About Us

What is Community of Writers?

Community of Writers, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the writing/literacy skills of elementary and middle school students throughout Oregon by raising the standard of writing instruction.

Community of Writers (COW) was started in 1999 by author and teacher Larry Colton, a Pulitzer Prize nominee. In the last eight years, over 1,160 teachers have participated in our program, and over 30,000 students in five districts have been impacted.

The Community of Writers' Program

The heart of the program is a five-day (40-hour) professional development workshop titled Teacher as Writer, which is accredited by University of Oregon. The workshop focuses on the writing process, with teachers learning classroom strategies and writing stories of their own. Workshops are offered in the summer and during the school year, and are primarily geared for elementary and middle school teachers. Although individual teachers are encouraged to enroll, the program works best when entire staffs participate, creating a school-wide writing program. Teachers completing the workshop receive the following benefits:

Writers-in-Residence

: Professional writers, skilled in the craft and experienced in working with students, spend time in the classrooms of the participating teachers. Each teacher gets two weeks with a writer of their choice, writers who bring passion and energy, and are knowledgeable in the writing traits. They offer a variety of approaches – poetry, journalism, songwriting, narrative storytelling – and work in partnership with the teacher.

Classroom books

: Each participating teacher receives a gift card from Borders worth $300 to purchase books of their choosing for the classroom. In schools where the whole staff participates, this represents a sizeable book purchase. For instance, a staff of 37 recently went through the workshop and received $14,800 worth of books.

Family Write Nights

: Participating schools receive a Family Write Night, an opportunity for students and family to return to the school for an evening of fun, family-based writing activities facilitated by professional writers.

Measurable Success

"[COW is the most effective program I've encountered in my 30 years of education," said Susan Carlile, Director of Curriculum for the Tigard/Tualatin school district, a district that in 2003-2005 enlisted COW to train every elementary and middle school staff member. And Tigard/Tualatin was the only district to report gains on the Statewide Writing Assessment in 2005. In 1999, after participating in COW's program, Wilcox Elementary in Portland went from 24% of students meeting benchmarks to 64% meeting benchmarks. In 2006, Lynch Wood Elementary in the Centennial district went from 26% to 48% of students meeting benchmarks--the second largest improvement of any school in the state.

Many studies have shown that programs that do not address or fundamentally change the way teachers teach do not create lasting impact or improvement. But our data, gathered through evaluation and assessment methods designed by Northwest Regional Education lab studies, a year-long doctoral thesis by Caitlin Scott of Cleveland State studying attitudes toward writing, Statewide Assessment test scores, student work samples, year end surveys, and teachers' and students' anecdotal comments, show that COW is the one program statewide that has consistently achieved measurable results in improving writing instruction and student writing.

Price of Admission

And what is the cost of all this for teachers and schools? Only the cost of the workshop, $1, 250, which is covered under tuition reimbursement or professional development funds of most school districts, plus $100 per teacher. This is a support program for teachers, with nearly all costs paid by Community of Writers.

Funding

To date, Community of Writers has raised over $2.7 million, which has gone directly into over 50 Portland area schools in the form of training, writers in residence, and money for books.
We've received generous support from The Meyer Memorial Trust, Schnitzer Family Foundation, Spirit Mountain Community Fund, Portland Schools Foundation and the James F. and Marion Miller Foundation and many others. For a full list of donors, please click here.

A Professional Development Program That Really Works
Learn classroom strategies Receive daily lesson plans Develop your own writing skills Work with professional writers Earn graduate credit Gain confidence as a writing instructor Network with other teachers Become eligible for on-going classroom support	In a unique partnership between Community of Writers and University of Oregon, the tuition money paid for the workshop by participating teachers is repaid to the program to purchase the on-going classroom support, such as writers-in-residence, books, and Family Write Nights.