Our Writing and Learning Connect Us: Charlie Troughton
Publication: NWP 2007 Annual Report
Date: 2007
Summary: Meet Charlie Troughton, principal at Corning High School, Corning, California. He is a part of the Northern California Writing Project and National Reading Initiative.
Article by Charlie Troughton
NWP 2007 Annual Report
"I leaped way ahead," says Charlie Troughton, former social studies teacher and now principal of Corning High School in Corning, California. "I began to see ways of integrating reading and writing into my government curriculum. It was exciting to see my students draw more from their reading after my writing project experience."
Charlie attended the summer institute of the Northern California Writing Project in 2004, after years of "pestering" by his friends and colleagues. "I had no time for the institute because I was always working in the summers," Charlie explains. "But I started to feel stagnant, and I knew it was time."
"To this very moment, I tell teachers the writing project was the best professional development I have ever experienced. I learned how to get kids to think through the content. I tried different strategies that made a huge difference for kids in their reading comprehension."
Charlie has been a key participant in NWP's National Reading Initiative, which supports local sites in expanding teachers' knowledge about the teaching of reading, the connections between writing and reading, and the nature of academic literacy across subject areas.
I began to see ways of integrating reading and writing into my government curriculum. It was exciting to see my students draw more from their reading after my writing project experience.
As part of his site team, Charlie worked with local colleagues as well as with teachers across the country to make important breakthroughs in classroom practice and in professional development. "Our goal was to figure out how reading is different in various content areas. In what ways do kids struggle? How can we help kids when they don't understand what they read? What works for them?"
"We emphasize literacy across the curriculum at our school," says Charlie. He also stresses that those who most influenced his transformation as a teacher were other writing project teachers. "It's the people who pass on the desire, the challenge, and the student-oriented approach."