I believe in “walking the walk”. I believe that one of the reasons that my 4th graders read a tremendous amount of books each year, is because I read a tremendous amount of books. My passion and love for reading rubs of on my students.
I would like to have the same effect on my writers. I’m not saying that I’m a bad writing teacher or that my students do not write a lot. What I’m saying, is that I feel that I will be a better teacher if I write more. One of my biggest issues as a writer is going through the entire writing process. I find that many of my in class writing lessons are focused on selecting topics, planning, and drafting. Revising, editing, and publishing are parts of the process that I tend to avoid. Can you guess which parts of the writing process my students struggle with?
I am hoping that participating in Kate Messner’s Teachers Write Program will provide me with the support to “walk the walk”. It helps that two of my favorite people, Jen Vincent and Gae Polisner, are on Kate’s Teachers Write team. I’m very excited and a little bit nervous to being this adventure. I still have one more week of school, but I plan to get started as soon as I can.
If you’d like more information on Teachers Write, please click on the badge below. Wish me luck!
sharpread 
I am all signed up and so excited! I talk all the time about how important it is to walk the talk and do it with my reading but not my writing. Can’t wait to get started!
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I’m looking forward to Teachers Write, too. The areas that you struggle with are the same ones I struggle with as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher, I look around at other classrooms in my school and see students publishing stories but they all look the same to me. Still, they look “nice”. I find that the editing, revising, and publishing pieces of writing can be tedious for kids, especially in the early grades. I still haven’t found a balance for doing this effectively so that learning is happening rather than mechanical compliance with my requirements. As a writer I also find it difficult to revise and publish. It’s the going public that makes it hard for me. If I can delay (or avoid) publishing anything, then I’m OK. My secret is intact because “they” will never realize that I’m a lousy writer after all. Sigh.
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I too am really excited to begin this process. I teach writing to middle school English Learners, but I struggle each and every day to balance the content with the language structure and finding time to both revise and edit, even in a class devoted to writing. I am glad I found your blog on twitter, as it sounds like you have the knowledge of the latest books out there. I am searching for new, meaningful mentor text.
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I loved writing with my students & when I now get to teach a group in some writing way, it’s fun all over again. It includes me directly in the process when I am struggling with some of the same issues as the students. I’m looking forward to writing with you, Colby (and hundreds of others I hear). Hope you have a good time!
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Good luck! Although you don’t need luck, you are here and you are going to try and that already makes you successful. I love that you realize what you want to do better as a teacher and are doing this with that in mind. Recognizing our weaknesses is a good step to making them into strengths.
When I think about your students and the readers you encourage them to be and the discussions you have with them about reading, it seems like you will be able to carry that over into peer editing. They already can read and talk about what they have read, so now you have to have them read each other’s writing and have them talk about that. And you have them collaborating with other classes and talking about books, so now what if they share their writing either orally or as written text, with those classes, too? I think you have such an awesome foundation in the reading community that you develop to expand it into a writing community. I love it!!!
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