Raising the bar for writing at MBE

Just like their students, teachers at Mountain Brook Elementary never stop learning. One of MBE’s recent areas of focus has been the improvement of writing instruction and the development of MBE students as writers.

The 2018-19 school year will be the second consecutive year that one of MBE’s WIGs (“Wildly Important Goals”) through the Leader in Me program will include writing goals for students and teachers. The 2017-18 WIG involved MBE students setting their own writing goals, and this year’s writing WIG focuses on teachers using student data to drive instruction. As a part of meeting the writing WIG for this year, on Aug. 6 MBE teachers participated in “Raising the Bar: Writer’s Workshop,” led by Krystal Hardy Allen.  Ms. Allen, an extensively trained consultant, is working towards her doctorate from Teachers College at Columbia University and has previously worked with MBE faculty and staff.

In her third year as a reading coach at MBE, Lindsey Ehsan was involved with coordinating the professional development workshop. In describing the structure of the day, Ms. Ehsan noted, “We spent part of the morning going over the balanced literacy framework, which encompasses all different types of opportunities for teachers to teach reading, writing and word study in an explicit and integrated way, as well as workshop, which is a best practice model for teaching that MBE has used for several years. We used the opportunity of having a number of new teachers at MBE to re-engage with and emphasize what best practice around English Language Arts instruction means for our school.”

Workshop participants then spent the afternoon collectively reviewing a set of MBE student writing samples from the end of the last school year, and then discussed what writing proficiency looks like at each grade level. Ms. Ehsan said this exercise would provide “a deeper dive into writing work, with all of our teachers trying to get on the same page about what good writing looks like and what academic skills and habits are encompassed in both the writing process and the writing communities that we strive to cultivate on a daily basis. Because everyone will be in the same room for this process, we will then be able to have vertical conversations about what good writing looks like in each grade and across the year.”

The goal of this professional opportunity was for MBE’s teachers to begin the year re-energized and to more fully understand what it looks like to be proficient as a writer at every grade level and how to use a cohesive plan to best guide students as they move through MBE.   

To sustain the professional development that took place before school started, MBE has added an embedded professional development opportunity this year. All writing teachers will have access to a writing lab, in which they will observe grade-level bands on a monthly basis, debrief and then apply what they have learned in their own classrooms. The writing lab will be an opportunity for MBE teachers to have an ongoing conversation about MBE’s writing goals and how to support students in achieving those goals.

MBE Principal Ashley McCombs said, “We want to teach our MBE Lancers to analyze their own strengths and areas for improvement in writing with a focus on growth through revision. Modeling feedback and support in an intentional way so that students feel safe and confident enough to take learning risks is of primary importance.”  

Submitted by Kitty Rogers Brown