Powerful Schools Educate! smart is great.
Powerful Writers supports young children in becoming confident, lifelong writers. We accomplish this by developing expertise among teachers and by creating a culture of writing within schools.
Every day, in public schools across South Seattle, Powerful Writers’ teachers facilitate daily writing workshops characterized by high expectations, predictable structures and routines, strong demonstration lessons, and an atmosphere of safety and trust that enables students to make new attempts in their writing. Teachers receive professional development in writing instruction, in-class coaching with Powerful Writers teacher coaches, volunteers trained to confer with young writers, and visits from local authors, playwrights, and poets.
Over the past several years, Powerful Writers has emerged as an exemplary professional development program unique to the West Coast. We foster school-wide leadership in writing instruction that’s aligned across grade bands, and build multi-year relationships with schools that nurture deep teacher knowledge. This deep knowledge sustains fundamental change.
The importance of writing in a young person’s life cannot be over stated. Students will be called upon again and again throughout their lives to demonstrate, through writing, what they know and how they make sense of the world. It is essential that they learn to use writing to shape and document their thinking and to communicate their thoughts, ideas and knowledge through stories, essays, poems, and articles. In a world of high stakes assessments, and one in which writing often takes the place of face-to-face interaction, young people who can effectively express themselves through writing will have a significant edge. Powerful Writers helps ensure that students acquire this essential life skill.