Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, August 30, 2013
www.issaquahreporter.com
Dream lives on Sammamish resident participated in march on Washington
Issaquah School District director of curriculum, Emilie Hard, with the new writing curriculum for students in kindergarten to fifth grade.
BY LINDA BALL IBALL@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
LINDA BALL, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
THE WRITE STUFF
New curriculum for Issaquah K-5 students designed to create better writers BY LINDA BALL LBALL@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
Emilie Hard can hardly contain her enthusiasm about a new comprehensive writing program for Issaquah students in kindergarten through fifth grade that will be introduced this fall. As the school district’s director of curriculum, Hard said this is the very best curriculum of its type to be published and feels very fortunate that they can offer it to students. Written by Lucy Calkins of the Teacher’s College at the University of Columbia in New York City, Calkins sums it up best. “One of the most potent ways to accelerate student’s progress as learners is by equipping them with first-rate skills in writing,” Calkins said. Instead of teachers telling kids to “just write about something,” the curriculum, called Units of Study, teaches students information and narrative writing as well as poetry, descriptive and memoir writing. The teachers were introduced to the program this week, but training will continue for three years. Hard traveled to New York with literacy coaches for training, which she called “phe-
“Giving kids a writing assignment is not the same as teaching them to write.” – Emilie Hard nomenal.” Not only did they experience the curriculum as teachers, but also as students. She said this program is different because it’s built on a writers’ workshop model. In the classroom, teachers will start each period with a focus, or mini-lesson, 10 to 20-minutes long, before engaging the students in an action or activity. The program encourages students to practice the craft of writing. “The more kids write in general, the better they’ll get,” Hard said. “Giving kids a writing assignment is not the same as teaching them to write.”
She said the teachers will be very hands-on as they teach the kids to debate, post blogs, learn to write essays, compare authors, often analyzing different author’s styles. They’ll learn how to write a good first paragraph, write characters they can bring to life on a page, and how to interview people. The district paid for the materials, but the Issaquah Schools Foundation is funding residencies for experts from Teacher’s College to come to district schools, identify a teacher and spend several days in that classroom working with the teacher and students. With 15 elementary schools in the in the district, Hard said she’s not sure they can get consultants to come and work at each school, but the literary coaches that went back east will be present in each school. Hard said this curriculum was completely re-written to meet the new common core standards that the entire state is adopting this school year. “This is the very best elementary writing curriculum,” Hard said. “I want all the students to have quality materials, perhaps because we haven’t focused enough on writing.” Hard is also thinking of having a writing institute next summer for teachers. She wants the teachers to feel like writers themselves.
It’s been 50 years this week since the Civil Rights March on Washington. Sammamish resident and retired educator Gene Cash was there — an 18-year-old young man standing up for the agenda of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. CORE, along with several other groups including the NAACP and the National Urban League wanted access to good housing, schools and jobs. Cash was just out of high school. He said the march came about because of injustices; the Freedom Riders were one group that was targeted. The Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who boarded interstate buses traveling to the segregated south in 1961. Even though it was legal to do so, as the result of a 1946 lawsuit which ruled segregated buses unconstitutional, the Freedom riders were greeted with violence and bus-burning. “Dr. King was inspired by the young people who got on the buses, so he wanted to have a non-violent event,” Cash said. Cash was amazed at the amount of people who showed up for the march - 250,000 strong. He said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech that day, was advised not to give the speech because he had delivered it many times in several churches. But Cash said Mahalia Jackson yelled at him to “give the speech!” Cash was about 75 yards from King in a crowd that included African Americans, whites and other ethnicities. It was a very SEE DREAM, 7