The Chippewa River Writing Project (CRWP), as a site of the National Writing Project (NWP), adheres to a model of “teachers teaching teachers,” and creates local teacher consultants who provide professional development experiences for their colleagues. Through opportunities such as our invitational summer institute, advanced institutes, and mentorship by site leaders, our teacher consultants are prepared to facilitate a variety of professional development sessions such as half- or whole-day staff workshops, classroom coaching, and week-long institutes.
The most powerful piece to this workshop involved the modeling, writing, and reflecting. I think we, as teachers, forget what it is like to be writers.
Our cohort of CRWP teacher consultants spans experts from all grade levels, elementary school through college, and can present on a variety of topics such as:
- NWP’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program;
- Creating a writing workshop;
- Conferring with student writers;
- Effective strategies for revision;
- Writing across the curriculum; and
- Integrating technology and writing.
Our professional development experiences engage participants in activities both as writers and teachers of writing. Specifically, we can offer workshops in 90 minute, 3 hour, or 6 hour formats and we aim to customize our services based on local needs for your students, staff, and school. Ideally, we would aim to work with a group of teachers at the school as part of a voluntary professional development experience, and would meet with them periodically over an entire school year, although we can offer one-time events as well.
The texts were pretty amazing and I’m glad that I was put into a situation to have to read them. So often, I read books over the summer and then have to wait to incorporate some of the ideas that look interesting. With this approach, I was able to more readily start changing my approach as the year progressed.
We have partnered with schools and intermediate school districts across Michigan, including:
- Byron Area Schools
- Carson City-Crystal Schools
- Charlevoix-Emmet ISD
- Clare-Gladwin RESD
- Gratioit-Isabella RESD
- Greenville Schools
- Kent County ISD
- Lansing Schools
- Traverse Bay Area ISD
Please contact our director, Troy Hicks, with questions that you might have about CRWP professional development opportunities.
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