Elana Bailes

Ebullient and engaged, Elana Bailes is the type of teacher who can turn virtually any experience into a series of teaching moments. So it should come as no surprise that when the 10-year teaching veteran arrived at Perelman last year, great things would happen. Writing Workshop, a multifaceted writing class that she, in conjunction with fellow third grade teacher Susan Miller, developed for Stern’s third grade, is undoubtedly one of them.

Based on a program created at Columbia University’s Teachers College by Education Professor Lucy Calkins, Writing Workshop is designed, says Elana, not only to build students’ writing skills and kindle a lifelong love of writing, but also to develop their abilities as close readers and incisive thinkers.

The emphasis, says Elana, is on teaching students to identify and use specific writing techniques. Daily “mini- lessons” offer pointed instruction that students then implement in writing assignments, most of which ask them to draw on their own lives for content. Just several months into the workshop, Stern’s third graders are regularly using concepts like “writing territories” (topics to which they feel especially drawn as readers or writers), “seed moments” (small snapshot experiences that happen over a short time), and “word storms” (lists of metaphors) to create carefully structured and powerful pieces of writing.

For many students, the class has changed the way they think of writing. Anita Hoffman now sees her life as full of stories. Charles Szwartz has loved discovering how to tap into those stories and has gotten hooked, he says, on “the strength, power, and nonstop imagination” that accompany that process.

For Elana, Writing Workshop is one of the highpoints of a teaching career that has included teaching pre-k, second grade, fourth grade, and serving as a lower school diversity coordinator. "It's something I’ve always wanted to do,” says Elana of the Workshop, “but until I came to Perelman, I never had the training I needed to do it right.” She credits Stern Principal Wendy Smith and General Studies Curriculum Coordinator Dr. Patricia Baxter — to whom she first proposed the Workshop last year — with not only believing in it, but also doing everything necessary to ensure it would thrive, including sending Elana and Susan for training at Columbia.

With the success of the third grade Workshop, the School is now looking at expanding it to second and fourth grades. And just last month a member of the Columbia team that pioneered the program was the featured speaker at Stern’s teacher in-service day.

“It is really exciting to work at a school that is constantly looking for the best educational practices,” says Elana, “and that supports new approaches to learning.”