School as Community | Professional Development

School as Community
Rebecca Erickson's fourth-grade students

Although all the teachers in COW get well acquainted during the summer session and occasional get-togethers, the eight from Laurelhurst Elementary who are participating this year have enjoyed a special bonding experience. "We've all had the same training. We all look at writing as an active process now. We talk more as peers, because we've made more connections. We share resources. It's created a real dialogue in this building about writing," says Wilcox.

While teachers are free to apply to COW individually, principals are starting to ask about involving their whole staff or a particular grade-level team. Generous grant support from community-based programs such as the Meyer Memorial Trust has helped the program grow. The summer workshop will expand this year to four separate weeks, to accommodate up to 120 teachers. Bradway, who has five teachers from her eight-person faculty at Wilcox participating this year, says the program "gets the whole building jazzed about writing," including students, parents, and teachers. "In my 25 years of education," the principal adds, "this is one of the best [professional development] programs I've ever seen."

The roster of writers also continues to grow as word gets out about the program. It doesn't hurt with recruiting, Colton admits, that writers are paid for their time. Added value comes from stronger school-community ties. Writers who are active in the program often wind up being cheerleaders for the work that teachers do every day.

Theoretically, all this attention to developing teachers' skills should result in stronger student writing skills. To track the impact of COW, researchers from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory are assessing student writing samples at the start and end of the year. An earlier evaluation, conducted during the 1997-98 school year, showed a positive impact on both student achievement and teaching practice. Participating students wrote more, liked writing more, and became more competent writers. Teachers collaborated more with their peers, felt less isolated in the classroom, improved their own writing skills, and became more open to trying new methods of teaching writing, according to the NWREL evaluation.

But objective measurements — so important in this era of achievement, accountability, and writing assessments — will tell only part of the story of Community of Writers, predicts Laurelhurst Principal Teri Geist. Sometimes, growth happens in more subtle, less measurable ways. "Let's say you have a few kids who were at risk of needing remedial help at the start of the school year. A visiting sportswriter or poet might grab their interest or trigger a new way for them to approach writing. Maybe they get inspired and manage to write a clear paragraph. That's huge!" she says, for students, teachers, and all the rest of the community that celebrates writing.