WriterCoach Connection

Give the gift of student writing support at year's end!

What better way to honor a loved one who cares about education than to make a gift to WriterCoach Connection in his or her name? As you plan your year-end giving with its related tax deductions, you can donate to WCC in honor of a friend or family member, write a personal note to that person, and we will make sure your gift recipient gets your message.

A gift in any amount helps keep our writer coaches sitting next to students in Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, and El Cerrito classrooms. Donating is easy and secure at our website, and here's an example of what you'll set in motion when you do it: community volunteers being trained as writer coaches earlier this month at Oakland School for the Arts.

Give a gift to WCC and warm the hearts of a lot of students and teachers as we head into 2012!

 

Bob Menzimer

 

 

Richmond Community Foundation helps light our way in West County

The Richmond Community Foundation has announced it is awarding a $5,000 capacity-building grant to Community Alliance for Learning, to help us recruit volunteers for our expanding WriterCoach Connection program in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District.

This year we have grown WCC at El Cerrito High School, to include every 9th grader as well as students in the English Language Development (ELD) Levels 3 and 4 classes we served last year. This expansion to 400 students makes El Cerrito High the largest among the dozen schools we serve in four East Bay districts.

Meantime, we are preparing to launch WCC at our second West County site, Portola Middle School, next month. The pilot program at Portola will serve a mainstream 7th grade class and one ELD class, with the hope of further expansion at the school for 2012-13.

We now have our sights set on Richmond, and the vision of continuing to serve students and teachers in El Cerrito and expanding north in the District would not be possible without the generous support of the Richmond Community Foundation. We thank them!

Bob Menzimer

WriterCoach Connection partners with Episcopal Charities

As part of our intiative to form expanded, broad-based strategic partnerships with our generous funders, we were pleased to help our friends at Episcopal Charities with their biggest fundraiser of the year, the Night of Lights, at Delancey Street on the San Francisco waterfront on a blustery and rain-swept night in early November. 

Here is Community Alliance for Learning Board Chair Kathy Kahn (r.), helping check guests in that night:

Since Episcopal Charities helps fund WriterCoach Connection, they requested that one of our coaches attend the event to talk about our program. WCC volunteer Janice Barbour, with her husband Steve, answered the call. Here they are (l. and center), in lively conversation about what writer coaching means to our students and teachers, and the satisfaction being a coach brings to our volunteers:

I was honored by the willingness of another person intimately acquainted with WCC to help out at the event: my wife Meg.

We were so happy to be a part of this warm and festive evening, which generated lots of donations for Episcopal Charities with a lively auction of fun prizes and activities.

Bob Menzimer

Honor your holiday gift recipients with writing support for students

If a toaster seems like a tired gift idea for your loved ones this holiday season, how about something packed with meaning for a public-school student and teacher? As social consciousness spreads in the face of a struggling economy, especially at this time of year, it seems more and more people are offering holiday gifts that truly touch hearts. A gift to WCC in the name of a loved one says something special about you and about the person in whose name you make your donation.

You can make that gift, in the amount you choose, via our website, and you can include a personal note that we will send to your gift recipient, so he or she will know exactly how big your heart is. 

Here's how generous hearts engage to support WCC. Below, a dozen pair of helping hands last week helped to send out our year-end fundraising appeal, with the latest edition of our newsletter.

 

Your dontion helps writing support get rolling, with the training of community volunteers as coaches. For the first time this year, we are training high-performing high-school 12th graders at Oakland School for the Arts to join us in coaching the school's 9th graders. Below, OSA seniors Domine Ezechukwu (l.) and Alex Harris soak up the training, preparing to coach their 9th-grade classmates.

 

And finally, of course, the rubber meets the road, as coaches sit down with students and guide them to more effective writing and critical thinking. Here's the end result of your holiday gift in the name of a loved one, coach-student pairs at work in the library at El Cerrito High School.

Donate to WCC in the name of a loved one, compose a note to your gift recipient, and we will make sure he or she gets the message. You'll warm a lot of hearts this holiday season!

Bob Menzimer

Picture yourself here

Are you thinking about becoming a writer coach? Your first stop is coach training, as it was for these volunteers last week at Oakland School for the Arts.

For the first time, we are training high-achieving 12th graders as writer coaches. Above, Domine Ezechukwu (l.) and Alex Harris hope to be working with 9th graders when coaching at OSA begins in January.

Husband and wife team Jean Rains and Steve Zimmerman try their hand at practice writer coaching.

Jennifer Duff in active discussion with two trainee colleagues.

There's still time to register for coach training sessions in December and January!

 

Bob Menzimer

 

A new coach learns to draw a student out

I think we are coaching our students not because they are unable to come up with answers but because faced with an assignment and a blank piece of paper they find it hard to come up with questions. 

So my MO has simply become to ask them questions - to give me three reasons why such and such should be happening.  When they give me answers I just say Write that down.  Then give me an example for each one of the three to provide color, movement and texture.  Write that down.  These are the middle three paragraphs.  Then ask the student whether he/she thinks all this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Write that down; this is paragraph 5.  Now, what is this all about?  Write that down; this is paragraph 1.

I notice that when I say Write that down it takes them a few moments to adjust to the idea that what they have just said is in fact worth writing down.

Peter Geraghty, first-year coach