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School Programs and Initiatives……..
The New York City Writing Project’s model of professional development is based on three mutually-reinforcing components, all of which are designed to support teachers and school/network leaders to expand and strengthen their capacities to implement effective literacy education in classrooms and schools throughout New York City. These components are: 1) on-site consulting; 2) graduate seminars, study groups and/or workshop series, and 3) strategic planning and direct support to school/network administrators focused on their literacy goals.
The foundation of our services resides in the on-site work that our staff developers (“teacher-consultants”) provide alongside teachers and students in classrooms. NYCWP teacher-consultants have been exemplary teachers, assistant principals, and literacy education staff developers. The NYCWP model for coaching and consulting rests on a belief that “teachers teaching teachers” builds local capacity and leadership.
The services of NYCWP teacher consultants are provided during school hours, after school hours, and in the summer; these services are co-constructed with schools, clusters, networks, teachers, and school leaders. During the school year, coaching and consulting services are offered at school sites during the week with additional professional development opportunities offered after school hours, on the weekends or during the summer either at the school site or at Lehman College.
The NYCWP offers a large menu of services to schools, districts and networks. An overview of some of our most popular services can be found below:
- On-Site Teacher Consultants are available to spend full days in your school building working with your staff. Teacher consultants can be staffed from anywhere from once a week to four times weekly; you can tailor the number of dates and weeks to suit your school’s needs. The NYCWP’s consultation and coaching services are designed to be practical, theoretical and experiential and are explicitly aligned with local and State education policy, including the Common Core Learning Standards, the DOE’s annual instructional expectations, and the Advance teacher evaluation system. The components of our work plan are co-constructed and designed with principals, network leaders, teachers and ILS evaluation staff. They are customized to meet the varying experiences, levels of professional training, school structures, sizes and grade levels, and priorities of students, teachers and schools to engage in continuous school improvement and student achievement.
- Leadership Workshops are designed as a forum for coaches, lead teachers, assistant principals, and/or principals to enrich their repertoire of professional development strategies: team teaching, demonstrations, facilitating meetings, conducting workshops. In leadership workshops, participants consider theory and practice in literacy education in relation to leadership themes. They experience and apply a variety of protocols that encourage discussion and promote close examination of student work. They share experiences working with teachers and adapt approaches for particular student populations including English language learners and special needs students. They explore ways to examine student work for data to be used in guiding teachers to plan instruction. Leadership workshops will also relate NYCWP coaching for teachers to specific competencies in Advance, the new teacher evaluation and development system.
- Workshop Series are designed to address the needs of particular audiences such as new teachers, ELL teachers, or educators of specific content areas. These series can also focus on topics of special interest within a school or across a network. These might include: strategies for supporting readers in content areas, essay writing, using computer technology to support literacy, or the development of a writing-intensive curriculum. Within these workshops, educators have opportunities to collaborate on the design of classroom projects and activities.
For more information about the services that the NYCWP can provide for your school community, please contact newyorkcitywritingproject@gmail.com.
