Workshop Descriptions

WorkshopTitle #1:  Supporting Beginning Teachers through Critical Junctures
Audience: 6–12 Teachers and Leaders; English Education Instructors and Supervisors

The workshop examines research about the major concerns of beginning teachers and their strategies for successfully coping with challenging episodes in teaching.  Workshop discussion focuses on ways that schools and teacher preparation programs can work together to support new teachers in navigating a series of critical junctures in the early stages of their career.

Workshop Title #2:  A Structured Process Approach to the Teaching of Writing
Audience: 6–12 Teachers

The workshop offers ways teachers can design writing instruction that will allow students to learn about writing processes while they produce works that are readable.  Through the use of several sample activities, the consultant will model what could be called a structured process approach to the teaching of writing.

Workshop Title #3:  The Discussion-Based Classroom as a Key to High Achievement
Audience: 6–12 Teachers

The workshop will reveal strategies for inviting and facilitating authentic discussion in the English classroom.  The workshop activities will illustrate how engagement in authentic discussion helps students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to work with challenging texts and complex writing assignments.

Workshop Title #4:  Teaming to Teach:  Learning and Growing through Collaboration
Audience: 6–12 Teachers and Leaders; English Education Instructors and Supervisors

The workshop reveals a model of teacher preparation and teacher practice that encourages collaboration and interdependence.  The participants will examine an alternative to conventional student teaching and will share a plan for moving practitioners away from isolation and toward community.