The Process

F. Isabel Campoy & Alma Flor Ada

After many years of working with children, teachers and parents, we collected an important body of information related to the psychology of learning. Looking closely to the data, several issues emerged as important facts to consider in the process of learning such as, the importance of teachers and parents modeling for children behaviors, values, enthusiasm for the acquisition of knowledge, reading or writing. Because we are authors of children’s literature, we thought that perhaps we could contribute with our experience, to explore the importance of modeling in writing.

The book Authors in The Classroom: A Transformative Education Experience is the result of our years of practice with a multiplicity of teachers and parents throughout the world

Authors in the Classroom is an exploration of Voice and Identity through creative writing as a means to bridge the gap between the cultures of home and school. Its contents center in the role of Teachers as authors, their leadership responsibility in the educational community of their classes, and the various strategies that they can implement to make authorship an important key in the curriculum across subjects. Teachers are presented in the first part of the book with the theoretical background principles that inspire this work, followed by a second part where Teachers find an opportunity to put into practice the first step of the process.

Writing effectively is essential for academic and professional success. There are many well-developed techniques and multiple books about teaching writing, but still some teachers have yet to overcome themselves the fear of writing. It is difficult to teach something one does not enjoy doing.

The process presented here is geared to transform every teacher in an author. Once teachers have experienced the joy of authorship they will be able to talk about writing authentically to their students. The success of this process is based on two key elements: providing easy to follow models and structures, and focusing on the sharing of significant personal experiences. It also recognizes the importance of the home-school interaction, as central and basic to the education process.

This training program has the following goals:

Improve students’ writing abilities as teachers/trainers modeled the authorship process thus helping students succeed on the State’s Learning Standards and Assessments.
Incorporate the family cultural and linguistic heritage into the curriculum as teachers/trainers facilitated students’ research on their family and community history thus making a link between school and the home that will affect student’s learning positively.
Empower parents by including them in their children’s educational endeavor.

The Authors in the Classroom Program supports the following Language Arts Standards:

Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding through exposure to varied literature of merit and literary genres.
Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and understanding through exposure to varied literature of merit and literary genres.
Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation through exposure to varied literature of merit and literary genres.
Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction through the presentation and discussion of varied literature, literary genres and personal books.

Students at any grade, skill, and language proficiency level, can benefit from this program.

Parents at all levels of literacy and language skills can participate. Numerous strategies are shared with the teachers to make this, a successful learning experience. Parents do not need to be present in the school (as frequently their schedules do not allow them to participate in school activities).

The Workshop

You can see here the class that was taught at Columbia University, April 9, 2016 as an introduction of 3.5 hours to the experience of Authorship: See the Complete Workshop

Program Handout

You can download the Program Handout of Authors in the Classroom from here:
> https://www.authorsintheclassroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Authors-in-the-classroom-Program-Handout.pdf