Writing Retreats as Growing Reflective Practitioners

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Excerpt

We are akin to caterpillars, all of us. At some critical moment through our own willpower or through the assistance of others we can enter a chrysalis, evolve through an amorphous state, and emerge changed. When practitioners came to a retreat to write about practice with Joe Check and me, some were able to do that. They moved through a period of writing just to write and sharing just to share. When they emerged from the cocoon of the retreat and returned to their schools and classroom, some felt different. From this first step of a yearlong process, intended to nurture education practitioner-writers for publication, they had emerged like delicate butterflies. As evolving reflective practitioners they flew in startling hues and in all of their fragility back to schools, which more often than not are the antithesis of a field of flowers.

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Purchase At the Heart of Teaching: A Guide to Reflective Practice from Teachers College Press.