October 20, 2016

Fall 2016: OWP Director Linda Christensen and Three OWP Writing Coaches Recently Published

All four local educators are featured in this Fall’s issue of Rethinking Schools magazine.
by Linda Christensen

Before students write essays convincing admission officers to accept them into college, students need to uncover and believe in their own capacity, to understand that when they are guided by their interests and passions, they exhibit the kind of curiosity and attention to detail that leads to success. How do teachers cultivate a place where students can find and voice their strengths in a senior college essay?

by Amy Lindahl

Teachers learn from architects and district managers that planning time in a teacher’s own classroom was a terribly antiquated use of space. The district’s plan for a desperately needed school renovation is based on “100 percent utilization”—teachers will rotate through classrooms, losing the home bases students depend on. They organize to change the plan.

by Tom McKenna

“Why do people say that Mexicans are stealing Americans’ jobs?” asks Sophia. Before I can respond, Marcus, an African American student, mutters, “Glad somebody finally said it.” In this essay, as a way to deal with racial tensions between his Black and Latina/o students, a high school teacher examines the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
If more money is not a critical requirement for improving education, why have school foundations become so ubiquitous? According to Ashlyn Aiko Nelson and Beth Gazley, who published an investigation of these school funding nonprofits, school foundations have proliferated in the last decades, increasing threefold since the mid-1990s. This teacher essayist uses her own school to illustrate how school foundations perpetuate inequality within districts and states.