Exploring Teachers’ Workplace Writing: Expanding What Counts as “Teacher Writing”

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Teacher and Student Writing Across Contexts

Abstract

K-12 writing teachers often are encouraged to develop their own writing projects, in order to inform their pedagogies and support reflection on teaching. Yet literature on teacher-writers privileges certain genres, largely ignoring the day-to-day writing teachers do as part of their jobs. This study follows four first-year teachers as they participated in an online writing group for over a year, sharing a variety of personal and professional texts. This presentation focuses on participants’ composition and revision of workplace texts. It argues that sharing such texts helped participants develop and adapt writing strategies consistent with the goals for teacher-writers, leading to more cohesive ways of being writers across contexts, purposes, and texts.

Author

• Christine Dawson, Skidmore College