Anew.

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. - Vonnegut

I love what I do.

I love working with teachers and administrators who are engaged in the process of figuring how the heck to teach kids to read and write more powerfully and independently. I love sitting with a group of educators and working together to solve problems, using my experience and ideas as a backboard to hit against. I love sharing with teachers the things I have found over the years that can make reaching our highest ideals as English and ELA teachers actually attainable, sustainable, realistic. I love schools, and working with students across the country, and the project of public education.

I know that much of the educator experience of pd is crummy. I remember feeling that way when I was in the classroom, and I hear it in the noisy vacuum of social media and in conversations with educator friends, feel it from time to time in my own performance in the wrong situation. The phrase “professional development” is most often accompanied with a look. I know. There is something baked into the structure of PD that can make it feel like a dentist appointment that doesn’t actually clean your teeth.

I’ve been thinking alot about what I offer the profession at this point in my career.

I love being helpful. I believe deeply in my work and it’s ability to make reading and writing and analysing and talking go so much better in your districts. There have been so many times in my career when I’ve had the privilege of seeing my work have a real effect on the teachers and students of a city or town. I am not a business person, it turns out (whoops) and so I have not collected testimonials and all that. I’m just not good at that stuff. But the reason why I love what I do is because it works. It helps. And helping educators is my purpose. That is, to use the all too often used in pd phrase, my why.

(My son is rolling his eyes so hard at me right now, deservedly. Forgive me.)

Of course, it’s also my job, and a precarious one. My partner and I are an entity to ourselves. We come from a tradition, and a training, and a rigor that I am eternally grateful for, but we are now making it our own with the schools and districts we work with. We do not belong to a company. This means we do not need to tow a party line, or say anything that we don’t believe in, or that we haven’t seen work. I love this. I have never really been able to … join. Group think turns me all the way off, and I am deeply suspicious of the profit motive.

So. I have been thinking. What do I think I offer the profession at this point in my career? I’d like to start being very clear about what I teach, and what you can expect to get out of work with me. While what I do is not a product, at the same time, you should know exactly what you are paying for. Professional development can be a lot like therapy - sometimes a little focused work goes better than a long standing meandering relationship. Sometimes not, but it helps if you know what oyu are going to get.

If you know anything about my work, it’s that I believe that the clearer we are on what we are trying to teach students, the better our teaching can become. It’s time to live up to that myself. Here are some packages I offer, with time frames for the work. Of course, more time means deeper learning, but sometimes you need to start with a day, I know. At the same time, PD doesn’t need to be forever. We could work together for three days over the course of a year, and be done, or create a partnership that supports each other for years. Both models work in their own way.

So, here is what, I think, I can teach you:

* I am starting with packages around books, as that feels like the easiest to market and resource - the work is tried and true. Packages around topics of need to come.

Package One: A Novel Approach: Strengthening & Connecting the Teaching of Whole Class & Choice Texts.

1-3 Days, Grades 4-12

If you want to:

• Improve reading stamina, volume, and engagement

• Increase independent analysis of text

• Organize curriculum in ways that build and deepen student ability

• Feel more capable & impactful in your teaching...

We can:

• Leverage the power of whole class novels and choice books to boost reading.

• Align our goals for students to our teaching with deep clarity

• Set up structures to support student growth in analysis

• Feel more capable & impactful in our teaching...

Package Two: The Heart of Fiction: Teaching Character, Theme, and Craft

1-3 Days, Grades 5-12

If you want to:

• Help strengthen everyone’s analysis of texts

• Build real independence in skills kids have been taught for years

• Connect how - not just what - we read to how we live

• Gain confidence and capacity in differentiating effectively and sustainably

We can:

• Build capacity to respond immediately to student need along three skill lines

• Strengthen structures & norms across grade/department/district

• Receive and develop easily used materials for explicit instruction and differentiation

• Supplement existing curriculum with fresh/responsive teaching

Package Three: Tools that Make the Work Easier

1-3 Days, Grades K-12

If you want to:

• Improve independence & problem solving skills

• Communicate expectations clearly each step of the way

• Raise the level of student academic performance

• Lean into effective & sustainable systems for differentiation

• Help students get more focused & working harder

We can:

• Create transferable toolkits that support students at their level of practice

• Raise the level of effort & attention to the unit’s work

• Personalize your teaching and humanize your teaching tools

• Respond to the needs in your room - now

Package Four: Help Students Read Texts Slowly, Closely, Carefully.

1-3 Days, Grades 4-12

If you want to:

• Teach students to pay closer attention to the texts they read

• Demystify close reading & deep analysis

• Embed a structure for repeated reading that works into your class or department

• Infuse enjoyment and effort into the reading culture of your class

We can:

• Learn a structure for close reading that can work across your year/school

• Increase independence and confidence in your readers

• Increase relevance by connecting reading strategies to our lives

• Integrate other forms of text (media, art, music) into the curriculum

As I said, I am not a business person, and yet, here I am, a person with a business. So. Here I am. I think I can help you. At the very least, we will have a really interesting conversation, and you will all walk away more sure about what you believe in teaching, particularly in the English/ELA classroom.

We all feel it - the delicate nature of the present moment. There is something to preserve in the act of reading and writing in school. There is something to save in the way we approach human creation, attention, and learning. There is something sacred there.

Let’s work together.