We held the CART Writing Retreat Saturday morning at the Houston Arboretum. Present were Mike, Betsy, Lochie, Adam, Melissa, Angela, Terri, and Donna. The purpose of the event was to polish the CART end-of-project narratives, to participate in new protocols, and to be critical friends for each other by both giving and receiving feedback.

We met in Classroom C at the Arboretum. The room had a vivid, large-scale mural depicting flowers and insects, and a full wall of windows that looked out onto the verdant grounds. There was plenty of space within the classroom, and the furniture was easy to rearrange. I would certainly consider using those facilities again. I appreciated being able to do this kind of creative work in a room with a view instead of a sterile meeting room.

After partaking in a light breakfast of warm coffee cake, fresh fruit, coffee, and juice, we rearranged ourselves to sit closely around one large table and started the icebreaker. Everyone thought about how to complete this sentence: When I am at my best as a writer, I am like a ________________. We drew pictures of our metaphors on name tents and then introduced ourselves and shared the meaning of our metaphors. For example, I shared that when I am at my best as a writer, I feel like a weaver. I love the feeling of being able to weave together many disparate threads into a seamless whole. Other images included a pressure cooker, an ocean wave, an unfinished puzzle, a sponge, a coffee percolator, and a medium.

We then jumped in to the Wagon Wheel Peer Editing Protocol. Each participant is like a spoke on a wagon wheel, and each “spoke” concentrated on one aspect of the editing process. A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I developed a list of things that we wanted to be addressed during this editing process. The six spokes that I settled on were
1) Your job is to check for completeness: Does the piece sound like a story rather than a report? Does it describe the context? Clearly state the research question? Describe the group’s activities? Share some important lessons learned?
2) Your job is to check for transitions: Does the narrative move smoothly from one idea to the next? Does anything seem choppy or abrupt?
3) Your job is to check for awkwardness.
4) Your job is to check for evidence: Did the narrative include concrete examples of new thinking or changes in practice? How did the group collect evidence? Do you believe the authors?
5) Your job is to check for length: Is the piece around 800 words? Where might you suggest cutting? and
6) Your job is to look for two things that you really like: What parts of the narrative were really good? What would you like to know more about?

During a round, you read one paper and give feedback on the one job that you’ve been assigned. After about 10-15 minutes, you pass the papers around the circle so that each reader gets a new paper to respond to but keeps the same editing job.

The debrief and the reflections indicated that most people liked the protocol. Its major strength is that it allows a group to respond to a lot of material in a very short amount of time—seven of the ten CART essays got fairly extensive feedback in a little under two hours. Two participants even indicated that they will adapt the protocol for their own classrooms.

If I ever do this again, though, I will be sure to post feedback norms. This was an aspect that I thought of the night before, but I didn’t write it down, so I forgot to do it on the morning of the retreat. Before we started reading the papers, the participants talked briefly about how to give and receive feedback, and I hope we sufficiently addressed the trepidation that some participants felt with sharing their work. However, I know that I should have modeled CFG “best practice” and been more deliberate about establishing and posting feedback norms.

Also, I am wishing that one of the spokes of the feedback wheel had focused on looking for if the authors set the context for their work. It really hooks the reader to immediately know more about the school or workplace where the action research took place.

I also struggle with using both the term “report” and “narrative.” I think I’ve probably caused confusion by using both terms. My early communications used the word “report” because that is what was used in the RFP two years ago. However, the term “report” seems to limit the piece of writing to an accountability document. What we truly want is a “narrative” that tells the story of how the group progressed and what they learned. Perhaps better spokes for the Wagon Wheel protocol in this case would have looked specifically at the building blocks of a good story:
Setting—Can you tell where the research took place? What is special or unique about that school?
Characters—Who was involved in the action research? Do they come across as real people?
Conflict— What does the group value? What was their question?
What tensions surfaced? Why? What did your group do about the conflicts?
Plot?—What did your group do? What were your CFG meetings like? How did you collect evidence? How did you analyze it? What was the climax of the group’s work together? Was there a resolution? Do you have any further questions? Will you sustain this work?
Point-of-view—Is the narrative written in first person (I and we)?
Theme—Is some sort of lesson learned clearly stated?

There is still a lot of work to be done to get these narratives into shape, but I think the CART Writing Retreat was an important step towards developing a compendium that A+ will be proud to publish.

Excerpts from the participant reflections are in the extended entry.