The Mindful Writing Workshop

"Though life occurs in events, it must be written about in moments."

Today's youth are growing up in an age of stress and trauma, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the classroom. Absenteeism, emotional distraction, passivity, and unresponsiveness are all signs of children in need. Thankfully, it turns out that the workshop classroom, with limited but essential tuning, can be just the environment students in the grip of trauma need to become comfortable in themselves and break through into active learning.
In The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma, Professor Richard Koch offers clear, comprehensive, guided lessons that help teachers gain the insight necessary to adapt their instruction of writing to incorporate restorative and healing practices--practices that can improve the quality of learning and writing for all learners.

Accessible, straightforward, and empowering, the approaches presented in The Mindful Writing Workshop will help previously indifferent or distracted students become engaged, increase their effort, deepen their resilience, and soon raise the quality of their writing, all while guiding teachers in creating a positive, collaborative, "doing" classroom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Koch has taught writing at both the University of Iowa and Adrian College, Michigan, where he is currently Professor of English Emeritus. He also has a secondary specialization in African American Studies. He has worked with the National Writing Project for over thirty years in Iowa and Michigan, directing the Southeast Michigan Writing Project.

He cowrote The Portfolio Guidebook with Jean Petterson (published by Christopher Gordon) and has also published articles on teaching in Language Arts, English Journal, English Education, and other journals. He lives in Pittsburgh and serves on the Core Leadership of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project at the University of Pittsburgh.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

All photographs of Mama, the calico cat, (including the back-cover photo with her owner) were provided by William Pelletier, an art photographer and cat lover who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.