I just wanted to take a minute to welcome all of our new members to the blog! I am so excited to share my love of writing and reading with you all as we work together to bring our students the best lessons possible, whether working from home or in person at school.
I am Kylene Reed, and I just started my nineteenth year in education. I have spent the last 18 years in the classroom teaching first through 6th grades. I was also the writing coach for Bushland ISD, just outside of Amarillo, Texas the last five years. This year, I made a big change and left the classroom to take a curriculum job for Amarillo ISD. I am helping teachers on my campus and all over the district learn to use EW.
I began using Empowering Writers nine years ago when I started teaching 4th Grade writing. My first time in ten years of teaching, I was solely responsible for 124 students and their state writing scores; talk about overwhelming! I remember working so hard to get my writers’ workshop up and going, only to have it flop within minutes of assigning my first assignment. After a couple of months of struggling to keep the students engaged and excited, all while managing conferences with each student just to get started, I found EW. That first workshop CHANGED MY LIFE!
Soon after, my co-teachers and teachers in grades around me began to notice my students’ work hanging in the halls and heard the modeling that was happening in my classroom. As word spread and teachers began using the lessons, we adopted Empowering Writers in our district grades K-8. Our students now build a solid foundation in their writing skills with a common vocabulary and assured experiences across and between grade levels. No longer are they starting the entire writing process over each year, depending on how the teachers like to teach writing. Instead, they now enhance those foundational skills and add to their student toolbox to ensure that they become the best writers possible!
So this blog is all about how to use EW in your classrooms! Each month, you will see various lessons from Kindergarten to eighth grade, sharing ideas on how to use EW for all of our students. I hope that we will be an inspiration to each of you as to how you can bring Empowering Writers into your classroom.
