Everyone Loved It and Still It Closed: When a Writing Program Isn't a Core Mandate

In Montclair, New Jersey, a parent-initiated program to support student writers in the public school system lost its modest funding after eighteen years of growth and enthusiastic response from students, parents, and cooperating faculty, whose welcoming attitude to the adult volunteers, university students, and high school students working as coaches in their classrooms made it possible. As the authors-one of the founders of the program and a partner from the local university-tell the story of the rise and fall of the Writers' Room™ Program, they both reflect on the reasons for the district's ultimate closing of this popular writing program and consider the legacy of the program-for the district and for community-based writing initiatives everywhere. The Writers' Room began as a support service for World Literature, a detracked English course for all 9th graders at Montclair High School. The course was designed with a revision-based writing component as a key element. The Writers' Room was created to expand the reach of the teachers in these heterogeneously grouped classes by providing trained volunteers who could give students feedback on their writing in individual conferences during a regularly scheduled writing workshop period. Writing coaches identified the strengths in a piece of writing and helped students turn those strengths into strategies they could use to revise. In revision, the emphasis was on content and organization first; editing for sentence correctness was a final step. The work of the coaches underscored the critical thinking skills that were central to the World Literature course and was essential to the process approach to writing built into the World Literature curriculum.