In this series,  we will discuss various issues related to writing workshop, not only as a way to bounce ideas off of one another (which we do constantly), but also to demonstrate that there are many ways to run a workshop while still being faithful to the method. Today, we’re discussing why and how we got started with this crazy thing.

How did you discover (or re-discover) writing workshop? What was the appeal?

Taylor: For me, using writing workshop has not been a re-discovery but a constant search for just how I could use it in my high school classroom.  I read all the same books that most future-English teacher read in college, but I had the unique experience of seeing a true Atwellian style workshop in action.  For the first half of my student teaching, I worked with a sixth grade Language Arts teacher who mini-lessoned and drafted and conferenced the heck out of some 11-year-olds!   I saw workshop work.  Of course, I saw the other end of the spectrum (“Julius Caesar essay due Tuesday.  Five paragraphs, double-spaced.”) in my second, 11^th grade placement.

When I got my own job, my kids were in 9^th grade, somewhere in between those 11-year-olds and the 11^th graders.  Starting my first year, I tried to find a form of writing workshop that would fall somewhere in between, too.  I’m still trying.

Seeing both of those classrooms – one in which kids were excited about writing and actually getting better at it, and one in which the traditional methods were producing lifeless, apathetic writing and writers – is what motivated me (and continues to motivate me) to apply the principles of WW.

Rebekah:  For me, it was pure desperation.  I had read In the Middle in my teacher prep program. I was told that this is the way to teach writing. But, let’s be honest, In the Middle is about middle school — a place I hoped to avoid — and everything was such a blur in teacher prep that I just skimmed through it. I figured I would worry about writing instruction later.

After five or six years of pushing off  developing a philosophy for my writing instruction — and pretty much just assigning papers — I realized that I kept hitting a big, brick writing wall. The papers were terrible. I was miserable.  The only person who learned anything about writing was me — that this wasn’t the way to teach it.  I thought back to In the Middle and again dismissed it (because that can’t work in high school!). That’s when Taylor discovered Penny Kittle, and everything changed.

So, how has your workshop evolved over the years? What did you try in the beginning that you’ve gotten rid of? What elements have you added? What has remained constant?

Taylor: The most significant ways my workshop has evolved “over the years” (I feel silly saying this, since it’s only been 3 and a half!) are:

-         It has shifted from piecemeal to planned.

-         I devote more class time to it.

When I started, I was using elements of WW, all of which I still use – giving students choice, conferencing, mini-lessons, etc.  However, I didn’t give much thought to how the individual elements would work together and to the various systems and routines I would have to put in place to support the workshop.  The summer before my third year, I sat down and considered every aspect of the workshop experience I could think of, from what kind of folders we would need to rules during writing times to how I would determine grades, and that gave me a whole new level of purpose and intention.

Time was also a game-changer.  My first couple years, we “did workshop” when it was convenient, which was not necessarily every day (we had posters to make, after all!  Ah, the silly things I thought I had to do to “engage” students…).  Now, WW gets time every day, consistently.  It’s just that important.

Rebekah: Since I taught writing so poorly for so many years, I didn’t really have a writing workshop adjustment period. I jumped in whole-hog from the get-go.  Trial by fire.

I have changed some little tiny, insignificant bits here and there — like my grammar instruction (working it into the workshop as opposed to making it a separate entity) — but overall I started with all of the writing workshop fundamentals, I saw they work, and I’ve stuck with them.

What fears/obstacles did you have to overcome to try it? What elements of WW (or of current educational realities) made you hesitate?

Taylor: I think my ignorance and inexperience shielded me from a lot of the fear I should have had!  As a brand new teacher with no one telling me what or how to teach, I tried out some of the methods I had learned from Atwell and my student teaching placements without really considering that I was doing something difficult or different.  That became apparent a few weeks into the school year, when I ran into the tough parts…how do I keep track of what everyone’s doing?  Aren’t they supposed to write about literature in addition to these personal narratives?  How am I going to grade all this??

My workshop definitely faded over the course of that first year, replaced by more traditional methods, as most of my energy was swallowed up by figuring out the realities of what it means to be a teacher, to work in a school.  The paperload, grading, questions about genre and SOLs, and the isolation all became obstacles to my idealistic workshop classroom.

Rebekah:  The biggest fear for me was the stuff I couldn’t plan for, which, in writing workshop, is a lot. I LOVE lesson planning and filling out my plan book and having all of my copies in order before class begins.  Knowing that I would have to let go of the reigns a bit and see what happens before planning how to respond to it made me nervous.  I wanted a script going into a conference and all of my mini-lessons planned before the workshop began. And writing workshop just doesn’t work that way for the most part.

What were the hardest parts of getting going?

Taylor: My first two years of piecemeal workshop taught me a big lesson: I had to go all the way with it, and I had to have a “big picture” from Day One.  That thought was daunting…like developing a whole new approach to instruction, with all kinds of tedious details, too (How long will they write?  Which genres will we do, when, how long?  Where do I get the cheapest folders?).  Penny Kittle is the one who helped get me over that hump, and that has made all the difference.  When I could envision how workshop would look in my classroom on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis, it started to fall together.

Rebekah: I totally agree with Taylor; the most daunting part was knowing that to do this right, it had to be a complete and total change in the life of my classroom. Writing workshop isn’t something that is an activity you pull out one day and forget about — everything about the way we did English class was going to have to change. And it’s a lot to think through! Thankfully, I had Taylor who had been there and experimented before me to help me hash things out.

Both of you have cited Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them as a major influence. How was the Kittle stuff different than what you had read or seen before? How did it move you toward a new vision of workshop in your classroom?

 Taylor: There’s so much that I learned from Kittle, so I’ll just mention one thing – from her book, I realized that not only could WW work in high school, but that it could be rigorous and serious…not all touchy-feely personal narratives and sharing time.  I loved her genre approach, her thoughtful mini-lessons, her challenging mentor texts, and she inspired me to incorporate many of the same strategies and routines.

Rebekah:  For me, Penny (yes, I call her Penny in my head. I think we’d be great friends) is like the Barak Obama of writing workshop. Her book has SO many wonderful ideas, so many fantastic examples — but the biggest thing I took away from it was a resounding “YES, WE CAN!” for high school teachers who previously believed that we couldn’t make writing workshop adapt to our teaching reality.

From that, I not only found the courage to give it a try but also the license to continue to take the fundamentals of workshop and mold them to fit a high school literature course, too!