Testimonials

Ideally, IWT develops a relationship with an on-site institution over time, so that teachers may continue to develop how to put into practice what they learn from successive workshops. One teacher, returning to her classroom from a good experience at an IWT workshop, may be able to change the way students write and think in her classroom. But alone she cannot bring change to the entire school or curriculum. Teachers from the same school who attend in together can support each other once they return to the classroom and can become agents for change in the school as a whole, and this could be reinforced by an on-site workshop. Here in their own words are teachers who have experienced this firsthand.

Testimonials

quotation markI've been participating on and off for 12 years in IWT Bard workshops.  My students' work is notably more engaging and sophisticated due to all the techniques I've learned.  The basic premise that writing is thinking has changed my classroom practice.  My students think and write and write and learn to trust and follow what emerges.  I could list specific techniques I've learned, but the point, overall, is that my students are learning to discover what they care about through their writing and to write their way into the world.  As a result, their analysis of literature and their essays are much, much more precise, original, interesting, and engaging.  As a result, they understand the power of their own writing and their own ideas.quotation mark

—Jill Veleas, John Jay High School, Katonah, NY

Ideally, IWT develops a relationship with an on-site institution over time, so that teachers may continue to develop how to put into practice what they learn from successive workshops. One teacher, returning to her classroom from a good experience at an IWT workshop, may be able to change the way students write and think in her classroom. But alone she cannot bring change to the entire school or curriculum. Teachers from the same school who attend in together can support each other once they return to the classroom and can become agents for change in the school as a whole, and this could be reinforced by an on-site workshop. Here in their own words are teachers who have experienced this firsthand.

Steve Garvey Junior HS, Lindsay Unified School District, CA

"Wow! I've learned so much about writing and learning.  I have a better understanding of how to weave writing throughout a lesson.  I feel I have a deeper understanding of literacy and the implication for developing critical thinking through collaboration.  Free Writing, Focused Free Writing, Process Writing, Dialectical notebooks, and Text rendering will be a good place to start."

"This workshop gave me a paradigm shift in my approach to writing in mathematics.  It was freeing to allow myself to write and grow in the confidence that I can bring this back to my students."

Asheville School, Asheville, NC

"This was one of the most helpful teaching workshops I've attended. Thank you."

"I've learned many teaching practices...ways to discuss student writing and revising...will use these in my classroom with great excitement and enthusiasm."

Finger Lakes Community College, NY

"The readings, the writing, the sharing of writing, and the discussions were all especially helpful."

"I have learned new ways to get students to think about writing and to get them more engaged in what they want to say."

Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn, NY

I took my first workshop in July 2000 and was immediately hooked. I was back the next summer for another workshop, and then I asked Teresa Vilardi about bringing an Institute Associate to my school. At the time, I was chairing an integrated English/History department covering grades 6-12, and often it felt like the sixth grade social studies teacher and the AP English teacher just didn’t belong in the same department. I hoped that the Institute writing practices would help us discover how connected our work really was. Alfie Guy came several times throughout the year and worked with our department during professional development days, and his impact was tremendous. As a group, we connected in ways that were both professional and personal, and as individual teachers, we started implementing the techniques he shared with us. We developed a common language for talking about thinking and writing, and we began to see how that 6th grade social studies teacher was laying the thinking and writing foundations upon which the AP English teacher would depend. That common language began with two words: process writing.
 
The power of process writing is that it reminds my students that the writing they do, first and foremost, is for themselves. It’s not for me. This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me when I was a student, and it certainly doesn’t appear to be obvious to most of my students today. They often think of writing as something they do so I can give them a grade. Process writing challenges that view. I try to help them develop the habit of using writing as a place to sort through their own ideas and learn to ask questions of themselves and of a text. Bard gave me the tools to do that well. 
 
I find the Institute workshops at Bard to be magical. I should probably say that they are professionally stimulating and fill me up with new ideas about my classroom. And that’s true. But that’s not why I got hooked back in 2000, and it’s not what keeps me coming back. There are a lot of places to get good ideas for teaching—my shelves are filled with helpful books about teaching, and online resources abound. What happens at the Institute is different. Led by top-notch faculty who pick up a pencil and do the process writing right alongside us, the participants of an Institute workshop are people who care about writing not just as teachers of writing but as writers themselves. The Institute is about lifting up the very thing that got me into teaching in the first place—a hunger for human connection, a longing to believe that writing and language can be ways to access our most complicated thoughts, our most nuanced perceptions. The Institute affirms my belief that helping others to think and write well is a noble calling. In every Institute workshop, there is a seriousness of purpose, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. And that’s why I keep coming back, and probably always will. You can never get enough of that magic.