OWP

Paper 4

Julie Hamilton

OWP Review

There are many practical tools I acquired from the OWP for teaching writing. The class was somewhat different than I had expected, as are the lessons I've taken away with me. This is not at all a disappointment. I've learned a great deal and did so with an interesting and fun group of people. An unexpected benefit I received from the workshop is a greater feeling of confidence, or maybe satisfaction might be a better word, with how I approach the teaching of writing in my classroom. The district mandated curriculum for writing is, aside from being nearly nonexistent, very dry and boring. I feel that my students enjoy many of our class writing assignments and that they are learning, but I'm often left wondering if I'm teaching the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way; like setting up the perfect volley to guarantee a teammate a scoring point. The satisfaction I now feel comes from the outpouring of dialog and shared tactics from the diverse teaching group who participates in the OWP. I've come to realize that many of my own concerns are labored over by others as well, from different teaching levels and with varied experience.

The mixed level group we worked in brought about opportunities in other areas as well. It has been my experience that the primary grades are often looked upon as the years where arts and crafts dominate classroom activities with very little attention to intellectual stimulation. Some teachers I've met in the work place seem to have lost sight of what is possible and, succumbing to this way of thinking, have lowered their standards to this level. Opportunity to work with upper grade teachers gives me the opportunity to gain a fresh perspective on teaching the standard subjects we are all responsible for and provides opportunity for others to see how serious many primary grade teachers take their teaching.

There were practical lessons learned as well. The presentations offered many useful ideas to try in the classroom. Nearly all of them are adaptable to multiple grade levels and they cover a wide range of topics within the subject of writing. Karen's resources and presentations for the elementary teachers are invaluable. I would have enjoyed hearing more from you, Nat; more samples of your writing and more instruction as to how to improve my own. Sharing in our response groups and during presentation activities was very helpful, still, anytime you interjected a suggestion or idea I found it very helpful and think that others did as well.

Two practices I will stress more in my classroom after participating in this workshop are providing more opportunity for sharing, and asking for more spontaneous writing samples. I've been aware since I began teaching 2 years ago that I ask my students to write more than many other primary teachers. As a new teacher, this has caused me some apprehension as to whether I've been expecting too much. I no longer believe this is the case. One change I might make will be to focus on more frequent, but shorter assignments. I will also feel more comfortable setting guidelines for class writing assignments. I found that when this was asked of me in our class, I could not float so easily into a way of writing that was comfortable to me. I always start with good intentions in my classroom at the beginning of each writing assignment, but end up forfeiting this requirement when I hear the whines and complaints of it being too difficult. My greatest fear has been that if a young student is reluctant to try something they consider too difficult, they may lose an interest in writing altogether. Being put in this position in the OWP has shown me that quite the opposite is true ö exposing yet another benefit of the project - experiencing the role of student again.

The OWP has been a great opportunity for me in both a professional and personal sense. It is something I will recommend to others and can see part, or all of the program, as filling a critical need within local teacher training programs.