Raising Readers and Writers

The teacher writing group met last week with the task of finalizing the revisions of our vision statement (first posted here).  I asked Dr. Bloome to please lead us in this endeavor.  He has the gift of leading us down the path of change in  a very positive, engaging way, which helps us think outside the box.   By the time we finished, we had a lot of feedback and everyone there had a part in making the changes.  Isn’t that integral to making a vision statement, or any kind of document for that matter,  successful?  Everyone needs to own it.  I’d like to explain the steps we went through.

Dave gave everyone a copy of the vision statement, which he had reformatted, so that people would have room to write on the document.  Then he told us, “Imagine that you were going to take this document seriously. (Insert chuckles here). How would it change you?” How many times do we scan through documents in front of courses of study, or other statements sent from “higher ups” that we don’t have any stake in?  It’s very easy to put these aside and never pay attention to them.  We do not want the vision statement to fall in this pile.  After we had time to write our responses to Dave’s prompt, we shared at our tables and then shared out what someone at our table had said.  Here are some of the responses (from the sketchy notes I took):

Use mentor texts and take them into own writing;  read a lot more books meant for people over the age of 12;  importance of communication between grade levels; collaboration between a community of writers in our classrooms; try to bring technology into own writing; take more risks with students as writers; and persue reading and writing as if they were brothers and sisters as opposed to cousins.

Next, Dave asked us what we wanted our vision statement to do for us, our classrooms, our school, and our school community.

For ourselves we said we wanted to:  raise the comfort level in sharing writing ideas among colleagues; have more open communication with colleagues about writing, hold ourselves accountable for writing in a variety of genres; focus on the value of writing; balance the components of writing; and writing more ourselves.

For our classrooms we said we wanted to:  have our students view themselves as writers; have focused talk like writers among our students; have our students’ self confidence grow in sharing their writing; model ourselves as writers.

For our school we wanted to:  bring teachers together so that we share a common language and are on the same page; collaborate and share more; have more authentic writing experiences; focus on where students are and where they are headed.

Finally, for our school community we wanted to:  see our students have a respect and joy for writing; create newsletters about writing; have a common language going back and forth between home and school; create a desire among our parents for more information; and bring families in more often to share writing experiences.

Our next task was to go through the vision statement and highlight words, phrases, and ideas that stand out as being very important. These phrases were deemed as having a strong impact:  our school fosters and environment where writing is encouraged and honored; use of technology; variety of genres; writing is meaningful; immersed in quality literature; read like writers and have conversations like writers; and students enjoy writing.

Then Dave asked us what we thought we might need to add to the vision statement. We thought it was most important to include bringing families in; having a common language, and knowing where students are and where they are going as writers.

Our last task was to go through the vision statement one more time to note any parts that made us uncomfortable.   One teacher was concerned about the statement of the teachers being a community of writers when not every staff member is involved in the after school writing group.  What do we do here?  Dave suggested that we change it to:  Our staff works hard to be a community of writers.

So where do we go from here?  Our principal, a few other teachers, and I will meet to go through and word smith the document.  Our principal, who has an artistic eye, has some great ideas to weave the information together into a document that will appeal to everyone.

I learned a lot from this experience.  Even though I gave the original vision statement to several people for revisions, I only got positive reviews.  The document was still essentially mine (and I held on tight to that…it was my baby).  After going through this process with Dave and the rest of the group, it now feels like it’s ours. I like that feeling a lot better!  I feel very lucky to work with such dedicated teachers who share a common vision!

It’s finally done and ready to be presented to our staff!  I’ve fretted, gone back over notes,  researched, looked for other writing vision statements (because that’s what Katie Wood Ray would do), and then just sat myself down and started to type.  What has caused all of this angst?  Our school’s writing vision statment.  Our small teacher writing group worked on defining our beliefs last year, got input from the staff, and ended the school year with this project still looming.  It nagged at me all summer, but never loud enough for me to do something about it.  Of course, I waited until I was in full swing of the new school year before I decided to pull all of our information together into an official vision statement (when will I learn to balance things a little better?).  I’ve given it to other members of our committee for suggestions on revisions and it is finally ready to be given to my principal and the rest of the staff.  It feels so good to have that done.  In fact, I had such a feeling of elation, that I finally (I’m using that word a lot tonight!) got the information ready to send out to fourth and fifth grade students for our after school writing club.  I can’t wait to get started with them, but more about that later! So, below you will find our Model Writing School Vision Statement.  We want everyone to know that if you come to our school, you will be a writer.  What do you think?

Writing Vision Statement for Avery Elementary School

Our school vision has three dimensions, learning to write, learning about writing, and writing to learn. We believe that Avery is a community of writers that includes both teachers and students. We have a trusting environment where students and teachers feel safe to take risks. Writing is meaningful and important in all areas of the curriculum. Our teachers are a community of writers themselves, which helps them better understand the process our student writers go through.

Our school fosters an environment where writing is encouraged and honored. Students have access to a variety of writing supplies, charts with student thinking hang in our rooms and hallways, and students are encouraged to publish their writing in a variety of ways including the use of technology. Halls and classrooms are filled with authentic writing in a variety of genres that includes a many types of informational writing.

The teachers at Avery recognize that in order for students to become better writers, they themselves need to write a lot. As a result, our teachers are committed to providing many opportunities for students to write not only in school, but also outside of school. It is here that our students develop the habits of life long writers. They learn to write by using writer’s notebooks, observation journals, and completing inquiry projects where they research, analyze, and interpret information. Students use writing to explore new ideas. They learn about writing by being immersed in quality literature where they read like writers and have conversations with other writers. Our students collaborate throughout the pre-writing, drafting, revision, and editing stages to make decisions about their writing, get a sense of audience, and develop voice.

Our students are given the unique opportunities to write in an after school writing club, publish books in our parent-run publishing shop, and celebrate writing on a regular basis with other classes, parents and community members. Avery teachers collaborate across grade levels to push for excellence for all of our students. As a result, students at Avery Elementary enjoy writing, see it as purposeful, and gain confidence in themselves as writers.