I Am a Change Agent
Ann and I lean toward the colored boxes graphed across my laptop screen. I point to two green boxes that account for 10 minutes of class time and say, “What did you notice as you conferred?” Ann summarizes the successes and struggles collected in brief conferences to check for understanding. I share my observations from two different student conferences. Together we celebrate a practice that is new to Ann: now, she is consistently creating spaces for student rehearsal and conferring throughout her instructional hour. And then I turn to the transcript of her lesson and say, “You closed this [rehearsal] period by saying, ‘So, some of you appear to be stuck.’ The next thing you said was ‘Who would like to share.’”
Ann interrupts, “Oh, my.” It is this Oh-my which will change Ann. She continued hypothesizing that her desire to get things accomplished is working against her. The pressure to get a paragraph written propelled her to gather but not use information about individual student performance. Using it would have slowed the work-of-the-day, and students would not have written introductory paragraphs by the end of the hour, and she would not have a daily grade. Instead she rushed to sharing and avoided the messiness of adjusting her instruction. This paper had to be done by Friday. At the time, she focused only on the task at hand, now she wondered: What happened to students who struggled? We reviewed student writing accomplished in the hour to answer her question as well as design a next-step plan for her students and herself. I am a change agent. Alongside collaborators, mentors, friends, and partners from the Oakland Writing Project (OWP) and National Writing Project (NWP) I have learned to change in my Oh-my moments. Now, I shift the teaching and learning of others as I also continue to change. Let me track how I developed the habits of a change agent with a NWP highlights tour. • In 2010, I learned to design curricular units so students enact tasks requiring sophisticated reading, writing, thinking, and listening within NWP’s Learning Design Collaborative. • In 2009, I learned how digital literacy can make a difference in a NWPM’s state-wide retreat.
• In 2008, I learned to observe and code classrooms making instruction visible on a NWP field research team for the National Study of Writing Instruction—Arthur Applebee and Judith Langer.
• In 2006, I learned how explicit data collection can alter teachers’ visions of teaching and learning and translate a failing school into a community of learners as OWP grappled with assessment.
• In 2003, I learned the scope of a state-wide network that collaborates and supports new writing project sites as it strengthens long-established sites within NWP’s State Network Project. • In 2001, I learned in OWP initiatives how action research can change teaching and learning when a school team asked: how can a nonfiction genre study impact reading achievement? The answer came in a 25% increase in reading achievement in the district’s two lowest performing schools.
• In 2000, I learned, again, the power of a writing project rooted in social justice, equity, and access with NWP’s Project Outreach Network.
• In 1999, I learned to transcribe classroom interaction and do discourse analysis of its rich points by participating in OWP’s Michigan Classroom Discourse and Instruction Group (McDig).
But it all began much earlier. In 1985, I learned to write and understand the transformative power of writing and strategic writing instruction in an OWP monthly response group with Stephen Dunning and writing project colleagues. This encounter changed the direction of my life’s work. I became a writer.
Oh-my moments collected from decades of working alongside some of the best minds in education as well as in National Writing Project initiatives have changed me but also the teachers and students I have encountered for the past 26 years. The mathematics of these statements would be a staggering number. More staggering is that I am only one member of the National Writing Project, and variations of the highlights tour could be repeated by many teacher consultants of the Writing Project connected to its 200 + university-based writing project sites. Oh-my. The quality and depth of study. The impact of the sustainable work on teachers and students. The scope of the infrastructure. Positive change happens over time with availability to consistent and supportive networks. Shouldn’t congress know these things? Shouldn’t an educated, responsible government identify the quality programs lifting them out of the one-size-fits-all definition that lined NWP out of the budget? These seem like rhetorical questions, but, indeed, they are not. I joined hundreds of project directors and teacher consultants from across the US to meet with senators and representatives to educate and argue for continued funding, for a redefinition, for reauthorization of NWP in the rewriting of ESEA. We gathered in tight circles in hallways and around conference tables telling our stories and providing data to young aides who took notes, nodded, smiled, and said the senator or representative is aware, but these are difficult times. I want to say that this first trip to Washington to educate and argue for a quality network was a positive learning experience about the power of the democratic process. But it wasn’t. Instead it taught me how conservative forces can redefine and blockade reason in a spending showdown. The rhetoric of this clean sweep uses phrases like duplicative programs, competitive grants, fiscal fairness, and consolidation into a broad funding stream to allow billions of dollars to be cut and to allow high quality educational programs to be eliminated. Isn’t it time that congress hypothesized that getting things accomplished is working against improving education by cutting the very programs that currently do just that? There is no Oh-my in the blindness transforming the nation’s educational landscape by cutting the National Writing Project. Simply put, dismantling NWP is destroying decades of effective programs that are an incredible bargain fiscally and an incredible agent for positive educational growth for teachers and students. All the fancy rhetoric in the world cannot change this truth. Linda Denstaedt
Co-Director Oakland Writing Project (MI)
Ann interrupts, “Oh, my.” It is this Oh-my which will change Ann. She continued hypothesizing that her desire to get things accomplished is working against her. The pressure to get a paragraph written propelled her to gather but not use information about individual student performance. Using it would have slowed the work-of-the-day, and students would not have written introductory paragraphs by the end of the hour, and she would not have a daily grade. Instead she rushed to sharing and avoided the messiness of adjusting her instruction. This paper had to be done by Friday. At the time, she focused only on the task at hand, now she wondered: What happened to students who struggled? We reviewed student writing accomplished in the hour to answer her question as well as design a next-step plan for her students and herself. I am a change agent. Alongside collaborators, mentors, friends, and partners from the Oakland Writing Project (OWP) and National Writing Project (NWP) I have learned to change in my Oh-my moments. Now, I shift the teaching and learning of others as I also continue to change. Let me track how I developed the habits of a change agent with a NWP highlights tour. • In 2010, I learned to design curricular units so students enact tasks requiring sophisticated reading, writing, thinking, and listening within NWP’s Learning Design Collaborative. • In 2009, I learned how digital literacy can make a difference in a NWPM’s state-wide retreat.
• In 2008, I learned to observe and code classrooms making instruction visible on a NWP field research team for the National Study of Writing Instruction—Arthur Applebee and Judith Langer.
• In 2006, I learned how explicit data collection can alter teachers’ visions of teaching and learning and translate a failing school into a community of learners as OWP grappled with assessment.
• In 2003, I learned the scope of a state-wide network that collaborates and supports new writing project sites as it strengthens long-established sites within NWP’s State Network Project. • In 2001, I learned in OWP initiatives how action research can change teaching and learning when a school team asked: how can a nonfiction genre study impact reading achievement? The answer came in a 25% increase in reading achievement in the district’s two lowest performing schools.
• In 2000, I learned, again, the power of a writing project rooted in social justice, equity, and access with NWP’s Project Outreach Network.
• In 1999, I learned to transcribe classroom interaction and do discourse analysis of its rich points by participating in OWP’s Michigan Classroom Discourse and Instruction Group (McDig).
But it all began much earlier. In 1985, I learned to write and understand the transformative power of writing and strategic writing instruction in an OWP monthly response group with Stephen Dunning and writing project colleagues. This encounter changed the direction of my life’s work. I became a writer.
Oh-my moments collected from decades of working alongside some of the best minds in education as well as in National Writing Project initiatives have changed me but also the teachers and students I have encountered for the past 26 years. The mathematics of these statements would be a staggering number. More staggering is that I am only one member of the National Writing Project, and variations of the highlights tour could be repeated by many teacher consultants of the Writing Project connected to its 200 + university-based writing project sites. Oh-my. The quality and depth of study. The impact of the sustainable work on teachers and students. The scope of the infrastructure. Positive change happens over time with availability to consistent and supportive networks. Shouldn’t congress know these things? Shouldn’t an educated, responsible government identify the quality programs lifting them out of the one-size-fits-all definition that lined NWP out of the budget? These seem like rhetorical questions, but, indeed, they are not. I joined hundreds of project directors and teacher consultants from across the US to meet with senators and representatives to educate and argue for continued funding, for a redefinition, for reauthorization of NWP in the rewriting of ESEA. We gathered in tight circles in hallways and around conference tables telling our stories and providing data to young aides who took notes, nodded, smiled, and said the senator or representative is aware, but these are difficult times. I want to say that this first trip to Washington to educate and argue for a quality network was a positive learning experience about the power of the democratic process. But it wasn’t. Instead it taught me how conservative forces can redefine and blockade reason in a spending showdown. The rhetoric of this clean sweep uses phrases like duplicative programs, competitive grants, fiscal fairness, and consolidation into a broad funding stream to allow billions of dollars to be cut and to allow high quality educational programs to be eliminated. Isn’t it time that congress hypothesized that getting things accomplished is working against improving education by cutting the very programs that currently do just that? There is no Oh-my in the blindness transforming the nation’s educational landscape by cutting the National Writing Project. Simply put, dismantling NWP is destroying decades of effective programs that are an incredible bargain fiscally and an incredible agent for positive educational growth for teachers and students. All the fancy rhetoric in the world cannot change this truth. Linda Denstaedt
Co-Director Oakland Writing Project (MI)
