Network Logic - Index of

Network logic
providing helpful feedback on colleagues’ teaching and writing. By
turns, they also become learners as they play audience to
presentations, get feedback after sitting in the ‘author’s chair’, and
engage in research and professional discussions. By rotating such jobs
as logging the days’ activities and bringing in food for snacks, they
play the role of nurturing and responsible colleagues, attentive to the
needs of a developing professional community.
Subtly underpinning these activities are the habits of mind
necessary for the process of good writing. Teachers learn to reflect on
their own intentions as human beings and professionals and choose
compelling topics to pursue. They have the space and time for prewriting
reflection, for drafting and getting feedback, for editing and
revising. They learn how their writing changes depending on their
purposes and intended audiences.
These activities, done in community, help teachers make
important connections. Teaching, like writing, requires clear and
compelling purpose, trials and errors, and revisions. And, like writing,
it flourishes best when taken public for collegial edification and
critique. Moreover, writing and teaching are both bolstered by
reading and research. Teachers who teach writing effectively and
comprehensively have more to do than simply teach the process. They
also draw on composition theory and cover such topics as genre, style,
grammar, structure, voice, audience and rhetoric. Over the five weeks,
an institute curriculum takes shape, incorporating both the active
process of writing and salient topics in literacy education. Moreover,
the curriculum makes clear connections to local educational
challenges. But it was initially honouring teachers’ knowledge that
engages teachers and encourages them to hold up their teaching for
feedback and critique.
Many sites (ours included) ask teachers to write three pieces: an
autobiographical re-creation of an experience; a personal essay
inspired by an experience; and an experimental piece – a poem, story,
or one-act play. For a concluding assignment, teachers are asked to
address an issue on the teaching of writing or to write a journal article
for submission or a policy statement for their school. In this way
68 Demos