I have learned a great deal from this book, I think the material is well organized, the case studies and vignettes are extremely effective. Here I am relating only to the points relevant to my thesis.
“Ample research from the last decade shows that staff development is both a crucial element in school reform and a catalyst for change in building a school culture that supports a high level of adult and student learning” (p. 57). Citing Daniels, Bizar, and Zemelman, 2001.
“…teachers’ groups, professional communities variously defined, offer the most effective unit of intervention and powerful opportunity for reform…The path to change in the classroom core lies within and through teachers’ professional communities; learning communities which generate knowledge, craft new norms of practice, and sustain participants in their efforts to reflect, examine, experiment, and change” (p. 57). Quoting McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993.
“Schools need to be considered as places for teachers to lead scholarly lives/ I can’t imagine providing quality education for students if schools don’t take the teaching of teachers seriously…” (Harwayne, 2001, as cited in NWP & Nagin, 2006, p. 59).
“We cannot build a nation of educated people who can communicate effectively without teachers and administrators who value, understand and practice writing themselves” (p. 60).
Lieberman and Wood (2002) discuss two central elements of the NWP structure of professional development: “…a distinctive set of social practices that motivate teachers, make learning accessible, and build an ongoing professional community; and networks that organize and sustain relationships among these communities and produce new and revitalizing forms of support, commitment, and leadership” (p. 65)
In NWP PD programs writing teachers are required to write. Teachers are expected to do what they ask their students to do.
In a case study (p. 66), Joe Check asked teachers in a PD to write a short memory based memoir. He added that the teachers were invited to write in whatever language they felt most comfortable using. Some of the bilingual teachers found this significant and were very grateful for the experience of writing on professional topics in their mother tongue.
National Writing Project, & Nagin, C. (2006). Because writing matters: Improving student writing in our schools (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.