On Tuesday, I shared a visual intended to help teachers conceptualize the whole of a writing workshop year before sharing a unit framework that middle level teachers might use to investigate social justice beside their students. Today, I’d like to show you the dashboard behind this kind of unit design. Those who have worked with me inside of writing workshops and studios are sometimes surprised to learn that I’m a fan of standards and other clear…
Here’s the short story, as most people I’m familiar with tend to tell it: Design thinking emerged from failed attempts to create innovative products and bring them to market. Traditional models for getting this sort of thing done suffered from a few serious flaws, so the people who cared about getting things right started making some significant shifts in practice. For instance, rather than inventing things they assumed would be useful and reacting to sales and…
This post is my fifth and last in a series about organizational story writing. In the first post, I described the form and spoke about why organizational story writing matters. In the second post, I shared my approach for facilitating a listening session. The third post defined story writing as more than a mere marketing tool. It’s a process that leads to individual growth and organizational improvement. The fourth post focused on the importance of…
More and more often, I’m invited to work not only with school districts, but with other organizations that are interested in telling their stories. Stories matter. They center us. They propel us forward. They change the trajectories of our work and our lives and the lives of the people we serve. They’re bigger than branding, and they’re far more than marketing tools. That’s why it’s important to value the story writing process as much as…
In Make Writing, I share the three layer design process that I’ve used each time I’ve set up my own makerspaces or helped school districts develop their own: First we establish the substructure of the space, which is prepared before we open the doors of the space. Then, we assess the needs and interests of the makers we serve during the start-up phase, which begins when the kids walk in the door. As individual writers begin to…
This spring, I had the opportunity to work with teachers from southern Erie and Cattaraugus Counties. Our initial sessions challenged teachers to define writers’ craft, the process, and the values and habits of masterful writers. Then, we considered how the progression of these skills and dispositions builds and evolves as experience is gained. Teachers returned to their classrooms with new ideas to consider and test. As I prepared to see them again last week, I hoped that…
I’ve spent much of this school year designing writing curricula with primary, elementary, and middle school teachers in different schools throughout western New York. Our process is iterative: We don’t design to deliver units to students. We are prototyping, piloting, and redesigning as we go, in response to what we learn from our clients: The young writers we serve. There is much to be gained by rethinking our roles as curriculum designers and the way…
Pedagogical documentation enables us to capture learning made visible and assess our students’ strengths and needs without disrupting the learning process. One potential anecdote to the testing mess, documentation inspires us to create rich narratives that deepen our understanding of learners and their experiences. This is a beautiful thing. Experience is teaching me that pedagogical documentation is also incredibly complex work that is not without its challenges. For instance, helping teachers and students choose the…
The Backstory: I’ve spent the last week helping Heather Bitka and Rachel O’Sheehan launch a brand new makerspace in Roy B. Kelley School in Lockport. This project began with solid visioning work that challenged all of us to think about and then rethink about what would happen in that space, how, and most importantly: why. This week has been an incredible learning experience for me, as I’ve tested new professional learning approaches and protocols while…
This post continues a conversation that I started last week about visible learning, documentation, and the use of Grounded Theory methodologies. My thinking and work has evolved over time, in response to the learning I’m fortunate enough to do at the WNY Young Writer’s Studio and inside of various western New York school districts. Studio teachers use these approaches to fuel independent action research as they strive to uncover instructional practices that truly meet the…