The ELC Writing Teacher News

When I started my full-time job last fall, I looked for a way to encourage professional development reflection in teachers. I also needed a way to help teachers feel that my observations in their teaching was meaningful. Although I am still looking for opportunities to improve both these goals, I have found some successful in the ELC Writing Teacher News.

What is it? It's a once or twice a semester newsletter that I use to communicate with teachers. In the first issue, I included one paragraph highlighting each writing teacher. I discussed one teaching idea that I learned during my observations of the teachers. I hoped that this would help the teachers in multiple ways:

• Help them to recognize that I paid attention during their observations
• Build their confidence by praising aspects of their teaching
• Encourage them to discuss and collaborate with one another

In addition, I hoped that it would help me exercise my writing skills, especially with a more specific and applied audience than most of my schoolwork writing had been.

I also used the newsletter to highlight particular themes in the teaching of writing, such as helping students to avoid plagiarism. This past week, as I was reviewing my notes from the Writing Matters seminar, I felt it would be valuable to synthesize my learning into the latest edition of the ELC Writing Teacher News. So, even though I am not working full-time this term, I am hoping to stay in contact with the teachers whom I serve, by sharing with them the professional development opportunities I am experiencing while I am "away."

Not only does this have the benefit of communicating with teachers, but I have found that it helped me better understand what it is that I learned last week:

Writing about it helped me learn it.

This key idea is a concept that Gary and Beth tried to communicate in the seminar last week, but I'm not sure I reallyt got it until I did it for myself. It's also an idea that is developing in my IPT 692R course: we learn by writing. It's a basic, and yet remarkable idea. Writing is more than just communication to the audience. It's also reflection and learning on the part of the writer. Makes me glad to be a writer. And a writing teacher.