Evolution+of+a+Workshop+Teacher

**Evolution of a Workshop Teacher:**  **The Essential Truths ** It’s one thing to read Nancie Atwell, Katie Wood Ray, Jeff Anderson and Penny Kittle—but implementing a workshop classroom is an altogether different beast. While workshops function as organic and authentic reading and writing communities, they do not emerge without deliberate work. In this session, teachers from three different school districts, in different places in their workshop journey, filling various roles in the classroom, talk about surviving the first years of work and experimentation in this student-led pedagogy.

In order to provide a platform for discussion, an interactive reading and writing lesson is embedded in this session. At a past NCTE conference, even Nancie Atwell was asked, “How are all of the kids reading different books?” In order to address this concern and alleviate some of this students-working-all-over-the-place anxiety, all participants will be given different literary selections to read, respond, and use for writing. The following minilesson, whole group discussion and participant writing will then illustrate and connect common literary skills and concepts. By modeling a workshop in this session, we hope to lend authenticity to the “truths” at the core of the discussion.

The “Ten Essential Truths” that centerpiece our session arose in the context of a Workshop Support Group that meets once a month at our county Educational Service Center. The sharing and collaborating and visiting of one another’s classrooms, however, began in the years before. This monthly support among like-minded, but often befuddled-by-workshop colleagues, created the platform and clarity to distill the many hours of conversation to ten essential truths that continue to bubble to the surface.

Our Workshop “Truths” range from frameworks to philosophy, from planning to assessment, from organizational strategies to resources. Each “truth” will pose a question, and panelists will discuss the answers that have emerged in her classroom and experiences. With each truth, we will also share the classroom artifacts and valuable professional resources that have helped us to forge through the first, tentative years. While handouts for the nuts and bolts will be shared, we will remained focused on emerging classroom philosophy and the epic realizations we have made along the way.

=Saturday, November 19 = Session F.27, 8-9:15 AM Palmer House/Salon 8/9, Third Floor