Professional Writing

Five invitations or beginnings to spark writing about education:

1) What story (or stories) of teaching--a particular moment, a particular student or group of students--do you find yourself going back to...either because it was a moment of celebration, or something happened that still leaves you puzzled?

2) Focus on one moment in your teaching (or work) life where you and others struggled, where things did not go right immediately (or ever). It could be a unit or project, a particular student, a colleague, or a class. What had been your goal? What was an obstacle to your goal? What did you do or say? What happened? What powerful learning can you take from this "rich point"?

3) What is one of the most important ideas/beliefs in your teaching (or work) philosophy? Explain this belief and its ramifications. How did you come to this belief? Who taught you this? How do you apply this belief in what you do and say? What tells you or shows you this belief is important?

4) If you could teach your colleagues the things you've learned that would make their lives better or their work with students more successful, what would these things be? List them. Choose one or two, then try to think about the stories that would help illustrate your points and serve as evidence.

5) If you could speak persuasively to parents or to legislators, what would you want to persuade them to do or think? Why? What stories or evidence could you set forth that might be persuasive?

Some suggestions:

Consider regarding workshops and presentations as "rough drafts" for professional writing.

Consider everything as data, from your scribbled plans to your reflective journal, to the samples of student work to the notes you make on conversations you have with students, to handouts, to photos of work-in-process and in final form.

Try to save lots of "stuff" from 1-3 students over the course of the year.

These days, maybe it can start as a blog post and work its way to a published article.

You're usually entering a conversation that is already happening within the profession-who is speaking to whom about the general topic of your focus? What do you have to contribute that can further the discussion?

In our Google folder there is a subfolder called "Professional Writing." Within that folder are lots of links to calls for articles and blogs by teacher-writers: Professional Writing Links