WriterCoach Connection

Read-and-Write-a-thon 2010 is heading your way!

The biggest fundraising event of the year for WriterCoach Connection, the annual Read-and-Write-a-thon, (RWAT) is on the horizon, scheduled for Saturday, June 5, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the library at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley. All WCC associates (coach volunteers, coach trainers, site coordinators, staff and board members) are reaching out to their friends and family members to ask for donations, as they did last year, to the tune of $30,000 (!) 

The process of making a donation is easy: Just log on here. You can also maximize your donation by saving us the cut our online vendor takes and mailing a check directly to Community Alliance for Learning (or CAFL), PO Box 6098, Albany, CA  94706. All donations are tax deductible--you'll get an acknowledgement of your generosity and a receipt for tax purposes.

You can also join us as an RWAT reader at the event. Sign up for a twenty-minute shift reading from the writing of your choice by clicking here. And you can attain stardom as a member of the Mighty RWAT Art Players as we gather 'round in the RWAT afternoon to read Thornton Wilder's classic of American literature, Our Town. 

Longfellow Middle School, the site of RWAT 2010, is at 1500 Derby Street in Berkeley. (Click here for a map.)

Here's a picture of WriterCoach Connection founding member Wendy Breuer reading from one of her favorite childhood works at last year's RWAT.

If you can make a donation to help keep our writer coaches in Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Albany classrooms next year, I hope to see you at RWAT 2010 on Saturday, June 5 to thank you in person!

Bob Menzimer 

Wrapping up writer coaching for 2009-10

Hard to believe, but the 2009-10 school year is rapidly coming to a close, and our dedicated site coordinators and their stalwart volunteers are conducting their final coaching sessions of the year, expressing heartfelt goodbyes to their students and teachers. 

Albany Middle School coaches completed their limited coaching program for the year, with support for all AMS eighth-grade students on their I-Search projects, at the beginning of May. But the first full coaching programs to wrap up for the 2009-10  school year were at Willard Middle School and Community Partnerships Academy at Berkeley High, this week.

The Willard coaches were first across the finish line. At most of our sites, our goal is eight to ten coaching sessions for each student throughout the year, but Willard Site Coordinator Jeanine Brown and her remarkable band of coach volunteers served Willard eighth graders with a full dozen sessions per student this year. WCC has proven to be a solid educational value indeed for Willard Middle School.

That's Jeanine below (third from left), with her fellow WCC site coordinators and Community Alliance for Learning staff members, at our spring site coordinator meeting. We salute all of them!

 
Back (l. to r.): Annie Stine (Longfellow Middle School), Jeanine Brown (Willard Middle School), Lynn Mueller (CAFL Associate Director), Jayne Walker (CAFL Director of Instruction), Mark Pasley (Longfellow Middle School), Peg Healy (Albany Middle School). Front (l. to r.): Sahib-Amar Khalsa (Community Partnerships Academy, Berkeley High), Kathleen Hallam (King Middle School), Karen Larson (Media Academy, Oakland). Not pictured: Teresa Barnett (Albany Middle School).

Bob Menzimer

Why the WCC Volunteer of the Year is a writer coach

Pam Crane, honored with this year's Community Alliance for Learning Marilyn Alberts Outstanding Volunteer Award (see blog post below), tells this story, which captures the spirit of what has kept her coming back as a writer coach, year after year:

"One time I lost my temper with a really sullen, nasty kid.  We'd had a few sessions together and he wouldn't talk to me, respond to questions, etc.  I'm sure I was giving off 'I-don't-much-like-you-either-Bud' vibes. This session was starting out just like all the others, and I just sort of gave up and decided
that if I didn't end the session I would soon be yelling at him.  So I just told him that it seemed clear that he didn't want to be there, and I would take him back to his classroom.  I stood up and to my
utter astonishment, he kept sitting there, looking shocked and hurt, and he said something like, 'Don't you have to work with me?  Aren't you going to help me with my paper?'  I sat back down, and said that he didn't seem to want my help. 'Why do you think that?' he asked, truly perplexed. 

"'Well," I said, 'you don't answer my questions, and frankly, I get angry when you sneer at me; it hurts my feelings.' 

"'But I really need help with my paper,' he said.  

"'OK," I said, and sat back down, 'but from now on can you be a little easier on me?'  He actually smiled and nodded, and things went uphill from that moment on through the rest of the year. As I look back on that day, I realize that somehow both the student and I let down our defenses and told the truth to each other - a very rare thing.  And it does not escape me that he was the first one to do so.

"When I coach I am often humbled by the power of simple human interaction, the dynamics between adults and children, between coach/teacher and student. We fall into roles: we think we know what
the other person is thinking/feeling and we react accordingly. For me, each coaching session is another chance to not make assumptions, to really listen, to get where that kid is at and where he/she wants
to go. As I write this, I know for a fact that I fail far more often than I succeed.  (That's truth, not false humility.)  But WCC gives me a chance to try over and over again, and that is a gift."

 

Pam is a gift to the students and teachers she serves, and to everyone in our program. Here she is with her friend (and WCC site coordinator at King Middle School in Berkeley) Kathleen Hallam, who later presented Pam with the Alberts Award.

Bob Menzimer

WCC honors its Volunteer of the Year

At the WriterCoach Connection Volunteer Appreciation Party on March 28, Kathleen Hallam, WCC site coordinator at King Middle School in Berkeley, presented the Community Alliance for Learning Marilyn Alberts Award to a  long-time coach and one of the program's first site coordinators, Pam Crane. Pam continued serving WCC long after her kids had graduated from the Berkeley schools, and continues as an invaluable writer coach to this day. She brings her boundless energy, focus, and skills to the table every time she coaches and has guided countless students to more effective writing over the years.

The Marilyn Alberts Award is presented annually to a WCC participant who embodies the skill and selfless dedication of Marilyn Alberts, a veteran educator who serves WCC as a coach and coach trainer and offers the organization guidance informed by a long career in the classroom.

Congratulations to Pam, a richly deserving honoree!

 Pam Crane, left, accepts CAFL's Marilyn Alberts Outstanding Volunteer Award from Kathleen Hallam at this year's Volunteer Appreciation party on March 28.

Bob Menzimer

The straws that stir the drink

What most people are interested in about WriterCoach Connection is how the program works, whom it serves, what results it generates. People like to hear stories from our coaches and comments from the students and teachers with whom we work. But every once in awhile, I like to pause and recognize the people who are responsible for the powerful impact WCC makes in our public schools. Community Alliance for Learning, the nonprofit that runs WriterCoach Connection, is populated by a remarkable group of site coordinators and by a tiny but highly effective staff. And here they are, or most of them, at our spring site coordinator meeting.

The site coordinators are the linchpins of this program, the indispensable links in the chain of our success. They run the program at each school, managing teams of volunteers (and helping recruit them, too), and providing the crucial interface between the coaches and the teachers. Here they surround CAFL's associate director Lynn Mueller and our new director of instruction Jayne Walker. A remarkable core of talent and dedication.

Back, left to right: Annie Stine (Longfellow Middle School, Berkeley), Jeanine Brown (Willard Middle School, Berkeley), Lynn Mueller (Associate Director), Jayne Walker (Director of Instruction), Mark Pasley (Longfellow Middle School, Berkeley), Peg Healy (Albany Middle School). Front, left to right: Sahib-Amar Khalsa (Berkeley High), Kathleen Hallam (King Middle School, Berkeley), Karen Larson (Media Academy, Oakland). Not present: Teresa Barnett (Albany Middle School).

Bob Menzimer