WriterCoach Connection

Welcome to WriterCoach Connection

berkeley high coaching

Thanks to WriterCoach Connection, high school and middle school students in Berkeley, Albany, and Oakland, California, are improving their critical thinking and writing skills.

Thanks so much for this opportunity. I love coaching and I say with utmost sincerity that it has changed my life for the better.—Berkeley middle school coach

Help Support WCC in Albany:

Attend the "Hear Me Out!" Poetry Reading Celebration and Fundraiser, Sunday, March 28, 4-6 pm, Thousand Oaks Baptist Church, 1821 Catalina Avenue, Berkeley Map.

Admission is free, with complimentary refreshments! In response to recent budget cuts that have left WriterCoach Connection (WCC) in the Albany schools with very little funding, the East Bay Nation of Men and other community members have launched “Hear Me Out!”, a poetry workshop for Albany public middle school students. The program culminates in a gala poetry reading/fundraiser on March 28 to benefit WriterCoach Connection. At the event, students and local poets will share their work. The goal is to both raise money to help fund WCC in Albany and to increase awareness of WCC. For more information, visit the Hear Me Out! page.

Now Online: Spring 2010 Training Schedule

Our spring trainings for Albany, Berkeley and Oakland will be conducted in downtown Berkeley. The exact location will be provided when you register. Go to our volunteer page to learn more.

Now Online: Winter 2009 Newsletter and Special Insert

2008-2009 Program Assessment now online:

In spring 2009, students from seven Albany, Berkeley, and Oakland secondary schools completed a survey that asked them to rate their experience with 11 aspects of the coaching process on a four-point scale. The scale ranged from "Not Helpful" to "Very Helpful."

Read-and-Write-a-thon (read the WCC blog)

The June 6th Read-and-Write-a-Thon has $29,100 from the RWAT page alone and still more from personal RWAT fundraising pages set up by individuals (for example, see Mark Pasley’s here).

What we do

WriterCoach Connection recruits, trains, and coordinates community volunteers as classroom writing coaches. The coaches work one on one in English classes, helping students write and revise their class assignments. Coaches provide immediate and personal feedback to students during the writing process to encourage critical thinking and proficient writing.

Who benefits

Every writer benefits from constructive feedback, so coaches work with all students in each English class. Coaches address all levels of ability and preparedness in grades 7 through 10.

WriterCoach Connection volunteers support teachers, providing the individual attention that teachers long to give every student. Students, teachers, and coaches respond enthusiastically to the coaching experience—and to the results.

Impact on teachers and students

Teachers report that with coaching, more students are completing and revising their essays and the writing is of better quality. The program gets demonstrable results and helps address the achievement gap.

“Let me tell you what WriterCoach Connection is like for me. It's like a miracle!”—Mary Paterson , teacher, Longfellow Middle School

“WCC has brought a shot of enthusiasm about writing to my freshman class. The students feel supported and confident in their writing process and look forward to many more sessions with their coaches.”—Susannah Bell, teacher, Berkeley High School

Who Volunteers

Volunteer coaches come from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions. They are parents, college students, retirees, and members of the community at large. Through WriterCoach Connection, they are discovering they play a valuable role in their local schools. Most coaches return year after year, a measure of the satisfaction they derive from helping students improve their writing.

Coach Views

“If the kids get a fraction of the satisfaction from writer coaching that I do, we have a raging success on our hands.”—Becca Burns, high school career coordinator and writing coach

“I had a student who burst into tears over her essay about her injured horse, and by the end of our half hour, she was writing with such intensity, scope, and vision that it was enough to have me commit to this program for the rest of my life.”—Kevin Westbrooke, writing coach

Posted March 11: Teaching Every Student How to Write, One by One
Successful high school mentoring program expands into Oakland school. The tardy bell at East Oakland's Media Academy had just rung, its scream echoing down the pale yellow halls and bouncing off broken orange lockers. Outside the door to classroom 1205, a dozen professional men and women hovered awkwardly. In this small corner of the city's beleaguered school district, they were piloting something unprecedented: one-on-one writing coaches for every tenth grader in the school.—As seen in the East Bay Express

Please support WriterCoach Connection with a tax-deductible contribution to Community Alliance for Learning.