Teaching Writing in High School: Infusing the Best of Workshop Methods into Secondary ELA

Wednesday, October 28 - Friday, October 30, 2020

Institute will be offered virtually through Zoom.

Grade: 9-12, for ELA
Hours: 11am-5pm Eastern Standard Time
Featuring: Mary Ehrenworth, Kat Schecter, and Philip Seyfried
Payment: Purchase orders for this institute can be made out to: Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, 525 W 120th Street, Box 77, New York, NY 10027

Writing workshop, with its carefully honed instructional methods and its structures for independence and agency, was born in the crucible of graduate writing programs, from investigative journalism to MFA programs for fiction and memoir writers. Yet sometimes high school ELA can drift from the essential structures and knowledge of writing process that help writers of any age become skilled and confident. When that happens, it’s because there is a knowledge gap for teachers or a crisis in how to fit significant writing instruction and practice into a high school schedule. We’ll tackle those challenges with you.

Join us to hone your craft as a powerful teacher of writing. We will begin with memoir writing and move from that to essay writing. Inside of these genres, our focus will be on methods—on writing process, demonstration, ways of working with mentor texts, and techniques for giving students intimate and transformational feedback. We’ll also support you in developing your students’ skills at being writing partners, so they are better prepared to support each other through the writing process.

The truth is that we know how to help kids become better writers. Writers like Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Don Murray, author of a Writer Teaches Writing, laid the groundwork for us to help any student— and any adult—become more confident and skilled. We simply need to weave that knowledge into our curriculum, our structures, and our own ideas about writing. Join us to make becoming a better writer in high school something that is attainable for all our students, in every class.

Cost

$650/$600 NYC DOE

Where

This institute will be offered online, in real-time via Zoom, and will not be recorded for later distribution. We will accept attendees until the institute has reached capacity.