WriterCoach Connection hatched in spring 2001, breaking out of its shell at Berkeley High School with 35 community volunteers working with 180 students. From that modest beginning, we have grown!
Within two years of its birth at Berkeley High, WCC had spread its wings to cover all of the Berkeley middle schools, and the program has been growing slowly but steadily ever since. This year, more than 500 community volunteers trained as writer coaches are sitting side by side with more than 2,000 students at a dozen schools in four East Bay districts.
After spreading north to Albany in fall 2003 and south to Oakland in fall 2008, we crossed the border into West Contra Costa County last year, with a pilot program at El Cerrito High School. Since then, we have grown faster in West County than anywhere else, with an expanded program at El Cerrito High this year, a pilot program this spring at Portola Middle School in El Cerrito, and planning now under way for our first program in Richmond.
On the heels of the intense community interest that brought WCC to El Cerrito last year and has kept it there this year, it was the West County school district that generated the vision for WCC at Richmond High. At a meeting last December in his office, Superintendent Bruce Harter announced that he wanted us at Richmond High, said he had identified the funding, and asked how quickly we could get it done. The answer was fall 2012, and we have been recruiting Richmond community volunteers ever since, with training sessions planned for later this spring and during the summer.
Our pilot program at Richmond High this fall will focus on English Language Development students in Level 4, the English fluency stage that immediately precedes a student's entry into mainstream classes. We project to serve about 150 students, and will need 60 coaches to work with them. If you'd like to be part of our first program in Richmond, contact Dave Moss at 510.233.3088.
We're excited to bring WriterCoach Connection to Richmond students and teachers at long last, a dozen years after the program's first peep at Berkeley High!
Bob Menzimer