engage in close reading and share their thinking in a low-risk context.
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Author: Ann Dobie Summary: Compiled by NWP’s Teacher Inquiry Community, this annotated bibliography of approximately 50 books offers a wealth of important designs, guides, case studies, and much more. It provides a rich resource for individual teacher researchers and those planning on leading teacher inquiry projects and professional development.
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Author: Jack Zangerle Summary: This blog post describes an alternative research-writing project: developing public service announcements (PSAs). This resource may be helpful as a model for any instructors who want their students to develop PSAs for civic engagement or for the development of digital skills and message-making. This digital “making” event could also be used during summer youth writing camps. A student-created PSA is included with the blog post.
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Author: Susan Connell Biggs, Kevin Hodgson, and Bruce Penniman Summary: This National Writing Project monograph describes the inquiry process undertaken by leaders at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project when the site faced radical changes and challenges in funding and leadership. This process led to a reorganization of the site, with new structures created to ensure its sustainability. In addition to the narrative, the monograph includes a variety of useful resources and tools for engaging in collaborative planning such as identity mapping, inquiry models, site leadership job descriptions, and more.
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Summary: This short list of LBGTQ books can be used when selecting texts to read as a teacher inquiry group or to use with students in a high school classroom. Annotated descriptions are included for each book along with other suggested book pairings.
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Author: Joanna Franklin Summary: After her experience participating in a writing group in her NWP summer institute, this teacher/author developed an instructional sequence in order to teach revision in her first grade class. She begins in September with students rereading their writing, advances through Author’s Chair and the creation of a class set of criteria for excellent writing, and by March has her students successfully working in writing groups and revising their writing. This work affirmed her belief that if first-graders are given appropriate support and structure, they are capable of deep thinking and learning. Through this article, early grade teachers in any professional development forum may see possibilities for change in their writing instruction.
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Summary: Thinking of gathering some colleagues together to work on professional writing for publication? This resource includes materials that can serve as models for site and teacher leaders contemplating hosting a Professional Writing Retreat: a sample flyer and application requirements along with different retreat options, and manuscript requirements.
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Author: Nancy Remington and Robert McGinty Summary: Leaders from the Great Basin Writing Project in Nevada describe a long-term school partnership that gave teachers at Southside Elementary the opportunity to redesign curriculum and reshape the writing culture of their school. This inquiry-centered approach to professional development, designed and led by teachers with the support of the writing project’s teacher consultants, could serve as a model for any school engaged in similar work.
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Author: Robert Yagelski Summary: Have you ever found yourself having to justify teachers’ writing as a key, non-negotiable component of your site’s professional development? If so, this article can help ground you in the importance and value of the act of writing. Yagelski proposes a pedagogy of “writing as a way of being” and describes how the approach can encourage awareness, reflection, and inquiry in ways that product-focused approaches may not. Yagelski’s full vision–that writing is more than communication, and that our lives and thinking live within writing–will be helpful to any teacher inquiry group or educator/leader teams who are working together to construct their own philosophical stance about writing: what it is, what it does, and what it should look like in classrooms. This piece will also be an invaluable resource for any teachers needing to justify the practice of having students write without being directly tied to the day’s objective, goal, or standard.
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Authors:Mary Weaver, Mary Calliari, Janet Rentsch Summary: This NWP monograph from leaders of the Saginaw Bay WP (Michigan) takes a deep dive into a districtwide approach to teacher-led study groups that resulted in significant changes in teacher practice and student learning as well as leadership development among teacher facilitators. The appendices include study group schedules, facilitation guides, evaluation tools, etc. Teacher leaders developing and facilitating school-based study groups will find that this offers a wealth of useful resources.
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Author: Joseph Check Summary: “If feeling emotion is part of working in schools, how does emotion fit into writing about that work?” This essay considers the reality of teachers’ emotional involvement with their work and how to deal with emotion in professional writing. A useful reading for writing groups and their facilitators, it considers three common struggles that many educators face when writing professionally – writing about a situation that they are frustrated by or angry about, trying to remain removed from the writing as a way to maintain objectivity, and being so passionate about topics that they struggle to identify a specific audience.
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Author: Cindy O’Donnell-Allen Summary: When a small group of language arts teachers from the Tar River Writing Project in North Carolina noticed that some students seemed less engaged in their classes, they decided to study their own practices, question their assumptions, and work systematically to change their teaching. Specifically, this inquiry project evolved into the LEEAP program: Leadership for Equity, Excellence, Achievement, and Partnership in 21st Century Classrooms, an initiative to support teachers in studying equity in their classrooms. In addition to the article, this resource also includes three digital-story videos exploring equity, created by the LEEAP team. This work may be useful as a model for conducting teacher inquiry to address specific issues of concern within or across schools.
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Summary: Teacher leaders interested in supporting early career teachers may find this resource useful as it describes how several National Writing Project sites developed programs for teachers new to the profession. Originally supported by NWP New Teacher Initiative grants, new teacher programs were integrated into the ongoing work of the site. Whether you are considering starting small (Southern Nevada: Study Groups), going all in (Houston: Intensive Summer Institute), or experimenting somewhere in the middle (Delaware: Workshop Series), there are protocols and other resources in this collection to help you devise a program that can provide the support, collaboration, and collegiality new teachers need to thrive during their early professional years.
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Author: Danielle Filipiak Summary: This multi-generational dialogue explores the ways in which teachers can strengthen their classrooms’ connection to communities, neighborhoods, and other contexts that their students navigate.
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Author: Susan Bennett Summary: This is a succinct overview on the role of coaching in the Summer Institute at the Redwood Writing Project. The document describes the relationship between the coach and the person being coached, carefully laying the groundwork for a supportive and collaborative, non-evaluative relationship. While the piece is based on coaching in the Summer Institute, the description of roles and the set of guide questions could be useful to anyone entering a coaching and/or mentoring relationship.
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Author: Paul M. Rogers Summary: This article describes how, supported by a grant to engage in multi-year research into their site’s professional development work in high needs schools, leaders at the South Coast Writing Project gathered and analyzed data from nine teachers and their students…surveys, interviews, classroom observations, and collections of teacher and student work—to assess the effects…[on] teachers’ classroom practices and their students’ learning.” In addition to improving the site’s professional development programming, teacher leaders developed “valuable capacities” and confidence as researchers and program leaders.
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Authors: Linda Friedrich, Carol Tateishi, Tom Malarkey, Elizabeth Radin Simons, and Marty Williams Summary: What is equity? What does it mean to work for equity in schools? What does it mean to make equity central to our work as teachers and researchers? With a focus on inquiry, Working Toward Equity explores these and other questions in 13 narratives from a broad spectrum of educators chronicling their real work in classrooms, schools, districts, and professional development organizations. Of use both in planning and leading teacher research, it offers a rich variety of tools and protocols to support individual and group inquiry.
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Summary: Teacher leaders involved in planning and/or facilitating teacher study groups will find a useful resource in this brief article describing how the NWP in Vermont developed and launched a long-term school-based teacher study group with several districts. The leaders of the program found the “open-endedness of the study group replicates the principles that make a summer institute succeed…teachers are intellectually and emotionally nurtured, rejuvenated, and empowered. They assume a measure of authority over their own learning.”
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Author: Rick VanDeWeghe Summary: This article describes the Denver Writing Project’s three-year professional development model used in partnership with several local schools/districts. In the first year, the site builds local capacity through teacher study groups, then transitions in the second year to site-sponsored professional development related to the topics researched by the study groups during the first year. The third year of the partnership is dictated by local school needs, with some schools starting new teacher study groups and some continuing with professional development through demonstration lessons or other means. Those starting new partnerships would be well-served to explore the document in its entirety, but a specific focus on setting and making explicit the goals for the program (p.2) and the expectations of participants and facilitators (p.2-3) may be especially useful.
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Author: Marian M. Mohr Summary: For those new to facilitating teacher-research, this article provides insight into the process, specifically how teachers approach research, the potential for research to change teaching practice, and implications for teacher education. It’s written as an introduction to a collection of research reports on the writing processes of students, grades one through twelve, and prepared by the participants in a teacher-researcher seminar.
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Author: Antero Garcia Summary: Acknowledging that, in these early years of the digital age, “literacies are changing . . . a lot,” Antero Garcia notes that this “is a resource of a specific moment.” Student projects, blog posts, discussions, and more from Garcia’s course “Teaching Reading,” in which he and his students undertook a “mutual inquiry into the ways reading is defined, enacted, and challenged within classroom spaces.” For teachers looking for a dynamic example of using a digital space as an integral part of a classroom inquiry, this resource-rich collection explores how technology and issues of social justice play into our conceptions of literacy.
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Author: Dale Jacobs Summary: This article is a model of how one teacher used inquiry to revise his classroom practice. The author explains how his experience working in a college writing center led him to revise his approach to classroom teaching, leading him to a pedagogy that was more student-centered and focused on individuals. He describes a process of “productive disruption” in his thinking about his practices, followed by critical reflection that led to change. This article would be useful in a professional development context focused on teacher inquiry or reflective practice, especially early in the discussions, as an example of this approach in context. It could also be recommended to writing center tutors who move into the classroom, to demonstrate how their skills as tutors can effectively translate into the classroom.
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Author: Ralph Cordova and Michael Murawski Summary: Documenting the cross-disciplinary literacy activities supported by a partnership between teacher-researchers and a local art museum, this excellent resource offers both activities and practical strategies for taking writing about art into the classroom using resources from local art galleries and online virtual art museums.
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Author: Mark Overmeyer Summary: In this short video, Mark Overmeyer, co-director of the Denver Writing Project and author of the book What Student Writing Teaches Us poses the question, “If you read student writing closely enough, will the student’s writing teach you what the student needs to know?” A thoughtful overview of the value of watching and listening to young writers in the process of writing, this video could be useful in launching a conversation about the role of formative assessment in the development of student writing.
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Author: South Coast Writing Project Summary: Although conversations about race and diversity are not easy, they can allow teacher leaders to examine and interrogate their beliefs and practices to determine the direction of their teaching and of their writing project sites. This article describes how the South Coast Writing Project spent two years engaged in “courageous conversations” around issues of diversity as a way to better meet the needs of the linguistically diverse student population in the area. Also included are useful details on how the program started with an open institute and links to several of the key resources used throughout the project’s implementation. The article and its related resources might inspire study groups and leadership teams to engage in their own critical reading and courageous conversations.
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Author: Michelle Rogge Gannon Summary: This article describes how to plan and implement a Professional Writing Retreat that supports writers who create multimodal texts, and how to troubleshoot technology-related issues that might arise. Included are guidelines for responding to multimodal writers in ways that support their revision in various media. This resource may be useful for groups who are planning writing retreats at their local sites; additionally the revision guidelines may be adaptable for working with students.
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Author: Robert Yagelski, Anne Elrod Whitney, James Fredricksen, and Troy Hicks Summary: Why should teachers write about their work? What is the evolution of this movement? The authors identify the teacher-writer as an activist, advocate, and knowledge creator. When teachers write and take on these various roles, they assert agency and authority in an age of teacher exclusion and blame.
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Author: Melinda Rench Summary: Social media, including platforms such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, offer teachers new and ongoing opportunities to connect with other teachers and literacy leaders in ways that were not possible for previous generations of educators. This short article offers a look into a few ways that one teacher has opened up her professional network and grown her pedagogical practice via social media. Have a read and then head out to Twitter, Facebook, the NWP Medium blog, or some other platform and get involved in the conversation.
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Author: Joe Check Summary: Making an argument for reflective teaching in the face of mandated, external programs, the author identifies five “myths” or beliefs about reflective writing and suggests ways to address the negative attitudes engendered by them. Useful to demonstrate the potential for connection between reflective teacher inquiry and externally mandated school change/reform. This resource may be useful in addressing concerns that Writing Project methods can’t be implemented in heavy top-down schools and provides support for the necessity of teacher voices in the reform process.
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Author: Meg Petersen and Megan Birch Summary: Arguing that the Common Core State Standards “represent an opportunity to disrupt and transform existing instructional practices and ways of thinking about curriculum,” the authors challenge teachers to move beyond facilitating writing toward becoming authentic intellectual partners with their students in response to the CCSS emphasis on thinking, arguing, & constructing meaning. The article cites multiple examples of how the authors used their linked courses (First Year Seminar and Composition) to rethink the interaction of their university students with literary texts and writing assignments. This article provides useful information about bringing a spirit of inquiry into the classroom as a way to reflect on and disrupt traditional pedagogical thinking.
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Author: Dorothy Fuller and Reva Potter Summary: What happens when middle school students are invited to explore grammar check tools in an intentional way as part of a teacher inquiry project that connects to instruction? The authors describe their process and the benefits: students became more informed users of the tools and more confident writers, and they made explicit and intentional connections to grammar concepts. This article could be included as a resource in a professional development program or study group focused on finding authentic ways to incorporate grammar into writing workshop approaches.
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Author: Sherry Swain and Paul LeMahieu Summary: This article details the journey of teachers and researchers who worked together to create the NWP’s Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC), an approach to writing assessment that is locally contextualized yet linked to a common national framework and standards of performance. In addition to demonstrating the AWC’s great potential for classroom use, the authors describe the multiple ways NWP sites have utilized the AWC to conduct research, to re-envision large-scale writing assessments, to develop effective professional development, and to mentor teachers in further development of their own writing. They also provide illustrations of how the AWC enabled students to discuss and iterate ways to improve their writing. This article, or excerpts from it, may prove useful during summer institute or teacher PD discussions of the most effective and in-depth ways to both scaffold and evaluate writing.
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Guests: Danielle Filipiak, Ben Kirshner, Ellen Middaugh, Nicole Mirra, and Paul Oh Summary: View this rich webinar about how and why preparing students for youth participatory action research (YPAR) leads to civic engagement, community improvement, learning, and literacy (cue the video to 16:52). Through this inquiry process, students gain an understanding of their communities and then can advocate for change.
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Authors: Marlene Carter, Norma Mota-Altman, and Faye Peitzman Summary: This monograph provides an in-depth look at the UCLA Writing Project’s approach to exploring two social justice concerns—matters of race and issues of homophobia—and the design of two multiyear study groups that engage the learning community at the site. The authors chronicle how both study groups were moved to take action as a result of their work together, and describes the programs they created and the impacts of these programs. Finally, the authors reflect on how these study groups have impacted the work of their site, and on the significance of nurturing long-term, focused continuity work for teachers. The monograph would be useful for teacher leaders interested in organizing and leading study groups focused on social justice issues, and/or in learning about strategies that support honest conversations among thoughtful colleagues.
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Author: Marva Solomon Summary: Are you engaged in or facilitating a workshop, pd program, or study group of teachers who are ready to move from discussion and research to developing actionable plans for teaching writing in their classrooms? If so, this template outlining an action plan could be a useful resource. It is designed to help teachers move from research and discussion to transforming classroom practice by identifying an area of their writing instruction they want to focus on, determining why it is important, considering what they can do to address the issue/concern, and deciding how they will evaluate the effectiveness of any strategies they implement.
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Author: Mary Ann Smith Summary: What is college writing like? This report describes a series of pilot workshops for high school juniors focused on this question. Students in the workshops quickly discovered that college writing is not the traditional five-paragraph essay. Instead, it is multifaceted, always involves critical thinking, and is the most common form of assessment. These principles and others are outlined below along with a small window into developing the workshops. Perhaps this can inspire you during the planning stages of similar workshops on academic discourse for high school students.
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Author: Margaret Kantz Summary: This report looks at ways in which college freshmen interpreted and negotiated an assignment calling for writing based on reading, along with how teachers then judged the abilities and preparation of the students based on that writing. The study discovered that students and teachers had different understandings of the expectations of the task and that such tasks are more difficult and complex for students than teachers realize. Although an older article, the conclusions of this research are still relevant in understanding the difficult transition from high school writing to college academic discourse. This article would be a useful starting point for discussions of how teachers must examine their assumptions about students’ interpretations of assignments. In addition, it might serve as a model of inquiry into the writing process of students.
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Author: Patricia Lambert Stock Summary: In her keynote speech at NWP’s 2007 Spring Meeting, Patricia Lambert Stock reports on her study of an overlooked genre of educational research: the teacher workshop. Describing in detail a teacher’s presentation on using mock trials in teaching literature, she shows that such workshops not only have the customary elements of research published in professional journals but, in addition, they are theory-based and situated in a teaching context, construct an argument about teaching and learning, and have an immediate impact on teaching practice.
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Author: Janet A. Swenson, Diana Mitchell Summary: This monograph explains a useful protocol developed by Red Cedar Writing Project for responding to demonstrations in the Summer Institute, called the Collaborative Responses to Teaching Demonstrations (CRTD). This response takes the form of a letter to the person offering the demonstration, thus providing responders with opportunities to draft and revise a piece with a clear audience and purpose. The monograph includes discussions of each aspect of the protocol, as well as tools to help prepare teachers for response, both prior to and during the Summer Institute.
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Author: Molly Toussant Summary: Students often wonder why they have to write every day. In this piece, with her students as her audience, one teacher outlines and then elaborates the beliefs that guide her teaching of writing. Points of use for this article may be early in summer institutes or school partnerships to guide teachers in examining their own beliefs about teaching writing as well as the value of making their beliefs more transparent to learners. This article may also be ideal for engaging community partners, parents, or administrators in discussions about the work of teachers who teach writing.
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Summary: In this NWP Radio program, moderator Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and teachers from the Southern Arizona Writing Project provide an overview of teacher research in general along with various approaches and settings (first 16 minutes), followed by stories of how the projects of three teachers impacted their practice, built connections with students and families, and benefited from a shared community of practice (16:00-51:35 total; 16:16 Laurie; 29:05 Denise; 39:11 Leah). Each segment provides unique insights that could inform new and experienced teachers engaged in teacher research and speaks to the power of teachers writing and talking about their work.
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Author: Art Peterson and Kathy Schultz Summary: Did you ever wonder about why certain students might choose silence? In this video and an accompanying article about her work, Kathy Schultz urges educators to inquire into the meaning of silence while also finding strategies to allow silent students to communicate. Watching the video may spur teachers to reconsider notions of “participation” and the function of silence in “talk-rich,” writing classrooms.
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Author: Marsha Pincus Summary: In this story of an extended teacher research project, the author shares the design, purpose, and impact of a course called “Drama and Inquiry,” where she and her students explored multiple perspectives, shifting identities, and ethical dialogue through their study of non-canonical plays including “The Laramie Project.” Consider including this article in an advanced institute to support conversations about teacher inquiry and social justice.
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Author: Marcie Wolfe Summary: How can teachers’ voices be heard within the top-down forces of reform, and how can NWP avoid becoming a “recipe-based” school reform model? This article tells the story of New York City writing project leaders who supported teachers and administrators within a city initiative to phase out large, struggling high schools and replace them with co-located smaller schools. Central in this resource are the ways the on-site NYCWP teacher-consultants became “redesign pioneers,” using writing to enhance policy and planning meetings as well as teachers’ practice. The article also addresses some of the challenges involved in coordinating with other professional development groups. This may be an important piece for site leaders or advanced inquiry groups to read as a frame for inquiry and for mapping out a plan for entry into schools undergoing redesign or struggling with reform issues.
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Author: Elaine Avidon, et al. Summary: This e-book includes powerful chapters written by teacher-consultants about the individual and collective impact of their work and its alignment to their site’s mission and beliefs about professional learning. Reading select chapters would support fellows in imagining different kinds of school coaching; alternatively, the book offers a powerful model for site leaders who want to pull together leaders to collectively evaluate and write about the impact of their site’s programs.
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Author: Kathleen Reddy-Butkovich Summary: This article offers an account of how to look at student writing using a simple but effective protocol, asking what students have accomplished and what they are “on the verge of” accomplishing. Although the article features elementary teachers collaborating, the protocol will be a useful framework for educators at all levels.
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Authors: Tom Frasier, Holly Ishman, Rosemary Holmes-Gull, Krista Johnson, Kim Sicurella, and Karyn Steffensen Summary: This resource includes full descriptions of two protocols that are structured to foster democratic dialogue within groups. Useful in planning for group discussions, particularly those that might become dominated by a few participants, these protocols allow the facilitator to work with the group in a equitable and fair manner that will allow all voices an opportunity to be heard.
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Author: Kathie Marshall Summary: This article argues for a teacher-led collaborative inquiry approach to data analysis, as opposed to seeing data analysis as a compliance process. Potentially a conversation starter for how teachers can use inquiry processes to regain control over instruction and improve student achievement.
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Summary: Useful for teams interested in planning teacher inquiry programs, this resource tells the story of a collaborative inquiry project carried out among teachers from writing project sites in Oklahoma and Nevada that not only transformed their individual teaching practices but also supported them to start teacher inquiry communities at their sites. This resource includes links to readings on inquiry, a PDF of a teacher inquiry-focused institute, and a great writing exercise (“The Stuck Place”) designed to help teachers begin to develop practice-based research questions.
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Author: William Strong Summary: Pushing back against the “hidden curriculum” of school writing as teacher-centered and reductive, Strong asserts a model of student-centered writing to learn. This article explains the importance of writing across disciplines and gives practical examples of authentic content area writing skills. His 12-point description of the features of the “hidden curriculum” can serve as a powerful conversation starter with any group of teachers engaged in a study of school-based writing.
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Author: Art Peterson Summary: “If this worked for me, why did it work?” This article explores writing project summer institute teacher demonstrations as a form of teacher inquiry at the Northern California Writing and the Red Cedar Writing Project, focusing on the questions that drive demonstrations of successful practices and various “lenses” for response. As Northern California teacher leader Kathy Wainwright notes, “We want our teachers to put their work in a larger context, one that they may not have thought much about. We encourage them to ask, ‘If this worked for me, why did it work?’ In this way, the presenter, as well as the other participants, will share and gain knowledge of more than just a strategy that works. Rather, a piece of theory will evolve from a presentation that has general applicability to the presenter’s teaching and maybe all teaching.” This article could help to introduce an inquiry strand or study group; the lenses for response included in the piece are adaptable for others’ use.
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Author: Janet Kiddoo Summary: Bilingual third grade students acted as helpers to first graders in a collaborative writing workshop. The third grade teacher guided her students through a process similar to teacher inquiry–to reflect on their own experiences as writers in order to help the younger writers, to take notes on their experiences as teacher/tutors, and to carefully think through the problems encountered and results obtained in order to improve their practice. This article models three useful practices in a writing context: 1) students as researchers; 2) older students as tutors to younger; and 3) reflective practice in writing and teaching.
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Author: Anne Marie Liebel Summary: Using Peter Elbow’s theory of peer response as described in Writing Without Teachers, Ann Marie Liebel began implementing response groups, providing space for her student writers to lead the way in revision. Central here are the ways she reflected as a teacher/facilitator and the ways she listened to her students as she adjusted Elbow’s methods to fit her high school and college freshman classes. Because this resource will instigate thought on how to initiate or improve peer response groups, it may be useful for teacher inquiry, for leaders of young author summer writing camps, or for guidance prior to summer institute writing group experiences.
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Summary: This NWP Radio episode, the first in a six part series examining a set of social practices embedded in NWP-style teacher leadership, examines three case studies of what teacher leadership through advocacy can look like, and how teachers can take up the practice of advocacy more generally.
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Author: Dina Sechio DeCristofaro Summary: What role does reading play in children’s development as writers? After surveying her fifth graders about where they get ideas for writing, the author of this piece examined the relationship between what students read and what they write. She identifies specific aspects of what her students borrowed from mentor texts, such as “subject,” “tone,” “genre,” “style,” as well as ideas stemming from silent, self-selected readings. This resource features student samples connected to specific mentor pieces and would be useful in teacher study groups or during a summer writing institute where teachers are discussing the value of deep, consistent reading to help young authors develop themselves as writers.
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Author: Mary Ann Smith and Sherry Swain Summary: How can teachers create effective prompts that motivate students to show what they can do as writers? Focusing on purpose, audience, authenticity, and accessibility, the authors of this short book analyze existing prompts and provide guidelines for teachers in developing their own prompts for different modes of writing. They also consider adaptations for culturally or linguistically diverse learners. Excerpts from this book may be particularly useful in school-based professional development partnerships, as well as in teacher inquiry focused on assessing student work.
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Author: Grace Hall McEntee Summary: The author offers five compelling reasons for teachers to write for publication, including the opportunity to understand our teaching practice and to inform the public. This brief article would work well as a resource for educators who are beginning to explore writing about their work. The article could be sent in advance of a professional writing retreat as well.
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Author: Judith Ruhana Summary: In this article, a teacher recaps her journey with portfolio assessment over four years. The writer shows how teachers can and need to adjust their teaching based on their students’ reflections on learning. The article will be of interest to teachers grappling with issues of assessment and grading. It includes rich samples of student writing and useful rubrics.
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Author: Kelly Lock Summary: Do you ever feel as if we live in a perpetual state of top-down, mandated pedagogy? How are classroom teachers responding to calls to act on these directives? This is the question Kelly Lock tries to answer as her school district orders an abrupt midyear mandated transition and required change to the writers’ workshop model. This article could be a valuable piece for educators who wish to discuss where we each draw the proverbial “line in the sand.” When do we give the new mandate a whole-hearted try and when do we adapt to include other strategies for the benefit of our students?
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Author: Ann Lieberman and Linda Friedrich Summary: How do teacher leaders work for change within their own schools? What can we learn from writing project teachers’ vignettes that describe challenges as well as features of success? This article, illuminating findings from the NWP Vignette Study, could be useful to read in an institute focused on teacher leadership, collaboration, or advocating for school reform. In addition, new leaders who are supporting colleagues as mentors and thinking partners will find ideas and inspiration for their work in this piece.
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Author: Amy Clark Summary: This NWP Radio conversation with Amy Clark, co-editor of Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity & Community, begins with a personal story of how transcribing an oral history interview with her great grandmother revealed the syntax and poetry in her speech. Subsequent segments include discussions of: 1) teachers’ and writers’ essays in Part II of the book that incorporate implications and ideas for instruction (4:38 -19:42); and 2) Amy’s teaching career trajectory that led to her bringing research about dialect to her writing project community; a discussion of contrastive analysis as a tool for helping students use their writing to understand reasons nonstandard grammar patterns exist so they can learn to make choices to switch between home/informal and school/formal languages; results and advice for researchers/study groups interested in this work (20:08 – 39:04).This resource could be useful in planning and/or leading professional development, study groups, or teacher inquiry focused on dialect and empowering student voice.
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Author: Carrie Usui Summary: What is the work of a literacy coach? Twelve UCLA Writing Project teacher-consultants serving as literacy coaches in the LA Unified School District spent a weekend retreat exploring that question by writing vignettes as a way to illustrate what it is they do as coaches. Here they share some of what they do and how it makes a difference for students and teachers in the schools where they coach.
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Author: Mya Poe and Julianne Radkowski Opperman Summary: Looking for specific ways to incorporate technology into teaching while leading students through the scientific research process? Noting that writing in science “is a dynamic process that changes quickly with technological change,” this chapter explores specific examples from both high school and college settings that invite students’ dynamic engagement as writers through proposal writing, literature reviews, storying research findings, and peer review. This resource will be of interest to both classroom teachers and those involved in designing professional development programs or seeking ideas for teacher inquiry.
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Summary: A leader in the field of teacher research, Marian Mohr left a legacy of resources to support teacher inquiry. This article provides an excellent annotated bibliography of resources for anyone interested in participating in or guiding teachers through the inquiry process.
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Author: Janice Jones Summary: In a thoughtful first person narrative, Janice Jones describes her inadvertent “silencing” of the only white student in a class of primarily African American and Latino students. An example of the power of a teacher’s personal reflection on classroom practice, this essay might serve as a resource for a teacher inquiry group or to spur teachers’ writing and conversation about race in the classroom.
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Author: Christine Dawson Summary: How might teachers pursue and support personally and professionally worthwhile writing practices in the midst of the many demands associated with teaching? How might writing groups sustain their work together – in person or online? This final chapter from The Teacher-Writer: Creating Writing Groups for Personal and Professional Growth, a book that documents the first year of a successful teacher writing group, includes strategies developed and a generative framework grounded in lessons learned by the group as they met face-to-face and worked online. Their story and what they learned together will be of particular interest to teachers who wonder how to build on their commitments to personal writing and sustain a collegial community that forms in the process of writing and sharing.
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Author: Anne Whitney, Sheridan Blau, Alison Bright, Rosemary Cabe, Tim Dewar, Jason Levin, Roseanne Macias, and Paul Rogers Summary: A key reading, this award-winning research study may serve equally well as the focus for a group studying writing process pedagogy or for teacher leaders developing and leading a professional development program. Based on two contrasting case studies, the overall study provided evidence for the importance of inquiry in transforming teaching practice and student performance. While each teacher discusses how she interpreted and implemented a process-centered theory of writing, the comparative data suggest that inquiry-based inservice may lead to more nuanced thinking about teaching writing and increase a teacher’s sense of responsibility for improving curricula and interrogating her own practice. The study also includes detailed descriptions of the inquiry-based professional development in which one of the teachers participated.
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Author: Sheila Clawson, Marion S. MacLean, Marian M. Mohr, Mary Ann Nocerino, Courtney Rogers, and Betsy Sanford Summary: Teacher researchers detail their inquiry journeys highlighting theories that influenced or explained their thinking about practice, about teacher and student learning, and about school change. Useful in teacher inquiry to demonstrate connections between theory and practice, and as models of how teachers can use theory to articulate their own journeys of discover as teacher researchers.
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Author: Antero Garcia, Christina Cantrill, Danielle Filipiak, Bud Hunt, Clifford Lee, Nicole Mirra, Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, and Kylie Peppler Summary: This collection of compelling firsthand vignettes written by NWP educators illustrate “connected learning principles” and depict teachers designing opportunities for all students to have access to, participate in, and thrive within the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. This resource will be exciting for teachers looking for inspiring curriculum design that is based in solid research and theory about teaching and learning while engaging the affordances of new media and networked technologies. For further reading, visit Educator Innovator.
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Author: Jeffrey D. Wilhelm Summary: In this short article, Jeffrey Wilhelm makes the case for inquiry, which he defines as “learning how to solve problems and design solutions by using the stances and strategies of expert practitioners,” as the key set of practices for attaining “conscious competence,” learning that can be understood, passed along, and applied in a range of situations.
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Author: Susan Lytle Summary: When teacher inquiry groups “get real,” there’s bound to be some discomfort and challenge, so groups have to consider whether to resist or persist. That might be the time to reach for this piece. In this article originally written for The Quarterly, Susan Lytle advocates that collegial teacher research groups should boldly collaborate in investigating “risky” questions that open up their classroom to closer scrutiny and the possibility of critique. She contrasts these ‘risky’ groups with other popular forms of teacher research and PLC groups, reflecting on the challenges and opportunities these groups present to participating teachers. Original Date of Publication: Winter 1993 From the opening: As inquiry becomes almost a buzzword, I find myself increasingly concerned about the risks inherent in teacher research becoming so common that it becomes mainstream, safe, even sanitized. I worry about a new orthodoxy, about invention and experimentation evolving too quickly into reified formats and teacher-proof cookbooks like those that followed upon early writing process research and that currently threaten the whole language initiative as it becomes the playground of publishers. I am also concerned that teacher research could become just another activity or project, an assignment or a topic in a college course, or another series of staff development workshops. It could become a way to create the illusion of support for fundamental change by “keeping the lid on” -by creating contrived contexts for collegiality, as Hargreaves (1989) has warned, without altering the structures that drive images of curriculum as knowledge transmission, that feed individualistic forms of professional development and foster new hierarchies, dividing teachers from one another. Teaching has long been a private and isolating profession. Yet teachers’ increasingly visible roles in collegial networks and their expanding participation in shaping restructured schools suggest that the mores of teaching are changing. As teachers reconfigure their work to emphasize its fundamentally social and political dimensions and as they struggle collectively to reframe classrooms and schools as sites of inquiry, there is an increasing need, it seems to me, for a critical discourse on how the concept of teacher research is being constructed differently by various teachers, teacher research groups, and university sponsors, and to what ends. To realize the promise of teacher research for dramatically altering practices of teaching and schooling, I think we need to explore in public forums how these differences may inform the ways that “the teacher research movement” gets forwarded, marginalized, critiqued, co-opted, trivialized and/ or strengthened in the coming years.
Related Resources
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Author: Christina Puntel Summary: An elementary school teacher and bilingual coordinator pushes back against the mandated content/performance descriptors provided by her district to assert that the “core” of her curriculum is her students’ learning. “I teach with an ear close to the core of each child, to the core of the monarch unit, the silkworm unit, the family songs unit….” Her important reflection on the humanity of the students at the heart of classrooms and curricula will be of interest to teachers and study groups wrestling with the influence of mandated curricula on their teaching.
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Author: Anne Elrod Whitney Summary: When teachers write for others in their profession they are taking on a form of leadership and embracing a means of advocating for the value of classroom inquiry and reflective practice. This article by Anne Whitney, a researcher who has studied the professional practice of NWP teachers, invites teacher-writers to get beyond the hurdles of doubt as they approach publication of their professional writing. An inspirational article for teacher writing groups, it could resonate with teachers who are ready or getting ready to share their work more publicly.
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Author: Beth Winningham Summary: A teacher researcher who studied the experiences of five language-minority students over the course of a school year offers concrete suggestions for improving the learning experience of middle/high school students in general, and English learners in particular. This article could be examined as a model of teacher inquiry and student advocacy.
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Guests: Stephanie Jones, Jen McCreight, Angela Dean, and Jaye Thiel Summary: In this NWP Radio show, Stephanie Jones, co-director of the Red Clay WP at the University of Georgia, and several Red Clay teacher-consultants share their experiences from a school-year teacher inquiry group that led to the publication of Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting with our Most Vulnerable Students. The group discusses how they each focused closely on one student who was on the margin of the classroom community and used narrative inquiry to explore their beliefs, understandings, and practices related to critical pedagogy. This resource is useful in planning and/or leading professional development, study groups, or teacher inquiry focused on individual students and their work. A sample chapter from the book is also included.
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Author: Joe Check Summary: How should teachers pro-actively respond to school reforms mandated from above? This article advocates for teachers to take the lead in determining how these reforms are best implemented at the school and classroom level through reflective inquiry practices. Specifically, the article covers three main lines of inquiry: 1) What effect is reform having on the climate for reflective practice in our school system? 2) What is the teachers’ understanding of system-wide change? 3) Has the reform honestly acknowledged the social, cultural, and contextual barriers to students’ academic success? These questions, and Check’s discussion of them, offer great starting points for teachers to confront problematic mandated reforms in a professional development context.
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Summary: This protocol from the Hudson Valley Writing Project takes teachers through the steps of looking at student work in a professional development session. The accompanying script helps a facilitator to guide participants through the “turns” in the protocol process. Adapted from the Prospect Center Descriptive Review Process and the National School Reform Faculty Appreciative Inquiry protocol, this resource allows participants to name what students have accomplished before making recommendations for next steps. Rather than focusing on deficits, it offers an additive model for reviewing student work.
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Author: Elizabeth Radin Simmons Summary: The reviewer provides useful examples of how Cochran-Smith & Lytle’s book might support teacher inquiry practices. Initially put off by the fact that most authors were university professors, the reviewer soon found much value when reading the book from the perspective of a school coach. For those choosing books to support teacher inquiry, a quick perusal of this review may help with the decision. And for those already planning to use Inquiry as Stance in PD settings, the review offers helpful insights on several of the individual articles.
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Author: Sherry Swain, Richard L. Graves, and David Morse Summary: This article details research about rhetorical elements associated with statewide assessment scores, and it focuses on teacher-noted occurrences of voice in student writing. The authors also spotlight student writing excerpts that are demonstrative of voice, concluding that voice is hard to define and has a metaphoric quality, possibly that of “soul.” Because voice is often assessed in student writing (i.e., the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing), teachers often seek to find concrete ways to find voice or to model it. This resource can be helpful for teacher inquiry groups as a guide to finding examples of voice through an action research project. Any school or district-level inquiry team could use this research to support curriculum development or to help understand that voice grows through the composing process.
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Author: Teri Hines, Bruce Bowers, and Vanessa Brown Summary: A vital resource for anyone planning an inquiry-based leadership program, this NWP monograph details the strategies and practices that define the Philadelphia Writing Project’s Leadership Inquiry Seminar, a yearlong institute designed to support the professional growth and reflective practice of urban educators as they examine their own pathways to leadership.
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Author: Susan Lytle Summary: In this article, Lytle observes that teacher-researchers aim primarily to teach better, a theme she finds illuminated in Atul Gawande’s Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, a physician-written book about the practice of medicine. She discusses why it makes a difference to ask those who work in a particular setting, whether medicine or education, to study and develop solutions to problems within that setting. Thought-provoking background reading on the importance of teacher inquiry, this resource may be useful for study groups or in workshops focused on beginning the inquiry process, and could serve as a valuable reading for anyone who must advocate for teachers to have a role in school reform.
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Summary: This advanced institute program overview from the Lake Michigan Writing Project could be a valuable resource for any sites looking to add an action research/teacher research component to their programming. The overview outlines program goals, objectives, key components, and expectations for participants, as well as a detailed and helpful breakdown of the focus for each of the academic year meetings. This short overview is an example of how to concisely convey the scope and desired outcomes of a program.
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Summary: This collection of materials on teacher inquiry was developed for a 2003 NWP Teacher Inquiry Communities Network online conference. A valuable resource for teachers who engage in or facilitate inquiry projects, the collection contains extensive and practical information on engaging in teacher inquiry including definitions, along with forms and processes of inquiry, dissemination/publication and support.
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Author: Jessica Early Summary: This article presents a model of how one group of teachers used inquiry to improve their understanding of student writing and revise their school’s curriculum accordingly. Specifically, they conducted action research on implementing Common Core standards in an Arizona urban charter school. Written by and for teachers, curriculum directors and administrators, it offers a case for encouraging teacher-led inquiry groups as a way to empower teachers and improve writing instruction for students.
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Author: KaaVonia Hinton, Yonghee Suh, Lourdes Colón-Brown, and Maria O’Hearn Summary: What happens when history and ELA teachers form a study group to develop understandings of disciplinary literacy and ways this new knowledge might affect each person’s practice? As members read and reflected together on historical fiction and nonfiction, they found that reading texts from both disciplines helped to more fully contextualize a historical period and promote historical empathy. This piece could generate ideas for forming similar study groups and provide an opportunity for teachers to delve into questions and issues related to disciplinary literacy within a professional development forum.
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Summary: Focusing on an inquiry group comprised of men who teach in elementary schools, this article discusses the unique issues faced by this group and how an inquiry process can support them in addressing those issues and sharing successful strategies. It includes the reading/viewing protocol used by the group to examine various publications they read over the course of their inquiry.
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Author: Tom Meyer, Fabiola Lieberstein-Solera, and Martha Young Summary: If you are planning professional development on the assessment of writing that involves students whose first language is not English, you may want to read this thoughtful article. The authors, the site director and two bilingual teacher leaders from the Hudson Valley Writing Project, describe an inquiry which focused on the question, “What if the writing rubrics we use don’t make sense to our bilingual students or their teachers?” By engaging in and studying a multi-faceted process of translating a rubric from English into Spanish, the team developed a rich approach to teacher reflection on student writing, assessment and writing instruction. Specific suggestions for planning are provided.
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Author: Lynne Yermanock Strieb Summary: In this chapter from her book, Inviting Families into the Classroom: Learning from a Life in Teaching, Streib draws on an extensive archive of documents (e.g., letters from parents, class newsletters, and detailed accounts of student-family interactions) accrued over a 30-year teaching career as a first- and second-grade public school teacher in Philadelphia. Capturing the complexity and nuance of working with the families, she candidly shows what can go wrong and how to overcome misunderstandings. These honest and thoughtful depictions of crossing cultural barriers could provide food for thought within a school/community study group or for professional development focused on building partnerships between school and families.
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Author: Marian M. Mohr, Betsy Sanford, Marion S. MacLean, Courtney Rogers, and Sheila Clawson Summary: A group of experienced K-12 teachers and teacher-consultants from the Northern Virginia Writing Project engaged in teacher inquiry for several years to improve their teaching. The process and the findings from their research reverberated throughout their school system and influenced how their schools were run. This chapter provides a clear and detailed definition of teacher research, and will be useful both as a guide for those planning to facilitate teacher inquiry and as an introductory reading for teachers participating in their first inquiry project.
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Author: JoBeth Allen and Lois Alexander Summary: This sample book chapter explains what teacher-led critical inquiry means in a social justice context. Useful in planning inquiry groups with a social justice focus, it also includes excellent content to help teachers to bring a social justice focus to their individual inquiry practice and encourage their students to take a critical inquiry stance in the classroom.
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Summary: A valuable resource for teacher inquiry into issues of race, equity and social justice, this bibliography includes key readings for those wishing to know more about the antiracist agenda of whiteness studies which recognize the need to identify “white” as a racialized category and a powerful symbol of privilege.
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Author: Ann Lieberman & Linda Friedrich Summary: For sites and individuals interested in exploring why teachers become leaders in their schools and communities and how they move into positions of leadership, this paper and accompanying slides provide a rich and in-depth look at stories from a research study of NWP teacher-leaders recognized as effective models of teacher leadership. Exemplary in its research methodology and rich in detail and examples of collaboration, coaching, reflective practice and professional growth within school reform contexts, these resources could be useful in study groups and a variety of other contexts where teachers seek to learn about teacher leadership and NWP social practices in action.
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Author: Sharon Miller Summary: In a compelling narrative laced with details of a teacher’s relationship as a co-researcher with Tony, a student in her class of seniors with special needs, and her own ethical struggles as a teacher-researcher, Sharon Miller provides insights into issues such as ownership of data, and the relationship between vulnerable populations and consent forms. The honest and respectful portrayal of her own experience provides lots of fodder for teacher inquiry communities to grapple with, whether students participate as informants or co-researchers.
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Author: Nancy Robb Singer and Diane Scollay Summary: Documenting a well-designed experimental study, this article offers clear evidence of the positive impact of teacher-led inquiry on student writing achievement. Teachers in the experimental group participated in inquiry-based professional development to increase understanding and application of effective writing pedagogy in their classrooms. Compared to a control group of teachers, the teacher-inquiry group demonstrated a broader range of writing tasks, longer duration of writing tasks, and explicit strategies to support students in making the reading/writing connection. In addition, students of teachers in the experimental group showed improved achievement in writing on a nationally scored assessment. This article represents an important resource in for leaders planning and/or advocating for an inquiry-based approach to professional development.
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Summary: The National Writing Project’s New-Teacher Initiative supported local writing project sites in expanding their work with early career teachers, placing a particular emphasis on the teaching and learning of writing in high-needs schools. A useful resource for leaders of professional development experiences for early career teachers, this annotated bibliography is a partial listing of the readings that have been most significant in the work of the New-Teacher Initiative. They address four areas: 1) the teaching of writing, 2) understanding culture and its implications for teaching and learning, 3) strengthening inquiry as a mode of learning, and 4) rethinking professional development for new teachers through participation in a professional community.
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Summary: This coaching guide and protocol from the Southern Colorado Writing Project may be a useful resource for program leaders looking for ways to support teachers in presenting their work to colleagues. While the protocol lays out a schedule and rationale for meetings between presenting teachers and their mentors, the guide provides a framework for establishing roles/relationships/responsibilities along with a set of questions that can be used to guide the thinking partners through the stages of identifying a question, researching the question(s), and creating a demonstration/inquiry workshop.
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Author: Jane Zeni Summary: Drawing on series of hypothetical episodes, Zeni explores a variety of ethical problems and dilemmas that arise when a teacher-researcher conducts research in their own classroom. This article could be valuable for prompting discussion and reflection at the early stages of an action research project.
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Author: Keri Franklin Summary: In this article, Keri Franklin provides ideas and methods to prepare student authors for meaningful peer conferences which promote social talk in students’ responses to peers’ writings. Students benefit from peer conferences by receiving ideas from an audience of peers and more feedback than one teacher can provide. This article is ideal for a teacher study group examining effective techniques for writing groups or peer revision/conferencing, as well as for a professional reading prior to writing-group time in a summer institute.
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Author: Carol Booth Olson and Robert Land Summary: This article documents a longitudinal research study conducted by members of the UC Irvine Writing Project in partnership with a large, urban school district in which 93 percent of the students are English language learners. Over an eight-year period, 55 secondary teachers implemented a cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction designed to make visible the thinking strategies that experienced readers and writers access in the process of constructing meaning. An important resource, this would be useful as a text for study in a professional development program or for individual teacher research. The project “was not just an abstract research study; it was a concrete attempt to level the playing field for specific EL students in a large urban school district through sustained, ongoing collaboration with a dedicated and committed group of teachers…” The consistency of positive outcomes on multiple measures strongly points to the efficacy of using this approach with EL students.
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Authors: Nanci Werner-Burke, Jane Spohn, Jessica Spencer, Bobbi Button, and Missie Morral Summary: This article describes how middle school teachers looked closely at their own practice with the goal of increasing student engagement. As they explored digital tools and multimodal texts and publishing, they came to recognize the need to interweave attention to the social aspects of students’ learning with their own teaching. In the process, four key ideas rose to the forefront: the use of writing as a tool for engagement and learning, the importance of preparing students to compete in an increasingly digitized world, the motivational appeal of the graphic novel genre, and the importance of interweaving social aspects of learning with teaching. The results of their inquiry may serve as an example of how teachers can examine their own writing and classroom practices to develop new strategies to engage their students.
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Author: Suzanne Linebarger Summary: Suzanne Linebarger, associate director of the Northern California Writing Project, describes how her site conducts an inservice program of model lessons that supports collective teacher inquiry into key concepts in teaching reading and writing. Useful for teacher leaders developing or leading school-based or outside professional development, the resource includes a sample schedule for a yearlong professional development program along with tools for evaluating student writing.
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Author: Beth Halbert Summary: Is leading a program for the site a new endeavor for you? Are you wondering, “what in the world did I get myself into?” Author and reluctant teacher leader Beth Halbert tells her story of being thrust into a site leadership role just two weeks before the start of the institute, demonstrating how remaining true to the NWP principle of “teachers teaching teachers” is foundational to the role of a successful teacher leader.
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Summary: Teacher leaders designing professional development programs will find this nine step coaching protocol useful. The resource outlines a cycle for working with teachers and describes how to coach participants through the stages of brainstorming, developing, presenting, reflecting on and revising a presentation/demonstration lesson/inquiry workshop. In addition, it offers “how-to” guidance, a timeframe, and overall goals with each coaching cycle.