During that time, the teachers meet daily to study and practice writing, discuss techniques of teaching writing and develop workshops to share their ideas and instructional strategies with colleagues. During the school year, the graduates, known as teacher-consultants, take their workshops on the road. We distribute descriptions of the workshops that are available, and when we get requests from districts or schools or groups of teachers, we schedule the ones they request. The workshops are extremely popular. The presentations cover topics for teachers at all grade levels, from kindergarten through high school.
Several workshops focus on using other subject areas, such as science and drama, to teach writing.
Vukelich, whose office scheduled 160 workshops throughout Delaware in the first six months of the current school year, said teachers and administrators are always seeking professional development programs that offer practical information. Because the project's teacher-consultants have tried out their techniques in their own classrooms, as well as having had feedback from their colleagues in the summer program, their workshops tend to be especially useful to teachers, she said.