A tentative but tenacious teacher struggles and eventually succeeds with workshop-style teaching in her second grade classroom

by Julie Bumgardner with Steve Peha

Steve Peha: In April of 2000, I got an e-mail from Julie Bumgardner, a 2nd grade teacher at Santa Fe Trail Elementary School in Independence, MO. Julie and I met at a summer institute in her district where I presented workshops on reading and writing. Normally, Julie asks me about teaching, but this time she asked me a question about herself: What advice might I have for her about developing her own writing? For someone who is regularly faced with answering this question, you'd think I'd have a pretty good response lined up, but I don't. The only advice I had for Julie was "Write!". Then, of course, the question of what to write about came up and I suggested she write about her teaching. I had two reasons for suggesting this, one genuinely helpful, the other utterly selfish. First of all, I know we all write best about our own lives and the things that are important to us, and there was no doubt in my mind that Julie's teaching consumed a huge part of her life and that it was tremendously important to her. Second, I wanted a writing partner, a teacher I respected and enjoyed interacting with who could help me get some of my own thoughts and feelings on paper. This is how we got started.

Writing Teacher's Block

Julie Bumgardner: I've been wondering what I could possibly contribute to a book about teaching kids to write when I've only been a teacher for four years and only doing Reader's and Writer's Workshop for one! Although I am only forcing myself to admit it just now, I have been avoiding getting on the computer to respond to your invitation because I couldn't think of anything "good" to say. (This is probably what my kids feel like sometimes when we write.) I suddenly didn't know what to say about anything, and felt like I didn't really have much to tell about teaching my kids to write. Then I realized that I was looking at it in the wrong way. I couldn't talk about teaching my kids to write because that's not what I do! My kids are already writers, filled with great ideas and stories; I just help them to "get it out". I help them to develop and make sense of what's already there. Then I show them ways to make it better.

Steve: I really love this paragraph, Julie, because it expresses what I believe to be three of the most important factors in determining a writing teacher's success:

(1) Teachers who write and reflect on their own writing process are more successful than teachers who don't.

(2) Successful teachers don't teach kids to write, they teach their kids to teach themselves by providing models, scaffolding, and strategies that help their students develop ownership and independence.

(3) Successful teachers act out of the belief that their students are writers the minute they walk into the classroom.

You also touched on one other thing, something that is very important to me but that doesn't show up often in research or in other professional writing. You write here that in your view of teaching writing you "just help them to get it out", the "it" being the wonderful stories and ideas they already have inside them.

When I think about this notion, I think about what it means to be a great editor. Not some textbook grammarian, one of those nitpicky types who red-pens every other word just to prove how smart he is, but a real professional editor whose job it is to help a real professional writer produce real professional writing.

I have often heard and read great writers commenting on the value of having a great editor. And the way they describe the role of the editor is pretty much always the same: someone who helps them figure out what they want to say and then makes sure they say it as well as they can.

This is what I think about when I'm helping kids learn to write. Like you, I model my own writing, I offer solid strategies, and I often encourage students to pursue a certain direction that to me seems promising, but I have a hard time associating this with the traditional view of teaching as the delivery of planned curriculum. Most of the time I have only a rough idea of what I'm going to teach, and at the end of a class, as I look back on what transpired, so much of what we covered seems to have arisen spontaneously, and only for a brief moment even then. Rather than focusing on what I want to teach, I try to discover what the kids need to learn. And for me, this begins by assuming the role of editor, so they can assume the role of writer.

Workshop to the Rescue

Julie: I absolutely love workshop-style teaching. I have taught at grades K, 1, and 2, and have struggled for three years now to find a way to teach reading and writing effectively. Every year I have felt like a major flop. I felt disappointed in myself and have searched for a way to do it better because no matter how hard I worked, it just wasn't right. I've used basal series', tried small groups, journaling, theme teaching, team teaching, word wall sets, book clubs, group stories, centers, etc. I had some successes and some failures, but was always left with the very strong feeling that this was all just wrong. I knew I wanted to use a workshop-style, but the books I read about it were somehow unfulfilling.

Steve: You're certainly not the first teacher to articulate these same frustrations about learning to teach reading and writing. I've heard many others express the feeling that no matter what they do, there's often this "sick in the gut" feeling at the end of the day (and especially at the end of the year) that somehow they didn't do right by their kids. The question I often ask myself is "How can so many teachers not know how to teach reading and writing when the needed information is so thoroughly researched and so widely available?" Clearly, teacher training is not adequate, nor is there enough on-the-job support for new teachers. Then, too, there appears to be something in the culture of teaching itself that resists solutions to these common problems.

Many teachers I have worked with have also expressed the same ambivalence about workshop-style teaching that you noted. They seem to have a feeling that it offers something significant, and that is what draws them in initially, but often they are too uncomfortable with it to explore it in depth. The books present another challenge. Frankly, there are more books about workshop-style teaching available today than there are about any other named approach, and many of these books are truly outstanding. However, no book can capture the experiential nature of Reader's and Writer's Workshop; it's an extremely dynamic form of teaching that must be practiced over long periods of time in order to be learned. For many teachers, having good books available almost makes it worse because those who study hard sometimes develop the feeling that they are doing it wrong if early results don't measure up to expectations.

Teachers interested in workshop-style teaching also face certain specific challenges from their schools, their states, and their profession: (1) Very few administrators actively endorse this kind of teaching. (2) The instructional culture of high stakes state testing encourages lock-step programmed instruction. And (3) Many teachers who practice workshop-style teaching actively and advocate for its use are shunned by their traditional peers.

Workshop-style teaching isn't easy to learn and even when teachers learn it they face constant resistance from their communities. The truth is that more and more teachers are moving to workshop every day because it is well-researched and thoroughly proven: workshop-style teachers get better results than traditional teachers. Ironically, however, it is precisely their success that gets them into trouble.

First Day of Writer's Workshop

Julie: A scared, unsure, but excited and determined me started school this year with the goal of making workshop-style teaching work. How was I going to do this? How would it feel? How would the kids respond? What was the natural progression that would make this work best? Was I going to be able to manage the class in this style?

We started writing the first day. I told them they were already writers. I told them that all the ideas they needed were already in their heads in the stories they tell me, their friends, their parents, and whoever will listen. I told them that these stories are just like the published ones they read in books, but they just weren't written down yet.

I emphasized that writing is about you and from you, that no one else has the same ideas in their head. Even if two people choose the same topic their stories will be different because each person has different thoughts and feelings. Each of us is unique, I said, and so are our stories. I told them we would be writing about things that happened in their own lives because in order to write well you have to know a lot about what you're writing about, and the thing you know most about is yourself.

Steve: I'm so glad you decided to start with Writer's Workshop on the first day of school. Many teachers seem to think that it is more appropriate to wait until later in the year but I have never felt this way. Getting a Writer's Workshop up and running requires the establishment of good management procedures and there's no better time to do this than the first day of school. I have also found that writing is a terrific getting-to-know-you activity. One of the most important things teachers have to do during the first few days of school is to get to know their students. They also need to make sure their students get to know each other. Having kids write about their lives and share their writing with the class is an easy way to accomplish this.

Topic T-Chart

Julie: In order to gather and focus their unique ideas, we started out the year with a Topic T-chart. Some kids referred to them a lot during the lesson, and even commented that there were so many ideas they couldn't decide which one to write about (they wanted to write about them all!). Some filled their lists up completely and had to take a few moments to make a heartfelt decision.

The Topic T-chart worked well for most kids but some had difficulty. I think it was because they listed very generic things, things they really didn't have strong feelings about. But even in those few cases where the T-chart strategy didn't help as much as it might have, the strategy still helped me help them in conference because it gave me something tangible to work with. If I said something like, "What about baseball? You wrote that on your 'Like' list." They might say something like, "Yeah, I do, but I like soccer better." Having zeroed in on something they really cared about, I asked more detailed questions. This usually led us to a memory they wanted to write about or another idea they wanted to use. I think some of them just needed to talk about it a little, writing down a list wasn't enough.

Steve: Talking is actually a pre-writing strategy, too. I never thought about this until one day I was working with a very noisy class. We did a Topic T-Chart just like you did here but every time I tried to teach something, they would start talking. After several minutes of starting and stopping, I finally gave in and told them they could talk for a few minutes. The catch was that they had to talk about their topics. (As it turned out, they were already talking about their topics, I was just too upset to listen closely.)

While the kids talked, I circled the room. I thought I was going to have to police the discussions and keep them on topic but all I ended up doing was listening. The discussions were great. Some were telling their stories, others were listening and asking good questions. Five minutes later I stopped them and said, "Start writing." At first they didn't know what to do so I told them to write down their stories exactly as they told them to their friends. That was all it took. The talking died down and pretty soon all I could hear was the sound of pencils on paper.

Building Excitement Through Personal Connection

Julie: I especially like the Topic T-chart strategy because it allows students to get excited about what they are going to write about as they explore, even in this very casual way, their own personal connection to the topic. Rather than me having them write about something, it becomes me letting them write about something. No matter what I do, I can't generate that much excitement about a pre-chosen topic for each and every student. Sometimes, sure, there's something most of the class is interested in, and asking them to write about that is something they want to do. But usually this is an experience we've all had together, like a field trip, so they are still actually writing about their own lives.

Encouraging Independence

Julie: At the end of our first session, I had the kids keep their Topic T-charts in their writing folders. In subsequent sessions, some kids got them out on their own to look for a new topic. It was so great to see them doing it without my asking. They were taking ownership of their writing process and this somehow made them even more excited about their topics.

When I saw them taking the initiative and doing it on their own, that's when my excitement really started to grow. This was exactly what I'd been wanting for my kids. The best part was that I didn't do it for them; I didn't even really teach them to do it. They already had these great ideas in themselves; I just gave them a tool they could use, any time they had trouble, to solve a problem every writer faces each time he or she stares down at a blank page.

Steve: The skill you describe here (the ability to pick a good topic independently and begin writing about it) is the first thing every writer needs to know. In the real world outside of school, there is no writing until a writer picks a topic. It doesn't matter if you're a novelist or an office worker or a parent or a small business person, you don't start writing unless you have at least some idea of what you're going to write about.

I have also found that teaching kids how to pick good topics solves many other writing problems. For example, kids who pick their own topics encounter Writer's Block less frequently. I have also found that conventions improve as well, probably because kids who pick their own topics have a greater sense of ownership in their work. Finally, the great American writing researcher, Donald Graves, has pointed out that when students write every day on topics of their own choosing they enter into a "state of constant composition" where they find themselves thinking of things to write about outside of class: at home, on the playground, on the way to school, etc.

You did a great job with this lesson, Julie. And I think you got your Writer's Workshop off to a fine start, too!

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