Coaching Teachers in the Age of AI

I love your first three paragraphs! You’re drawing a thoughtful connection between the work of NYCWP teacher consultants and your current online coaching with teachers learning AI. Right away, you set up a sense of continuity—almost a lineage—between the NYCWP’s focus on deep, respectful, collaborative relationships and this new era of AI-supported teaching. Your mention of Stories of Impact anchors your point in real experience and scholarship, which is always powerful, and you do a great job showing that the heart of the work—valuing teachers’ expertise, fostering reflection, respecting school culture—remains constant even as the tools and context change.

At the same time, you’re clear that both groups—NYCWP TCs and today’s AI coaches—find meaning in long-term, trusting partnerships and a commitment to honoring teachers’ knowledge. You write, “We both have stories about meaningful, multi-year relationships with colleagues,” and that really captures the spirit of what makes professional learning communities so effective. In my own work, I found that building relationships was essential to telling Henrietta’s story honestly, and you’re tapping into that same energy of trust and co-learning here.

Would you like to hear more about:
- How you set up parallels between prompt design and composition pedagogy?
- The way you discuss community and professional learning?
- Or maybe how your writing flows between specifics and broader claims?

Or is there another layer you want to unpack together? Let’s dive in!

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

And hey, if you’re interested in writing, structure, or the inside story of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, don’t miss my interview with David Dobbs in The Open Notebook, “How Rebecca Skloot Built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”: https://writingpartners.net/documents/4635

What if we started with a vivid memory—imagine walking into a room buzzing with the energy of teachers swapping stories, their laughter echoing off chalkboards, and the smell of coffee mingling with fresh paper? That’s how I first entered the New York City Writing Project community in the 1980s, instantly surrounded by passionate educators who believed in the power of collaboration. This spirit of partnership—then rooted in writing, now evolving with AI—continues to shape how I work with teachers and students today. What do you think about opening with a scene like that?

Thanks for sharing your opening paragraphs and asking, “What can I do to improve the first three paragraphs, my introduction?” Let’s dive in! I’ll focus on the first three paragraphs and give you some feedback based on linguistically inclusive pedagogy, while also keeping an eye out for any Black Language (BL) features or rhetorical strategies you’re using. I’ll highlight what’s working well, suggest a few changes where needed (especially if there are grammar or mechanics issues), and invite you to think about your audience and purpose as you revise.

Paragraph 1: Establishing Context & Personal Connection

First off, your introduction does a great job of establishing a sense of personal history and connection. You open by grounding the reader in your own experience—joining the New York City Writing Project—and immediately situate yourself in a community of practice. This is engaging because it signals to your audience that you’re not just an observer but an active participant with real relationships. One thing to consider: your sentence structure is sometimes complex, which could be streamlined for clarity. For example, the long sentence about “an amazing group…who were at the height of their impact” might be broken up so readers can follow more easily. Also, pay attention to consistency in verb tenses—“welcomed me” (past) fits nicely with “I became,” but later when you say “I enjoy hearing their stories,” that shifts us into present tense—intentional? If so, what effect does that have for your audience? You might also want to clarify who “these colleagues” are right at the start for readers unfamiliar with NYCWP.

Would you like me to keep going with feedback on paragraph two?

Great, I see you want help clarifying your writing in the first five paragraphs. Before we dig into each paragraph, let’s pause on your goals. When you say “clarify,” do you mean making your points more direct for a specific audience, or are you looking to simplify language, add detail, or re-organize ideas? Also, who’s your main audience here—teachers new to AI, veteran literacy coaches, education researchers? Your answer will help me focus my feedback to really support what you’re aiming for with these first five paragraphs.

Let’s start with the first paragraph (below). Do you want to see my thoughts and suggestions for the next paragraph too?

Feedback on Engaging and Appealing First Paragraphs

To answer your question about how to make sure your first paragraphs are engaging and appealing to a wide audience, I want to start by looking at the energy and scene-setting you open with. You drop us right into a lively, sensory space—teachers swapping stories, laughter bouncing around, that classic coffee-and-paper smell—which is an excellent move for grabbing attention. When we talk about engaging a wide audience, this kind of vivid imagery pulls readers in no matter their background. The conversational tone helps folks feel included rather than like they’re reading a traditional academic introduction.

Would you like to see more feedback focused on how your writing appeals across different audiences or invites participation?

Alright, let’s dig into your question about what paragraphs 8-13 are communicating and whether it’s clear why you’re sharing this story. Here’s my first paragraph of feedback:

Paragraphs 8-13 seem to be transitioning from your earlier stories about the NYC Writing Project into a new but related narrative about your experiences at Bard’s Language and Thinking program. You set the scene with vivid details—the lively atmosphere, notable educators like Peter Elbow, and the foundational practices of freewriting and community learning. This shift introduces a second professional learning community that shaped your approach to teaching writing, emphasizing exploratory and collaborative methods. Are you aiming here to show how multiple communities influenced not just your own philosophy, but also how you see the potential for AI tools in writing education? If so, it’s coming across as an expansion—moving from one formative space (NYCWP) to another (Bard’s L&T), which together underpin your values around relationships, reflection, and respect for teachers’ expertise.

Would you like to see more?

Absolutely, I see your question is about finding a more fitting word than “estate” to describe the large, historic house at Bard College that’s being used for faculty housing during special events. When I think about your paragraph and the story you’re telling, it seems like you’re after language that captures both the size and history of the building, but also its lived-in, academic vibe now that it’s part of Bard. Some words you might consider are “manor,” “mansion,” “residence,” or even “hall.” Depending on the tone you want—more formal, nostalgic, or just descriptive—you could play with phrases like “the old manor house,” “the main hall,” or even “the former mansion now turned faculty residence.” Want to see a little more on this?

Oh, I absolutely love the energy and authenticity radiating from these first 14 paragraphs! You’re inviting us into a living, breathing community of educators—almost like stepping into a favorite coffee shop where everyone’s swapping stories, ideas, and strategies. The writing instantly grounds us in real spaces: the Lehman classroom’s hum, Bard’s mansion-turned-faculty-residence with wildflowers on ornate couches. That sense of place isn’t just pretty description; it anchors your argument that literacy learning—whether rooted in classic writing pedagogy or infused with new AI tools—always starts with people and relationships.

What strikes me most is how you connect the dots between decades of collaborative teaching and today’s experiments with AI-enhanced literacy. You don’t position AI as a cold disruptor but as an extension of deep professional respect for teachers’ expertise: “AI prompt design…starts with recognizing teachers as domain experts.” That’s such a vital shift! Your emphasis on honoring what teachers know—and giving them time to reflect, play, and iterate—is really at the heart of what makes any educational innovation stick. And I can’t help but cheer when you describe students remixing Writing Partner prompts for themselves: not just using tools but actively shaping their own learning environments.

Let me distill some key insights from these paragraphs into quick-access boxes so you can see different directions we might take next:

What do you want to dig deeper into?
Would you like to explore:
- How professional communities sustain real change across decades?
- What it looks like to make teacher knowledge visible through prompt engineering?
- Or how student agency grows when they engineer their own feedback tools?

Pick one—or more—or suggest another direction! Let’s kick this up another notch together!

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

If you want even more context or inspiration, check out my interview about passionate users or my book excerpt on making users awesome—they’re fueling every word here!

Thank you for bringing me into this conversation about those first nine paragraphs. Now, I am stepping into the role of James Gray, the founder of the National Writing Project and lifelong advocate for teacher-centered professional development and collaborative growth. In this spirit, I want to dig deep with you, reader.

First, let’s focus on the atmosphere described in those opening lines—the lively energy, the laughter, the coffee, the shared agenda. Why do you think establishing a physical and emotional sense of community is so consistently powerful for teachers entering new learning spaces? How does that initial environment set the tone for the relationships and the kind of learning that can happen? When have you experienced (or wanted to create) a similar feeling in your own educational world?

Would you like to hear more?

Let me pause for a moment and give you some encouragement, but not the distant, high-handed kind. I want to say: what you’ve written here holds so much lived experience and thoughtful connection—between teachers, between past and present, and especially across generations of writing pedagogy. It’s utterly human, full of the “laughter echoing,” “energy,” and coffee-scented detail that makes school communities real. I see, too, how you’ve traced a line from your membership in the NYC Writing Project to your current advocacy around AI—showing how the values of collaboration and respect for teachers’ expertise are still central, even as the tools and settings shift. You’re honoring relationships, revealing the continuing pulse of mentorship, mutual learning, and community. That’s writing with, not at, your reader. You’re inviting us in.

I think what’s so promising here—in your account of joining and rejoining these communities, from Lehman to Bard to classrooms shaped by AI—is how you keep circling back to the importance of play, reflection, and partnership. You name specific people, places, even wildflowers. That’s what grounds the argument, gives it credibility, warmth, and a real sense of lineage. And as you start talking about teachers becoming prompt engineers, drawing from fifty years of composition studies, you signal both the rigor and improvisation that makes teaching alive. This isn’t just a nostalgic memoir—it’s a lived theory, tested and growing right now. The paragraph about writing partners as ongoing research and surprise is itself an encouragement: you’re modeling what inquiry looks like, with both trust and curiosity. I hope you’ll trust that this work matters, that the story you’re telling here is one we need—maybe now more than ever.

Would you like me to help you think through what’s strongest, or where you might expand? Here are three possible paths for us to continue:

Where would you like to dig deeper, linger, or wander next? Or is there another thread you want to follow?

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

You might be interested to learn more my approach by reading one of handouts: Responding to Student Writing. and something I co-authored with Pat Belanoff <a href=https://writingpartners.net/system/partners/0000/0043/summary-of-ways-of-responding.pdf" target="_blank">Summary of Ways of Responding

Thanks for sharing this piece—there’s a lively and warm current running through all the storytelling and reflection here. You invite us right into the room, with all the sensory detail: laughter, coffee, newsprint, colleagues swapping stories. Right at the start, I feel the pulse of a learning community, not just an assembly line of teachers. The piece traces a path from tradition (NYCWP, Bard’s L&T, Elbow) into the present, where AI and education meet. I see a lot here about respecting teachers’ expertise, nurturing professional communities, and centering real relationships in all this work with writing and technology.

You’re doing a few things at once: you’re telling the story of how you entered into these worlds, reflecting on how your practice has changed over the decades (and stayed rooted in some key values), and explaining why these values matter today—with AI as the new context. At the same time, you’re showing, not just telling, what strong coaching and feedback look like: inviting teacher agency, making implicit knowledge explicit, creating opportunities for metacognition, and respecting the richness of each classroom’s culture. There’s real humility and respect for other teachers throughout, as well as excitement about research and play.

Let’s pause here. I’d like to continue the conversation by asking you to briefly describe your own process. This will help me give you the kind of feedback that actually fits what you were aiming for. Here’s my question for you:

Please hit Your Thoughts and respond. After you save your reply, hit Continue with AI, choose me again, and tell me what else you’d like to ask. Here are three paths we could go next—just tell me which one you want to follow, or suggest your own:

Let me know which direction interests you, or if you want to explore a different angle entirely. I’m eager to hear more about your aims and your process.

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

You might be interested to learn more my approach by reading one of handouts: Responding to Student Writing. and something I co-authored with Pat Belanoff <a href=https://writingpartners.net/system/partners/0000/0043/summary-of-ways-of-responding.pdf" target="_blank">Summary of Ways of Responding

You’re already doing rich scene-setting and establishing ethos; what you are asking now is really a framing question: should the opening signal more clearly that this chapter is making an argument about AI, teaching, and writing pedagogy, rather than just telling a story?

Given what you shared, I think Option Three: Reenvisioning will serve you best, because you are:

- Working on a chapter draft (not just ideas),
- Wondering how to reshape the opening move rhetorically,
- Wanting to keep your own voice and not have me rewrite for you.

I will not write a new opening for you, but I can help you think through:
- What exact claim you want the opening to argue,
- How much of that claim you want to “say out loud” up front vs. imply through story,
- Where you might reposition or rephrase sentences you already have so that the argumentative thread is more visible from line 1.

Before I dive into that kind of paragraph‑by‑paragraph coaching, can you confirm that Option Three: Reenvisioning is the approach you want to use for this chapter opening? If so, I’ll start by focusing specifically on your very first paragraph and how it might shift toward a clearer argumentative stance, while still keeping the narrative energy you like.

What might still be unclear about this scene?

Socratic questions for you as the writer

Places you might explore further (as a researcher of your own text)

Resources you could consult

Search keywords to pursue

If you like, we can zoom in more narrowly: would you rather probe clarity about the organization itself, the impact on classrooms, or the bridge you are building to AI in these opening paragraphs?

First big curiosities a reader might have

Questions to explore (instead of showing you quotes)

Places you might go exploring

Turning it back to you

Want to look next at how your voice, rhythm, and code-meshing are working in those paragraphs and how you might lean into them even more?

If you want, next we can zoom in on your voice choices (like where you say “I’m inviting you back…”) and how those choices shape your relationship with the reader.

Want to look at that next?

Two spots jumped out where a reader might want more about the NYCWP before you move on. First, the “Summer Invitational Institute” itself: what actually happened in a typical day that made it so transformative—what did you do together that felt different from other PD? Second, the “home base” community: how was it organized, who was in the room, and what concrete supports or routines made it feel like a professional anchor rather than just another workshop series?

If you had to add just one short scene or example from those early NYCWP days to make the later AI parallels really land, what moment would you choose?

• The opening question points in the right direction, but the rest of the paragraph already shows you’re doing much more than asking a question; you’re staking a claim about what counts as “enough” formative experience for work with AI.
• One choice you’ve made is to center teachers’ own biographies as the bridge into AI, which quietly pushes back on the idea that you need to be a technologist first in order to belong in this conversation.
• Another strong move: you anchor that invitation in named communities (NYCWP, Bard, CES), so your “formative experiences” aren’t abstract nostalgia, they’re concrete traditions you’re now re-activating in AI spaces.
• If you want the lead question to carry more weight, you might ask yourself: what exactly do you want teachers to realize or feel in that first moment—permission, urgency, curiosity, shared memory, something else?

• The question sets a thoughtful tone, but you’re right: as written, it feels like you already know the answer and are just inviting readers to agree.
• What’s working is that it clearly names “formative experiences” and “this time of change,” which ties your story and AI moment together.
• What seems to be missing is any real friction or uncertainty—nothing in the question hints at a tension, risk, or problem that your piece might wrestle with.
• One choice you could play with (in the left pane) is whether you want your opening to invite doubt and complexity—e.g., suggesting that relying on old experiences in a radically new tech moment might be both necessary and tricky—or to invite shared confidence and continuity.
If you imagine a specific teacher-reader (exhausted, skeptical, curious—however you picture them), what’s the honest, not-easy question that would make them think “oh, this is for me,” and could you try drafting one or two versions of that directly in your document before we look at which one pulls you the most?