Nancy at Se Hace Camino Al Andar is writing about her experiences at the Teacher College's Reading and Writing Project's Summer Writing Institute. As usual, she has some great thoughts and has taken useful pictures of her experience.
What I commented on her blog was that the most important point I see in what she's written is the idea that we are teaching the writer, not the piece of writing. See the post for my complete comments.
Something else that I thought about her post, but did not comment on was the relationship between what TC is probably training people on and how the NYC Department of Education mandates it be put into practice. The keyword there is 'mandate' - which goes completely against the main philosophy behind the TC approach. Since I'm not in the training, I can't say if there is a big discrepancy, but I'd put big money on there being one.
Funny you should mention "mandate." I thought about something similar today, but now I can't remember what... In any case, there hasn't been any formal directive at my school to follow TC's workshop model though I'm sure they would love it. They can't really force us to do it since our school is not structured for it. TC recommend 4, 45-minute periods a week devoted to writing workshop. Theoretically, I could do this in my Ramp-Up class since that's a double period and I plan to. As for my other, single-period, classes, I'll do the best I can to incorporate what I've learned, since I have found the workshops incredibly useful and empowering.
Posted by: Nancy | July 18, 2006 at 05:49 PM
Now we have a great walkway that goes to the beach and to the canals that came from the partnership of community with government
Posted by: North Face Down | December 29, 2011 at 04:12 PM