Can you remember when you learned to write? I can’t. Not really. I remember the lined paper and the fat pencils. I remember trying to have the very best penmanship because I wanted my name listed on the chart that covered the side of my teacher’s desk. I remember that writing came pretty easily. I was one of those students. My teachers loved me because I was well-behaved, listened, learned, and made all A’s.

I do not teach those students. Well, maybe a few, but most of them would be my antonym if my student-self were a word.

When I began teaching, I had no idea that my students would not be like me. I know, funny, right? I thought I could teach them comma rules, show them where the commas went, and I would see beautifully crafted commas in all the right places. (Don’t even get me started on the period.)

I had to learn to be a writing teacher.

Thank God for the North Star of Texas Writing Project. Fortunately, for me and the hundreds of students I’ve instructed since, I’ve learned how to create a community that fosters a love (or at least some days, a tolerance) of the written word.

A couple of weeks ago, the leadership team of NSTWP met and crafted the tenets of our site. We decided that community encompasses and interweaves itself throughout our work, and authenticity, inquiry, modeling, dialogue, and re-visioning make it shine.

A few of us jumped on a Google doc yesterday to craft our proposal for NCTE 2013 where we defined our points and described how we would share them at the conference. This got me thinking about my own practice:  do I walk the walk as well as I talk the talk?

Here’s a glimpse into our thinking, plus a little of my own:

Community— Trust, communication, sharing, feedback, and transparency all lead to a safe place for learning. Community is the core of a workshop classroom, so it must be a constant focus. (National Writing Project, Gomez, 2010) Read-alouds, and classroom and school-wide book clubs, among other relationship-building activities, can all help build community.

Authenticity— How do we make learning real? By allowing for real life connections and experiences. When we expose students to real-life situations and allow them choice in topics, we can engage them more effectively, stimulate more critical thinking, and get them to read more abundantly. At the end of 2011 only three young people in ten now read daily in their own time, down from five out of ten in 2005 (Secondary Annual Literacy Survey, 2011). How do we change lives? We allow students choice. Just as in reading, students must have choice in writing; teachers must allow students to choose topics that interest and intrigue them, and they must allow students to publish in mediums and to audiences that students believe matter, i.e., student created blogs, ebooks, and portfolios.

Inquiry— An inquiry stance goes beyond the use of essential questioning and places the creative thought process into the hands of students, inviting them to questions in every aspect of literacy from responding to texts, engaging in research, to broadening their horizons as writers.  An effective response protocol that fosters inquiry can be adapted and applied to a myriad of literacy experiences.

Dialogue— Authentic conversation transforms classroom community. Learners take ownership of their craft and develop a sense of agency in a student-centered approach to dialogue.  In Choice Words (2004), Peter H. Johnston explains that language “creates realities and invites identities.” Thus, dialogue in our classroom becomes an essential part of student growth.

Modeling— An integral part of literacy instruction, modeling as reader and writer is essential to an effective workshop classroom. Mentor texts that engage students and provide for in-depth study of craft allow for authentic reading and writing experiences.

Re-visioning– NSTWP invented this word to describe the complexity involved in revising our instruction and engaging students in revision of their work. Adaptive Action, “the iterative process we use to leverage unpredictable change for individuals” is crucial to making workshop work. (Adaptive Action, 2013). Conferences, written feedback, and portfolios can all be managed and used to revise our classrooms.

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