When she was in college, Jane Carlson wrote her master’s thesis on staff development.

Tuesday, August 10, 1999

When she was in college, Jane Carlson wrote her master’s thesis on staff development. Never has the topic been more applicable than it is this year, when Carlson, the Ellis Middle School media specialist, and the district’s remaining 309 teachers will join together in a program called "Writing to Learn."

It’s a two-year experiment that began last week with 31 teachers participating in a three-day in-service at Ellis. The goal of the breakthrough program is to facilitate writing ideas among teachers, who, in turn, will introduce different forms of writing into their classrooms – no matter the subject.

"It’s the first time we’ve done it this way," Carlson said.

It may be the first time anybody’s done it precisely this way.

"We’re changing the way we define teacher training," said Candace Raskin, the director for educational services who, along with St. Olaf College English Department professor Linda Hunter, had a hand in designing the program.

It’s vastly different from standard teacher training, in which a teacher or group of teachers is shipped to a workshop under the flag of continuing education. But studies show that when teachers are simply presented with theory in a lecture format, a mere 5-10 percent of that information is ever applied in the classroom.

Hunter has even stopped giving lectures that pass as teacher training.

"I don’t think it’s effective," she said. "I feel like a phoney."

But under the new training format, which Hunter calls "teachers teaching teachers," a whopping 80-90 percent of the knowledge is applied in the classroom.

Hunter, who will be working closely with the district throughout the two-year program, conducted last week’s workshop. Essentially, her job was to provide the 31 teachers at the workshop with the background to act as facilitators to the remaining teaching staff.

Each of the 31 teachers – with representatives from each of Austin’s public schools – will be assigned 10 fellow teachers. Those "learning groups" of teachers will meet four times throughout the school year; there are four half-days of "Writing to Learn" in-service built into this year’s school calendar. The learning groups are designed to get peers talking about how they can bring writing into any classroom – what Hunter calls "writing across the curriculum."

"If this format doesn’t work," Hunter said, "I don’t know what will."

Marsha Wilson is a third-grade teacher at Banfield Elementary and will be assigned 10 teachers in a learning group.

"Everybody thinks it’s a great idea," Wilson said. "Being able to pull together and share ideas and simply having the time to pull together."

Michael Kohel is a 10th-grade U.S. History teacher. He was apprehensive about the program at first. But by the third day of last week’s in-service he was convinced.

"The key is to be open minded," Kohel said. "This is something that will help."

Before getting into how the program is expected to benefit the classroom, it’s important to understand the foundation on which the program is built. There are three assumptions that the program is founded on:

1) Writing in students’ own words teaches them about content. Importance: Introducing writing in a student’s learning process can act like a stamp by firmly planting ideas, theories, etc. into a student’s brain.

2) Writing is a teachable process. Importance: To break the myth that the ability to write, and to write well, comes naturally and is exclusive to those who display it early.

3) Knowledge is linguistically constructed. Importance: Writing can be used in any classroom – math, social studies, art, etc. – to reinforce what is being taught.

"When we talk of writing there’s usually this stigma attached," Kohel said. "We talk about taking notes, doing papers, writing essays."

But Kohel came away from the in-service with a creative writing outlet he can use in his history classes – journal writing.

"What was Abe Lincoln thinking on his way to the Gettysburg Address?" Kohel said. "I can ask my students ‘What do you think he saw?’ and have them write about what it’s like to be him."

Carlson, who by working in the Ellis library works closely with all the school’s students, talked about teaching students double-entry note-taking. It’s a process in which a students write lecture notes on one half of their paper, then respond in their own words to those notes on the other half.

Those are but two of the ideas that resulted from "teachers teaching teachers."

Everyone involved expects myriad ideas to come. Raskin, Hunter and the 31 teachers are excited about the process, about tapping into a whole new way of educating.

After a school year of "Writing to Learn," the program shifts focus in 2000-01 to "Writing to Communicate." Following two years, the program’s effectiveness will be evaluated.

"If the model works," Raskin said, "we’ll use it for teaching other concepts."

If teachers’ response is any indication, the new model may one-day become old hat when it comes to staff development and teaching students.

Because under the new model, "Everybody kind of feeds off of each other," Wilson said. "We open up a lot of wonderful resources when teachers use each other."