Building Learning Communities 2014

Milan Kundera famously said, "One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness will have arrived."" Has that age arrived, when everyone is blogging, texting and tweeting, and some have stopped listening? Now, more than ever, as students are encouraged to ""find their voices"" as writers, teaching quality writing strategies is critical. Students need reasons to write, audiences to reach, and teachers to encourage them to take great risks as they negotiate the transition into serving as their own writing authorities.
In this session, two teachers, one from Washington D.C., the other from Zurich, Switzerland, will share their year-long collaboration experience focused on the art of teaching writing using modern tools. Their work is interdisciplinary and often experimental: students are encouraged to ""own their writing"", even self-assessing and critiquing each other. In this interactive session, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Tumblr and other self-publishing platforms are used to explore the synergy between modern tools and ancient writing traditions. Both teachers encourage their students to foster an appreciation for classical authors and writing strategies by encouraging them to incorporate ancient rhetorical devices into their modern writing platforms.
This session is focused on the art of teaching writing to Middle and Upper School students.

About us: Daryl ""Gus"" Grissom, Ph.D., is a historian who has spent his career learning from ancient Greek authors, specifically Thucydides and Aristotle; Caitlin Krause, M.F.A., is an author, poet, and visual artist who focuses on timeless concepts such as mindfulness and empathy in her exploration of the craft of both interdisciplinary studies and teaching writing. Through this collaboration, their goal is to leverage both tradition and technology to allow students to discover their own authorial voices while still guiding them in ways that transcend the traditional writing process."