While many students and educators enjoyed three months of R-and-R, a band of teachers from the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District spent a week at Columbia University in New York City, participating in intensive courses to improve how they teach reading and writing through the Teachers College Summer Institutes.
After a rather stringent application process, 14 teachers from the district were selected to attend: five from San Lorenzo Valley Elementary and nine from Boulder Creek Elementary.
The training was primarily paid for by two grants from the Cotsen Family Foundation and was also supported by one of the district’s parents clubs, as well as district money earmarked for staff training and a gift from an anonymous donor.
Jody Bruce, a kindergarten teacher at Boulder Creek Elementary, said that without that support, many of the teachers would not have been able to attend. Tuition for the program was $700, on top of costs for lodging, airfare and food.
“It sounded too good to be true,” Bruce said. “We’ve always been encouraged to grow and meet the needs of the kids.”
Even with some of their program expenses covered, many of the teachers who attended paid for part out of their own pockets.
“This was our family vacation this year,” Bruce said.
In New York, the teachers joined 1,200 educators from around the world.
The curriculum focused on goals and encouraged creative writing by making reading and writing familiar to young learners through a series of group writing activities and the use of “mentor texts” — reading materials on subjects children can relate to, to plant the seeds for their own creative styles.
“When you teach 22 kids, you have 22 different styles of learning,” said Jen Wilson, a kindergarten teacher at Boulder Creek Elementary. “Kids sometimes learn the best from each other.”
The program is intended for teachers of kindergarten through eighth grade, to ensure that students’ experiences learning to read and write aren’t wildly different from year to year.
“The idea is that when my kindergartners go to first grade, they’ll pick up where they left off,” said Georgie Purtscher, who teaches at San Lorenzo Valley Elementary.
“The more of us that are doing this program, the better,” agreed Lisa Benavidez, a teacher at SLE who is participating in the Art of Teaching program through the Cotsen Family Foundation.
“It’s a commitment to teaching writing every day,” she added. “It has to be prioritized.”
Superintendent Julie Haff lauded the teachers for their efforts.
“I think we have an excellent staff,” Haff said. “They took time from their summer to improve their craft.”
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