Continuity in the Rhode Island Writing Project: Keeping Teachers at the Center

By Susan Ozbek, Keith Sanzen, Marjorie Roemer, Susan Vander Does

Summary:
The Presenters’ Collective Network (PCN) began as a support for teacher-consultants in developing workshops for inservice, but the Rhode Island Writing Project quickly discovered unintended purposes that strengthened the site’s continuity program. Susan Ozbek, Marjorie Roemer, Keith Sanzen, and Susan Vander Does detail how PCN functions along with the tools that help to sustain it. Originally published on January 1, 2008

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The authors describe the Rhode Island Writing Project’s Presenters’ Collaborative Network (PCN). Created to support teacher-consultants offering inservice work in schools, the PCN has turned out to be one of the site’s most effective continuity programs.

Groups of teachers meet on Saturdays to present, critique, ponder, revise, and adapt demonstration lessons and learn more about their own practice. The stated goal has been to refine the teachers’ presentations, but the effect has been to keep teachers working together, thinking like writing project teachers, supporting one another’s innovations, and sustaining the network that enables teachers to grow in the company of others.

The authors trace the evolution of the meetings’ format, describe in detail a number of the practices and structures used, and provide protocols and guides in the appendices.

Topics/tags:

Professional Learning continuity

This post is part of the collection.

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