WORKSHOPS

T&W Offers Workshops for November 2
Staff Development Day

With the approach of Election Day on November 2 and New York City’s fall staff development day, Teachers & Writers Collaborative has begun preparing for professional development workshops at schools throughout the city. T&W programs are not only for students! Our professional development workshops provide inspiration and practical teaching methods and tools for K-12 teachers and administrators.

During the 2009-2010 school year, T&W writers led more than 40 professional development workshops at 30 schools and community sites in New York City. Last year, T&W provided professional development workshops focused on:

• improving the rigor of elementary-school students’ writing, their writing stamina, and use of significant details;
• integrating creative writing in middle-school history and science classes;
• teaching Shakespeare to high-school students;
• providing effective feedback on student writing and teaching the revision process;
• best practices in teaching writing to students with autism and other special needs, and to those identified as English language learners;
• best practices in teaching journalism, literary response, memoir, poetry, and realistic fiction.

T&W also provided multi-day professional development seminars in 2009-2010, as well as professional development periods included as part of ongoing writing programs for students.

Most T&W professional development workshops serve 10 to 25 teachers. Schools that partner with T&W in professional development programs typically receive:

• A two-hour workshop tailored to the school’s specific needs in a genre of the school’s choice; workshops can also focus on how to work creatively with and across the curriculum and/or with special populations, specific authors, and New York State Learning Standards.
• Hands-on writing exercises for teachers that immerse them in the process of writing.
• Concrete ideas, solutions, and lessons that teachers can take back to their classrooms.
• A relevant T&W book or an issue of Teachers & Writers magazine for all participating teachers.

The following comments are from teachers who participated in T&W professional development workshops last spring at PS/MS 4X in Crotona Park, Bronx:
• “Nicole [the T&W writer] gave us wonderful ideas and engaged us in stimulating conversations and activities. My co-teacher and I are looking forward to using these ideas with our students!”-Ana Rodriguez
• “This was one of the few PDs where we could actually turn the material into a lesson tomorrow.”-C.S. Kenny
To learn more about T&W professional development programs, please call 212-691-6590, e-mail workshops@twc.org, or visit www.twc.org/workshops/professional-development.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Free Resources From Teachers & Writers Magazine

This fall, Teachers & Writers Collaborative continues to mine its rich history of resources from Teachers & Writers magazine to provide techniques to help writers and teachers looking for new and creative ways of teaching writing. This month’s new posting on the T&W website is Bill Zavatsky’s article, “If Dogs Fly, Let Them Fly! Writing a Dream Poem,” about teaching his high-school students to forge a connection with the deeply personal language of their dreams and using those rich images for poetic inspiration. Check back next month at www.twc.org/resources/techniques for upcoming additions to this trove of free resources to support the teaching of writing.

BECHTEL PRIZE

Garth Greenwell Wins 2010 Bechtel Prize for “A Native Music: Writing the City in Sofia, Bulgaria”

Garth Greenwell has won the 2010 Bechtel Prize for “A Native Music: Writing the City in Sofia, Bulgaria.” In his essay, Greenwell takes readers into his experience of teaching writing to Bulgarian high-school students in their last few months before graduation from the American College in Sofia.

Greenwell’s submission and the finalists for the award were selected by Phillip Lopate. Lopate is a novelist, essayist, poet, critic, and member of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative Board of Directors.

T&W awards the Bechtel Prize annually in recognition of an exemplary article or essay related to literary arts education. In addition to Greenwell, two other writers were honored by having Lopate select their submissions as finalists for the 2010 Bechtel Prize:

• Wilson Diehl, Seattle, Washington: “Getting Creative with the Truth”
• Barbara Feinberg, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York: “Your First Lime”

“A Native Music” will appear in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of Teachers & Writers magazine and will be posted on the T&W website in December. The submission deadline and guidelines for the 2011 Bechtel Prize will be posted on the website by January 1, 2011. (www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize)
Questions regarding the Bechtel Prize should be directed to bechtel.