We Mustache You, "What's The Best Professional Development You've Ever Experienced?"

Yesterday, I resurrected an oldie, but goodie, workshop on informational writer and to make it more successful, I asked the teacher leadership institute to join forces with the Little Lab for Big Imaginations kids, 3rd-5th, so that our learning was that much more powerful. Yesterday, we explored both informational and argumentative writing with a series of prompts, games, and shared experiences. The bottom line? The little people are phenomenal instructors for the older writers (e.g., teachers) and their responses and leadership are exactly the refreshing voices we all need. 

Why do we do anything we do, if it is not for the young people we work with? We were privileged to have Karen Romano Young, children's book author, illustrator, doodler, thinker, writer, scientist-explorer and sage, who offered us a workshop on the importance of drawing and sketching out ideas before one writes. She was the catalyst for an incredible afternoon where we thought critically about how to write informatively and argumentatively. Her work with non-fiction and scientific thinking was thought-provoking, engaging, and INFORMATIVE. Exactly what we needed.

The teachers are loaded with pet-peeves, but also expertise for what they might explore for week 4 of the teach institute. We wonder what they will inform us? Or, perhaps they have an argument they need to be here?

What I love most, however - very unique to the CWP-Fairfield, is the contributions of Young Adult Literacy Labs and youth expertise. We can only take our work so far. It is the kids we are working with that help us to go th extra mile.

Hence the mustaches. Each participant was given a mustache and asked to require of neighbors a few additional responses to questions they had. 

"Neighbor, I mustache you another question? Why do you feel such anger towards that political statement? Why do you want to inform the rest of us about this or that?"

Boom. We are Thursday at CWP-Fairfield, Week 4 with 2 more weeks to go. Our brains are loaded and, speaking of, this afternoon, the teachers will get the #UNLOADED workshop from Darcy Hicks, Allison Fallon, Mary Himes and Helen During.

I can't wait to kick this off.