At this website, I celebrate the writing process and writers workshop.

"We write to prove that we think." So read the sign on my classroom door when I finally became the writing teacher I had hoped to become.

For the first few years of my teaching career, I did what many new teachers did: I emulated bad practices that had been done to me in my own school days. I passed out a lot of worksheets, I made my students memorize vocabulary words they had no connection with, I assigned reading that I knew many students wouldn't do, and I lectured way too much.

I knew teaching could be more authentic than what I was doing, but college hadn't taught me how to break with the traditional schooling methods. In 1996, inspired by my new association with colleagues from the Northern Nevada Writing Project, I added a new tool to my classroom: a weekly writer's workshop. It took me two or three years to make the tool work in my classroom and with my style of teaching. When I worked out the kinks, I knew I had found the genuine educational environment that I would have thrived in as a student.

My students started thriving as writers and thinkers. I couldn't believe the difference.

Each day, we (that's right, me too!) wrote down any new connections we'd made that day into our writers' notebooks. Then once a week, we devoted an hour to choose one of our new ideas and take it through the writing process. By semester's end, I expected my students to have taken five connections through the entire writing process--from pre-write to publish--and these pieces of writing became their writing portfolios. This was my adaptation of writers workshop, and this tool completely changed my teaching. My students' portfolios, in the years I was using my workshop the best, counted as 80% of my their final grade. My students owned every idea in their portfolios, and for the first time they owned the grade they earned. My students wrote to prove that they thought.

I shifted the focus of every subject I was assigned to teach--American literature, poetry, Shakespeare, mythology, non-fiction, journalism, etymology, grammar--to work with my writers workshop environment. It always worked. What's more, I had less to grade than I ever had before. Self-evaluation and peer response became such integral parts of my writers workshop that I found myself with weekends free of paper grading for the first time since beginning teaching.

In 2001, I left the classroom to become the Director of the Northern Nevada Writing Project. As Director and as a full-time writing trainer, I created resources for teachers that I shared during every one of my trainings. The WritingFix website is one of my proudest accomplishments, as is the Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide, because these resources have become tools that are used by teachers around the world, not just in Northern Nevada, which is where I call home.

I began this "Always Write" website in 2007. As I continue my career as both a writing teacher and a writing trainer, I will house and offer my original resources and teaching ideas here. I hope you are inspired to become the best teacher you can be, and that you will understand how "We write to prove that we think" should be the motto of every classroom.

NEW! My Ten Favorite Mentor Texts NEW!

I share dozens and dozens of mentor texts during my trainings for teachers, and the question keeps coming up: "But which title should I get right now, Corbett?"

I can't tell you what the "best" one is, but I will share my list of ten texts that I continually have the most success with as a writing teacher. I invite you to compile a similar list and share it with your colleagues. When it comes to books, I think we learn about the best ones from each other, not from the publishers of textbooks.

Click here to compare my list of ten perfect mentor texts to yours.

Introducing The Mr. Borilla Project:

When I do demonstration lessons in classrooms, I always begin by telling the students stories about Mr. Borilla (at right), who was my fourth and fifth grade teacher. Mr. Borilla--though stoic and strict--turned out to be a teacher who did two life-changing things for me: 1) he made me feel like a writer for the first time, and 2) he inspired me to become a teacher.

To honor Mr. Borilla (and those teachers who made a difference in the lives of other teachers), I am launching The Mr. Borilla Project. This will be a community where teachers and adult writers may share the story of the person who either inspired them to write or inspired them to become a teacher. Anyone may submit a story (and a picture, if you've got one) to be posted at this new page. Here we will celebrate teachers who have made a difference.

Click here to visit this under-development page at this website.