Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The First of the Lasts

Despite the amount of time we have left in this seemingly endless school year, some things are winding down.

Tomorrow is the last meeting of the language arts professional learning group that I facilitated this year: planned as a continuation of our local chapter of the National Writing Project, it's been one of the biggest disappointments of my career.

One key thing that my participation in the Writing Project reminded me of was that engaging kids is crucial to the success of any class. As a fellow in the summer institute four years ago, I was completely immersed in the culture of reading, reflecting, and sharing practice, not to mention the focus on my own writing. It was awesome, and I finished the summer with the focus and desire to create that level of engagement for my students. That's a gold standard that I still hold high.

Part of the required agenda for tomorrow will be to gather and combine everyone's opinions about the experience for a brief presentation in June. I'll be interested to see what other people think, but in my mind, it's been a failure, and worse-- a waste of time. I think the biggest problem with this professional learning group was that it needed the participants to be engaged to make it work; for a variety of reasons that didn't happen, and so it never get off the ground.

Can we write it off as being passably valuable to those who attended when they were able? Maybe, but such a casual engagement was not worth the time I spent planning the course. Is it unreasonable to think that such a community is possible to create during the school year? I don't think so, but a firm commitment to the concept would have to be a requirement, and any who were unable or unwilling should excuse themselves and join another group.

In any case, I won't be around to find out; I'm done.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - I am bummed that you see it as such a failure. And - your last line sounds like quitting?! You don't quit! Why not look for other ways to engage adults in improving and enhancing their instruction and personal experience in the art of writing? This conversation is one of the ways available to us to combat the standardized minimalism that is encompassing our teaching and learning world.

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