Celebrating Educators: Troy Hicks

This second installment of Celebrating Educators features Troy Hicks, who I first heard about through his book The Digital Writing Workshop. As I was just starting to explore with technology in education, the book instantly caught my attention. I was so glad to realize that Hicks also has a blog so that I could continue to learn from his insights. 

As a teacher educator, I am proud to work with and for my colleagues. Through workshops and conferences, classroom coaching and conversations over coffee, we have opportunities to collaborate and create, as well as to commiserate and celebrate. We write together, plan together, learn together. And, as I reflect on my journey as an educator at this, the beginning of my 15th year of teaching, I see that my work as a teacher educator has grown out of my continued desire to lead, grow, and change.

The simple story of how I came to be a teacher educator -- currently as an associate professor of English at Central Michigan University and Director of the Chippewa River Writing Project -- appears to be one of linearity: undergraduate English major working at a writing center, student teaching internship at a high school, teaching at a middle school, adjuncting at a community college, returning for graduate school in teacher education, and eventually earning a tenure-track position at a university. While this is accurate, telling the story in this manner does not describe the joys that I find in being an educator; new experiences are available to me as both a teacher and learner, so long as I'm willing to avail myself of them. And all of these experiences are a result of the relationships that I develop with dedicated colleagues. 

In particular, I would like to focus on the relationships that I've developed as a result of participating in the National Writing Project (NWP). When I was an undergraduate, I was aware of the Red Cedar Writing Project that was housed at the Michigan State University Writing Center. I knew the teachers came in each summer for an intensive workshop, and after that they were qualified to lead other professional development events and youth programs. I knew this even as I went out into my teaching, and began my masters degree, and yet I never took the opportunity to come back and participate in an Invitational Summer Institute. 

After a few years in the classroom, and participating in a variety of professional development activities, I was having a conversation with my mentor from the middle school. He knew that I wanted to move beyond my classroom walls and work towards broader goals in education. In the context of a conversation about my future, he winked and smiled while saying, "Troy, you just don't belong here anymore.” After a long mentorship, his witty insight gave me the push that I needed to call my former supervisor at the Writing Center and to reconnect with the Red Cedar Writing Project. I returned to Michigan State University that fall as a doctoral student. 

After participating in my first Summer Institute, I instantly became enamored with the NWP's twin goals of having us become better writers and better teachers of writing. I was able to focus my graduate study and full-time work around professional development opportunities for our local site, as well as the state and national network. I worked with teachers to develop presentations and workshops, shared ideas for integrating technology into their classrooms, and, eventually, in my dissertation study, collaborated with a group of teacher researchers to explore how they represented their work in digital portfolios. Through all these instances, we relied on the NWP model of “teachers teaching teachers” in which we valued and applauded our own knowledge and experiences while also seeking new resources and opportunities. 

As I finished my work at Michigan State and began the job search, one of the questions I was asked when interviewing at Central Michigan University (CMU) was whether or not I would be interested in starting a writing project. Of course, I was, as I had grown to know the teachers with whom I worked not only as colleagues, but as friends. I wanted to provide the same types of opportunities for teachers in the local contexts around CMU, and so I partnered with colleagues in the English department to establish a writing project. This was no small feat, as it required collaborations both inside and outside of the university, including local schools and intermediate school districts. We wrote the grant, were awarded a site, and then the real work began. 

After a great deal of planning, we were able to launch our first summer invitational Institute in 2009, and have, since then, continued to invite teachers to campus each summer to explore the intersections of writing and technology, all the while furthering themselves as writers and teachers of writing. Throughout the school year we meet in a variety of continuity and professional development events, many of which now are led by the teachers themselves with me acting only as an outside coach to help inform and motivate them. Also, I am able to take what I learned to work with writing project teachers and immediate we apply it in my preservice writing methods course, English 315.

At this moment, my professional career has come to a crossroads. Not because I feel it ready for a change necessarily, but because outside forces have acted to cut the funding for NWP and made me question many of the things that I took for granted because of that support I have relied upon for so long. This puts me in a precarious situation as an educator and as a leader in local, state, and national conversations about the teaching of writing. I want to continue doing the same types of good work that we've been doing for many years, and yet I find myself -- like so many other teachers have found themselves during the last year and a half -- feeling increasingly beleaguered and under pressure from a variety of sources inside and outside of school. 

It is difficult for me now to stand in front of a group of preservice teachers and, in good conscience, advise them that they are choosing the right career. I feel guilty about the pay, the status, the burdensome restrictions and supervision placed on teachers. There are times when, sadly, I can no longer try to fight against the monotony of standardized tests, the ever-increasing requirements to become certified, the demands for accountability. I want to tell them that, no, really teaching isn't all that we want to romanticize it to be. 

Yet, as my work with writing project teachers continues, my colleagues remind me that, yes, indeed, these young people are choosing the right career, the right calling. Writing has the power to change lives, and teaching writing offers us opportunities to reach our students in ways that no other content can. As a teacher educator, I know I would not be able to inspire or motivate or encourage my preservice teachers to do the kinds of work that we do inside and outside of class that helps prepare them to become better teachers of writing were not for my relationship with the writing project teachers with whom I collaborate. They remind me of the reasons we teach, and those reasons are the people who sit at the desks in our classrooms each day, not any set of standards or a meaningless test. We teach kids to become writers, and in doing so we teach them to become themselves. 

And so, in reflecting on my journey as a teacher -- and in thinking about the power of personal learning, professional networks, and the visions that I have for education, both broadly as well as in the classrooms that my own children attend -- it is only with continued collaboration and learning that I might move forward. It is possibly trite to say that I love my job, but it is not trite at all to say that I care deeply for the colleagues with whom I work, from rural to urban, K-16, near to far. This is what inspires and motivates me, and makes me want to learn so that I can share my learning with others. 

Recently, I was asked by other faculty members at my university to lead a presentation at a new faculty development workshop. Someone asked me how to become successful and how I collaborate with so many people. My simple advice was this: leadership invites collaboration. When I view myself as a leader, I can only see myself in relation to those colleagues that surround me. As I do what I can to teach them, to inspire them, and to help them become better teachers, I become a better teacher myself. 

I begin teaching next week for the 15th time. I will be proud to work with and for my colleagues each and every day of the coming year, and as they encourage me to keep learning, I will work with them for many years to come. 


*You can read last week's guest post by Penny Kittle here.