Sheila and I had worked together for years as free-lance writers for big publishers before deciding to co-author our own writing books. Now we wanted to see how our ideas worked in classrooms. We really wanted students to learn that revision is the key to good writing and that correcting grammar and spelling is copy-editing and proofreading, not revision.

We worked in elementary and high school classrooms in our home town of Montclair, New Jersey and in middle school classrooms in nearby Paterson. We were pleased at what the students—all the students—could do when they had someone to talk to.
We became coaches, not correctors. – Ellen Kolba

I’ll never forget one Montclair fifth-grader who couldn’t think of anything to say about himself for a class autobiography. Luckily, I remembered an old interview trick from my radio days and asked him what he did over the weekend.

His face lit up as he told me that on Saturday his uncle and his dad had let him cut the linoleum for the floor they were laying for a customer. As we talked, he told me the details of the job, and laid out the content for his essay.

As a coach, I had the time to connect with this young man. Sometimes I think the one-on-one connection is the basis of the true magic of our program. --Sheila Crowell

One of the most valuable things the Writers’ Room does is provide a reading on first writing – this is indispensable. For one, it gets kids going immediately on the revision process. Kids don’t turn something in and then know they will wait three days before they get it back. With same-day feedback, students can go home and begin to revise immediately.
-- Gail Ciecierski, Language Arts Teacher

I have learned how much I can improve even my best work. All the work I have done this year has been hard for me, but now I find it easier to write an essay than I did in the beginning of the year... I wonder what I would do without The Writer’s Room.

As I become a writer, I want to influence not just myself but also other people. I want to write about the problems teenagers have and what drives them to gangs, guns, and drugs. I have been through so much that I believe my writing could help other people.

I saw the surprise and pleasure on Stephanie’s face when I laughed at a line about Big Al’s Pet Shop in her tall tale about the giant couple. She knew she had a receptive audience. Perhaps knowing that I’m a writer too brought her even more confidence and satisfaction.

Does it matter how it will end? I don’t think so—I don’t think that’s the point. If a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody there, does it make a sound? If a student writes a story and nobody reads it, will they believe that it’s really any good?
-- Ninth Grade Coach