EDU5614 Writing Workshop for Teachers and Young People
This summer session course takes place in two phases. In the first phase, a Writing Workshop for Teachers establishes a supportive community where teachers work as writers, explore their own writing process, look critically at writing craft, receive response to work in progress through writing conferences, and discuss the implications of this engagement for their teaching. Based upon the belief that engaging in writing can make a unique contribution to the teaching of writing, teachers learn to use a writer's tools more effectively and heighten their sensibilities to form and craft by examining the work of other authors. With the instructor and peer writers in this intensive workshop, students will learn how to invent, develop and revise material, as well as develop a repertoire of techniques to share with young people. The second phase of the course is a field experience in the teaching of writing, which mirrors phase one. It is designed to provide hands-on experience in the teaching of writing to elementary and secondary students. Emphasis is placed on building inviting, creative, interactive environments in which young people explore with teachers topics of their own choosing to create, develop, revise, edit, and publish their own work. This field experience will provide students with a model for conducting a writing workshop in their classrooms and for interacting with writers in conferences. The goal of this course is to develop a repertoire of techniques for teaching writing and a personal understanding of the idiosyncratic nature of writing.(Literacy Course)