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Sacred Heart History Teacher Earns Fellowship

As a teaching fellow through the Bay Area Writing Project, seventh-grade teacher Jen Vaida will serve as a writing coach to other educators
Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton (SHS) seventh-grade history teacher Jen Vaida has been named a teaching fellow with the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), a division of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, after completing its Immersive Summer Institute program this summer.
 
“It’s so humbling,” said Vaida. “The brains I was around were just astounding. It was the most uplifting community of teachers, writers, and learners—all so committed to creating a more just, exciting, and more accessible experience for kids to practice writing.”
 
The BAWP aims to provide teachers from elementary school through college instruction levels the tools and techniques to incorporate writing into curricula, across all disciplines, not just the humanities.
 
A cohort of 20 teachers spent three weeks meeting daily for a course of study Vaida described as being “like a condensed, concentrated graduate program.” 
 
“Our goal was to share and learn best practices from each other and support one another as writers ourselves, because the idea is you can teach writing more effectively if you are a writer yourself,” said Vaida.
 
That meant tackling four or five writing prompts per day along with producing two ready-for-publication pieces by the end of the program: one professional and one personal.
 
Participants read aloud, received critique, and revised their own writing, while also engaging in pedagogy study. Each day, at least two members of the cohort shared a best practice; mentors who were also the BAWP’s facilitators were on hand to ensure the best practice demos were top caliber.
 
“I came away with this amazing array of tips that I’m now using in my classroom—and my first thought was, ‘oh my gosh, I have to change everything now,’” says Vaida with a laugh. “But it was really good to be reminded that writing is so much bigger than just the essay, and that anything that engages the student authentically with language is valuable, and that doesn’t always have to be via the academic essay.”
 
In her history classroom this week, students have begun a first unit “different from any I’ve done before,” said Vaida. “[One] that is less text heavy, and more discussion- and image-based to bring out more creative word play.” First up is “blackout poetry” in which a student selects a page of text, chooses words to leave on the page, and then blacks everything else out so the words that remain read as a poem. Next, students will create a “TED Talk-like” argument answering the question, “Is history important?”
 
“I’m so grateful to have the support from Sacred Heart’s administration allowing me the agency to bring these lessons to the classroom,” said Vaida. “I know that’s not always the case for teachers at many other schools.”
 
In her new role as a fellow, she will engage with other educators around the Bay Area as an instructional writing coach. It’s a full-circle moment for Vaida, who recalls several years ago being first introduced to the BAWP on the Sacred Heart campus. 
 
“It’s super exciting—I’ll be able to go out in the field, coach other teachers, and help them bring writing into their curriculum, just as they had done for us at Sacred Heart.”
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Sacred Heart Schools Atherton

Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton

150 Valparaiso Ave
Atherton, CA 94027
650 322 1866
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12