Always Write: Corbett's Representing Educational Philosophies On-line Workshop

Welcome. My name is Corbett Harrison, and I have been an educator and a teacher-trainer since 1991. I specialize in teaching writing using differentiated instruction. I also focus on critical thinking techniques, especially during the pre-writing and revision steps of the writing process.

I serve Northern Nevada for nine months of the year (September-May), and during summers, I hire myself out to school districts around the country.

I am already working with several districts for the upcoming summer. If you would like to check my availability for the summer of 2012, please.

Always
Write

Because writing--when skillfully taught from the heart--can and should be the most enjoyable part of your teaching day, I created this website.

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You've found my page of materials for a workshop I conduct: Representing One's Educational Philosophies On-Line

I am a maximizer. That is a personal strength of mine that I am proud to have. It means I do my best work when I'm with fellow professionals who are already good at what they do, and my strength involves inspiring these types of teachers to become even better. I am so lucky that my work with the Northern Nevada Writing Project and the Northwest Regional Professional Program specifically has me create programs that help my fellow teachers maximize their own potential. It's easy to love your job when you know your strengths and are asked to base your work on them.

I am also a teacher leader in my district and state. The best professional development I've ever participated in was hosted by fellow teacher leaders (not by my state department's trainers or by text book company representatives). As a teacher leader, I actively participate--as both a learner and a leader--in regular professional development because the best educators know they still have plenty to learn about teaching. As a teacher leader, I encourage both my most stubborn and willing colleagues to embrace new ideas to try in their classroom.

I believe we need so many more teacher leaders to steer the future of education in the right direction, and when I play the role of maximizer, I know I am helping build a larger pool of these types of educators. Lately, as I continue to play the role of teacher leader, I find myself encouraging the very best teachers I know to develop an on-line presence. I believe the web will become the new place where teacher leaders will be discovered. I believe teachers can grow as leaders by establishing and maintaining a web presence for their professional ideas.

More importantly, I believe that if just the top 20% of teachers began posting ideas and resources for the worldwide community to discover and use, we could do away with all the mediocre text books and the quick fix programs that are thrust upon us by people who haven't stepped foot in a classroom for far too long.

I hope that every way-above-average teacher out there is someday inspired to build a website, to post some of their best lessons and resources, to share their philosophies of why they believe their ideas work in the classroom, and to help others find their on-line ideas. In 2006, I began my own personal/professional website. I am pleased with the regular visitors I have from across the globe. I encourage other teachers to not only follow my lead but to also follow the leads from other educators working to build high-quality websites that represent their classrooms and their beliefs.

On this page, please enjoy some of the resources and links that I share with teachers when I present my philosophy about the Internet to fellow teachers.

My Tools for Website Building:

Dreamweaver: My HTML Code Writing Program
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Fireworks: My Logo/Graphic Program
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The Template Store: Where I buy pre-made templates

The PowerPoint I use to Introduce this Workshop

Click here to access the PDF version of the PowerPoint I designed for this workshop.

Can Your Represent Your Beliefs as a Teacher?

Nevada Teachers Sharing their Beliefs & Resources

There's an activity in Barry Lane's 51 Wacky We-Search Reports that I use a lot during workshops: The Roman Centurion's Brain. This activity asks the writer to partition up someone else's brain like a pie chart. It works with any topic, and it requires the writer to ask, "What does this person I've researched think about, and to what degree?"

Barry provides a great example on page __ of the book. It's the Roman Centurion's brain. Barry shows what he's learned about the life of this historical persona by divvying up a typical centurion's thoughts. It's a great way to summarize research without copying.

When using this activity, I ask teachers to think about what they believe in their heart of hearts about teaching. What makes a great teacher? What makes a great classroom? I challenge teachers to come up with the three or four answers, and then they do the important part: they divide up the brain based on how important each idea is when set to next the other ideas. I have the teachers create a profile of their heads, then divide up their brains inspired by Barry's example from the book.

Here are a few examples I photographed when I did this activity with writing teachers. I asked them what were the thee most important things that they believed helped to create a true classroom of writers. If you click on the images, you can see them in larger form:

My Model Corbett's Website: Are my drawing's big ideas represented in my webpage's introduction?	Dena Harrison's Example Dena Harrison's Website: Are this teacher's big ideas represented in her webpage's introduction?

Holly Young's Example Holly Young's Website: Are this teacher's big ideas represented in her webpage's introduction?	Theresa Crowley's Example Theresa Crowley's Website: Are this teacher's big ideas represented in her webpage's introduction?

Rob Stone's Example Rob Stone's Website: Are this teacher's big ideas represented in his webpage's introduction?	Jamie Priddy's Example Jamie Priddy's Website: Are this teacher's ideas represented in her webpage's introduction?

Blogs:

Brian Crosby's Blog

Nings:

Rob Stone's "Listen Up" Ning

Dena Harrison's Classroom Ning

WritingFix's Ning

On-Line Nevada Projects:

Jodie Black's Kindergarten Writers Workshop Project

Terry Stelle's "Poem for Each Student" Project

Four Outside-of-Nevada Teacher-Made Websites I've Always Been Impressed With...
New Jersey educator, Keith Schoch, hosts the "Teach with Picture Books" blog where he shares great texts and activity ideas for the books.	Oregon husband-and-wife teacher/author team Glen and Karen Bledsoe share advice about teaching writing on their webpage.

Teacher Dawn Little hosts the "Picture This!" blog where she shares great texts and activity ideas for the books. I follow Dawn on Twitter.	Victoria Jasztel, an elementary teacher, maintains a dynamic and visual website for her students as well as for fellow professionals. I follow Victoria on Twitter.

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