PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE

After presenting at a recent conference I was approached by a teacher who said that my suggestions for helping her students become better writers were extremely helpful. She considers herself an excellent teacher but she isn't a writer. I've heard that comment hundreds of times over the years.

Save being a non-writing teacher who nevertheless is held responsible for teaching students to develop writing skills is a worry for many teachers. That's why so many districts bring authors in to visit classes and talk to teachers.

I started out in 1967 simply wanting to create literature for children. It was my naive belief that writers write, publishers publish, marketing folks market, and sales people sell. Teachers? Well they teach of course. But what did that have to do with me? All my simple perceptions disappeared long ago. Now I understand that part of my job as an author is to partner with teachers to share information and expertise. I learn from them, they learn from me, and the students benefit.

I begin every teacher workshop, after hours discussion group, conference breakout session, or anywhere else I have a chance to meet with educators by asking what I can do to help make a difference in their classrooms. By now I have a lot of practical suggestions about how to help students find ideas, get something down on paper, develop their story or poem, and learn how to revise their work. I wrote a Scholastic Guides book on how to write stories and two of my teaching strategy books (both co-written with teachers) are about how to teach poetry and how to use poetry as a teaching tool across the curriculum throughout the year.

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New word posted on the first of each month.

LETTER FOR SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

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Monthly Teaching Tool

FEBRUARY

JOURNALS AND IDEA FILES

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JANUARY

ONE WORD POETRY

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DECEMBER

SHOW DON'T TELL

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NOVEMBER

INSPIRATION THROUGH OBSERVATION

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OCTOBER

FIRST COMES THE IDEA
Story Ideas

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SEPTEMBER

SCRIPT
Revising

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AUGUST

BEGINNING WITH A VERB
Get Writing

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-- David L. Harrison with Bernice E. Cullinan, 1999. Easy Poetry Lessons that Dazzle and Delight. Scholastic Professional Books.