Professional Development

Looking to bring meaningful professional development opportunities to your school community?

Email us to learn more about the following offerings: 

Grades 7-12: Centering your values to re-energize your writing curriculum (Kristine Lafferty, Writing Arts)

Description:This workshop will provide you with strategies to define, identify, and increase student success in their writing.  Participants looking to re-energize their writing curriculum will do so by centering their Core Values of writing. Participants will move through a framework to identify what they value in writing, while also reconciling their own values with the expectations of the Department of Education, higher education, and/or students’ future careers. 

Grades 3-12: Strengthening our Informational and Digital Literacy Skills (Kristine Lafferty, Writing Arts)

Description: This workshop will help teachers modernize their own digital and informational literacy skills as we look to better equip our students with the skills necessary to effectively locate, evaluate, incorporate, and cite information. Participants will learn concrete strategies,  like lateral reading, click restraint, and “going upstream,” while also exploring how algorithmic bias and confirmation bias complicate the information landscape. 

Grades 9-12: Creating confident and competent writers who are ready for college (Kristine Lafferty, Writing Arts) 

Description: This workshop will help 9-12 teachers of all disciplines foster writing skills within their classrooms so that their students are prepared for writing in college and beyond. Participants will engage in self reflection on their current practices, engage with evidence based writing pedagogy, and leave with concrete strategies to support meaningful writing in the high school context. 

Grades 6-12: The Writing Studio: Guiding students through the writing process (Celeste Del Russo, Writing Arts)

Description:  Drawing from studio pedagogy and collaborative writing approaches, this workshop offers strategies and best practices for guiding students through the writing process using small-group and one-on-one conferencing. Participants will leave with an overview of writing studio pedagogy and the “four effective tools” for guiding students through the writing process, from brainstorming and drafting, to revision and editing. 

Grades 6-12: Reading and Responding to Student Writing: Theories and practice (Celeste Del Russo, Writing Arts)