What We Believe
We developed Looking Both Ways out of a particular set of assumptions regarding faculty development, adult learning, and teacher professionalism.
Cross-institutional Learning
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Co-leading seminars in high school / college pairs encourages respect and attention for both high school and college participants as well as a view of literacy that spans students' development over an eight-year period.
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High school and college teachers of reading and writing possess knowledge of use to themselves, each other, and the broader community of NYC educators of which they are a part. Providing opportunities for teachers to share, discuss, and reflect upon that knowledge will strengthen literacy education for the students they teach.
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Visiting each other's settings provides teachers with important insights into different contexts for experiences of teaching and learning, and therefore has the potential to affect teaching practice.
Professional Development as Inquiry
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Organizing seminars as inquiries into complex issues in literacy and language development enables participants to examine their practice more deeply, and thus has greater potential for impact than quick-fix approaches to student achievement.
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Making assessment a focus for inquiry enables teachers to examine test components and student work within a broader consideration of expectations and standards, curriculum and pedagogy.
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Carefully facilitating seminars so that they become "safe spaces" enables participants to raise honestly and publicly the issues they confront as teachers.
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Discussing theoretical readings helps teachers to understand their students as writers and learners and draw implications for their own practice.
Sharing Teacher and Student Work
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Presenting assignments enables teachers to surface their expectations for students, values for writing and reading, and theories about teaching and learning; such presentations also provide teachers with new approaches for their learning repertoire.
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Presenting student work enables teachers to see students as individuals, identify what particular students are able to do in their writing, and recommend next steps for teachers to take in order to assist students in developing as writers.
Teachers as Readers and Writers
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Teachers of reading and writing will understand more about their own and their students' learning processes if they engage in a variety of reading and writing tasks themselves.
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Inviting teachers to write about, share, and reflect upon their own literacy experiences underscores the impact of class, culture, race, gender, and language on their own and their students' development as readers and writers.