Making Writing Workshop the New “Norm”

After viewing Dr. Cross’s TedX Talk entitled “Three Myths of Behavior Change-What You Think You Know But Don’t”, I have become enlightened to an entirely new set of tools that I can use to my advantage in order to get my colleagues on board with my innovation plan to make authentic writing a seamlessly every day part of learning in the lives of our students. As Dr. Cross suggests, we do not necessarily pay attention to our own common sense when we are trying to influence an important group of people in our lives or organization in order to make positive changes. After focusing on her main points I have reflected and devised a plan of action in order to make the changes necessary to make our students better writers, not only in English classes, but in every area of their study and their lives.

Vital Behaviors

• Teachers deliberately develop lesson plans that will allow students to write in authentic ways within their subject areas.

• Staff models the appropriate use of constructive criticism both inside and outside of the classroom, not only with students, but also with each other.

• Focus on the use and sharing of ePortfolios for personal weekly learning reflection amongst both staff and students.

Obvious

We are already one to one with devices for every student and staff member. We have the capability to have students create a space (blog or ePortfolio) where they can write and reflect about what they are learning without having to make any extra work for ourselves. We have the capability to form groups where students and faculty can share their thoughts and constructive criticisms during classes or during built in mentoring periods. The groundwork is there, we just need to make authentic learning experiences through writing happen for our students. We will be able to accomplish this goal by allowing planning time for teachers to create and incorporate these authentic writing opportunities for their students. Administrators need to allow time for the staff to plan, for students to write, and for all of us to reflect and share about our learning experiences together in order to form this real learning community.

Crucial

The main shift of focus has to be in our critical culture. Both staff and students need to be able to have open and honest conversations about the learning process with each other without feeling attacked by anyone. We are all on the same team and have to focus on the same goals, which should be improving our students' learning experiences. If we give ourselves the time to create authentic learning opportunities for our students through writing across the curriculum, which has been one of our district goals for as long as I can remember, we may actually finally achieve it. If we all start to model how to self reflect on our own learning experiences with our students, we can teach them the importance of learning how they learn. Creating this sort of open and trusting atmosphere in our school is crucial if we want to see growth.

Positive Deviants

Thankfully many of the teachers and administrators in our building are gifted at forming trusting relationships with students. Many of them are also not afraid of letting students speak their minds and would be comfortable with engaging their students in a writing self reflection process. I believe that if the plan is presented to the staff and students in a way that it seems as though there will be a minimal amount of effort that they have to put in to get it all started, that they would all very easily “buy in” to the plan.

I believe that in this case, the students themselves, will be the greatest positive deviants. Once they create their own space (blog or ePortfolio) where they can write/journal and reflect on their learning, they will be able to share this with their peers and the rest of the staff. I would love to have students present their writing through their ePortfolio use to the faculty during a professional development day. They could teach the teachers how to create the ePortfolios that they would be using personally as well as with their students. This sharing experience would help build the type of open constructive criticism culture that we need in our building in order for us all to grow as learners.

Culture Busted

Students becoming facilitators will help to change the entire environment of our building. Creating a sense of community and trust where we show students that we believe that we can learn from them will show them that we are serious in our commitment to create a safe place where students should be allowed to learn what they want to learn from us and each other. Sharing writing, be it an essay, poetry, or self reflection is always scary for students because it is extremely personal. However, once we create an environment where everyone feels that their ideas are valued, this will no longer be an issue. Students and faculty alike, will become more open to sharing their ideas, their learning experiences, and their writing. Asking the students what they are interested in learning more about or what they feel they can change through their writing will not only get them vested in their studies, but will also help them improve their writing skills.

6 Sources of Influence

After reviewing the vital behaviors that I wish to change, I believe that incorporating the following sources of influence will help bring about the most change:

Personal Motivation: I want to motivate my colleagues and my students by challenging them to think about or remember their “why”. Allowing students to use technology to assist in their writing process will create stronger learners (if we show them how).

Personal Ability: Teachers will be allotted time to work together to discuss how they have been implementing writing workshop practices into their classrooms. Teachers can discuss and help each other with which strategies have been working well and which ones haven’t been as effective.

Social Motivation: The use of writing and the sharing of ideas between administrators, teachers, and students will become a common occurrence by allowing ample time for writing in classes and the use of weekly ePortfolio self reflection in each course.

Social Ability: Offer support and examples to teachers and administrators of how they can incorporate more writing into their classrooms.

Structural Motivation: Have students and staff share their learning experiences and accomplishments through video spot on a morning television show once a (week/month).

Structural Ability: Provide training, example lessons, and support for teachers on how they can incorporate more writing into their daily lessons through technology use and self reflection.

Measuring the Change

I believe that the best way to measure the change that will take place will be to give all students, staff, and administrators a brief survey at the beginning of the school year and the end of the first semester to gauge the amount of importance that everyone places on the use of writing, constructive criticism and the reflection process. The following questions would be asked and answered using a 5 point scale (1 being the lowest/5 being the highest):

• Do you believe that becoming a better writer will help you achieve your goals academically?

• Do you believe that becoming a better writer will help you achieve your goals professionally?

• Do you believe that learning how to accept constructive criticism in a safe environment will help you become a better learner/teacher?

• Do you believe that self reflection on your own learning/teaching experiences will help you grow as a learner/teacher?

I hope to see an increase of both student and staff engagement of at least 3 points by the end of the first semester.

It is my hope that by the end of the school year all teachers will be incorporating more authentic writing opportunities, even if they are only having their students self reflect on their own learning experiences once a week. The more we engage our students in the writing process through authentic writing opportunities, the more they will be engaged in their own learning process. The end goal for administration is that our test scores will increase. Our end goals as facilitators of the learning process is for our students to become better learners. I believe that through this plan we will be able to achieve both of these goals and much more.

References:

Cross, J. (2013, March 20). Three myths of behavior change-What you think you know that you don’t: Jeni Cross at TEDxCSU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5d8GW6GdR0

Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer: The new science of leading change. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.