Teachers Writing, Healing, and Resisting

For at least the past twenty years, writing education and writing teacher education have been carried out in more and more tightly managed, neoliberally influenced policy conditions as well as worsening conditions of inequality in educational resources based on both race and on income. The result is increasingly dehumanizing conditions for teaching and learning writing. This context intersects in interesting ways with the notion of the teacher-writer. This essay re-raises and reframes the idea of the teacher-writer to open up possibilities for both resilience, and resistance-- both in teachers’ individual lives, and for teachers in the collective sense

“It’s a Two-Way Street”: Giving Feedback in a Teacher Writing Group

Abstract: A consistent feature of teacher writing groups is the giving and receiving of feedback on writing. While there have been several studies that have explored the effects of receiving feedback on one\u27s own writing, there have only been a few that explored the effects of providing feedback to others can have on a teacher’s own work. Drawing on interviews with teacher-writers who work together in a writing group, we conclude that giving feedback transforms the writing lives of all participants involved in the feedback process through experiences of reciprocity, involving claiming authority within a community of writers, developing rapport, and challenging hierarchies of writing teacher and writing student

“It Sounds Wrong” vs. “I Would Be Curious”: Challenges in Seeing Students as Writers in a School-University Partnership

This article presents qualitative data and a pedagogical reflection from two teacher educators as they consider a writing partnership between preservice teachers in their methods course and a class of middle school writers. The purpose of the partnership was to help preservice teachers think about students not just for the purposes of evaluation and grading, but as writers, and, more importantly, as human beings. Authors present their inquiry and the challenges that arose as a result of the project, including reflections on the partnership from preservice teachers

Forum: Teacher-Writers: Then, Now, and Next

In this article, the authors reflect upon “the teacher as writer” and describe how they see this concept and movement developing. They articulate a view of the teacher-writer as empowered advocate. Using examples from their scholarship, they illustrate how this powerful idea can transform research conducted about and with teachers. Finally, they draw attention to the potential of the teacher-writer stance as a means of resistance to current reform efforts that disempower teachers

Experience Over All: Preservice Teachers and the Prizing of the \u27Practical\u27

Anyone who has worked with preservice teachers has occasionally felt the vehemence of their desire for more “practical” material and less (or, sometimes, no) material they deem “theory.” By “theory” they seem to mean not only theory in the classic sense but also any evidence from research, discussion of ethics or socioeconomic issues or policy, or other aspects of the context for teaching. By “practical” they seem to mean concrete activities that they can use in the classroom the next day with little or no modification or reflection. Tensions between theory and practice permeate the work of English teacher education, reaching into every area of our work all the way down to course organization and the methods texts we choose (Barrell, 1996; Smagorinsky & Whiting, 1995). “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” we have heard a preservice teacher remark to her classmate. These attitudes are ones we notice most as students enter our programs, most likely inherited from a wider prejudice against “over-theoretical” education programs spread via mass media reporting on education issues and at times by teachers themselves, and as students begin to engage their coursework in earnest these attitudes do soften. Yet as they approach their first field experiences, preservice teachers do seem hungry to know exactly how to teach—and if we know how, they seem to plead, why won’t we just tell them

Understanding Teachers’ Writing: Authority in Talk and Texts

In this article, we explore how teachers who make their work public through talk and texts may find their composing complicated by issues of authority. These public composing acts include drafting articles, preparing workshop presentations, authoring op-ed pieces and letters to the editor, developing book manuscripts – creating any of the spoken and written texts by which educators communicate as a field. We draw from three studies in different contexts to examine the authority concerns that teacher-writers experience during the composing process. Our aim is to draw attention to (a) the struggles in process that teachers face as they develop individual pieces and wrestle with rhetorical decisions, as well as (b) the struggles with people, power, and authority that occur as teachers consider how their words, ideas, and experiences circulate in public venues. We see these as intrinsically linked: The writing process is a site where the wider struggles are played out and become visible

Coaching Teacher-Writers: Practical Steps to Nurture Professional Writing

When teachers write, good things can happen; writing helps educators to better understand themselves, as well as students, parents, and colleagues. This practical book illustrates how to encourage, lead, and sustain teacher-writers, especially in group contexts. In contrast to guides on writing and teacher research, this book is designed for those who support teacher-writers, such as teacher educators and literacy coaches. The authors offer descriptions of key practices they have developed over years of coaching, teaching, and collaborating with K-12 teachers who write about classroom instruction, teacher research, or advocacy for better policy and pedagogy. Knowing firsthand just how hard writing can be for teachers, they provide a repertoire of strategies to elicit writing, to support teachers as they write, to find audiences for the teachers work, and much more.https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/books/1052/thumbnail.jp

Teacher-Writers: Then, Now, and Next

In this article, we reflect upon “the teacher as writer” and describe how we see this concept and movement developing. We articulate a view of the teacher-writer as empowered advocate. Using examples from our scholarship, we illustrate how this powerful idea can transform research conducted about and with teachers. Finally, we draw attention to the potential of the teacher-writer stance as a means of resistance to current reform efforts that disempower teachers