“Reinvigorating.” This is the 1 word Shiyel, a 7th
grade English teacher from Grand Fork’s Valley Middle School, was most thinking
about at the halfway point of our weeklong C3WP Institute in Bismarck. In three
days, we’ve read:
2 political cartoons,
a short story,
chapters from Teach Arguments,
chapters from They
Say, I Say,
three text sets,
and two mentor texts.
We’ve written to discover our thinking and to craft nuanced
claims. We come from rural districts and large districts, 5th grade
classrooms and AP English, instructional coaching and math classrooms, a
teacher who hasn’t had her first day yet and a teacher starting year 26. And
instead of going home weary at the end of the day, teachers are “reinvigorated”.
This is my 9th Institute through the National
Writing Project as either participant or facilitator, so I expected this to be the
familiar ground I love about NWP: “Teachers of writing need to be writers” and
“Teachers teaching teachers.”It has been that, and more. This week I’ve learned teachers
of argument must engage in argument. As Heather, a middle school English teacher
from Underwood High School, perfectly captured, “Conflict is how you learn.”
Not only are teachers getting vulnerable engaging in
argument together, but they’re also getting vulnerable with teaching in front
of each other. But instead of teaching us the usual my-best-lesson-ever,
they’re teaching us a lesson from C3WP’s
Instructional Resources. In true workshop style, they’re co-planning
to refine the lesson, co-teaching to take risks with support, and then
receiving feedback and application ideas from their colleagues.
As Shiyel wrote, “Hard work is important work,” and I’m so
honored and reinvigorated to be a part of this group’s work.
No comments:
Post a Comment