In-service

Just got out a little while ago from a faculty in-service. I had to give a small presentation on the topic of the seminar I went to a week or so ago on teaching the writing process. The colleague with whom I went spoke first, in his rambling jumbled way, and I followed. I wasn't particularly inspiring (I didn't have a powerpoint or overhead presentation like the math and science guys who preceded us), and made merely a few points: one, that the woman teaching the seminar stressed the idea of writing being connected to the subject matter; two, that rubrics were stressed, but nothing much new was said; three, that teachers were asked to model the kinds of writing the students were doing, a thing I had only just started doing myself, at the prompting of our Assistant Headmaster; and four, that the previous recommendation seems like a throwback to the old style of teaching classics: read the masters, do your best to write like them, and then, once you have mastered the basics, give free reign to your creativity. That seems to me to be wisest.