Do you want to know a secret?

I’ve got some dreams for this site. See, I’ve been teaching writing for more than a decade, and I love doing it. In that time, I’ve thought a lot about what makes writing exciting, interesting, and engaging. When people find out I’m an English teacher, they usually groan and say something like, “Oh! I hated English class!” Even some people who are lovers of books and great writers themselves often have this reaction.

My goal is to make writing enjoyable and challenging, helping people to see writing as a way not just to jump through some academic hoops but to engage meaningfully in conversations that matter to them, to think about the world deeply and articulate those thoughts clearly.

That’s what I have spent my entire adult life doing inside college classrooms, but now that I’m a homeschooling mom, I want to bring that same passion and excitement for writing to the homeschool community as well.

Dayla Learning Writing Curriculum

I’m designing full-semester writing programs based on full-length nonfiction books. If you want to read a little more on why I’m choosing nonfiction instead of the traditional literature, check out this blog post.

My first curriculum is almost ready, and it’s themed around Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Outliers, which is a look at success and our (sometimes misguided) beliefs about how to achieve it.

Here’s a video about the book to give you a better idea of what it’s about:

My writing curriculum will take a book (Outliers, in this case) and provide a full semester’s worth of reading guides, vocabulary exercises, comprehension quizzes, writing prompts, supplmental links, and resources so that you can use this book to teach high school-level writing.

I Need Your Help

Now, I know that I can teach this book well becuase I’ve taught it several times in college classrooms. I’ve taught it to honors students at an elite private college and remedial students at a community college. I have taught it in eight weeks and in sixteen weeks. I have taught it to reluctant readers and straight-A students.

What I haven’t done, at least not yet, is hand over the curriculum in order for someone else to teach it. But I realize that’s what I am going to have to do if I want to really share my love for writing instruction with the homeschool community in the most impactful way. There are tons of great teachers out there guiding their children through the homeschool process, and I would love for my curriculum to be a resource that helps these moms and dads teach writing in a way that is fun, interesting, and effective—and maybe even gives the whole family a book they can read together.

In order to make sure that I am effectively making the leap from designing curriculum for myself to use in my own classroom to designing curriculum for other people to use in their own homes and co-op classes, I need some beta testers. The curriculum is almost ready to go, and it will be complete by August 31, 2018, meaning that it is ready for the Fall 2018 school year.

I’m looking for beta testers with students reading high school-level material who are ready for high school-level writing. My suggested age range is 13+, but if you have advanced readers who you believe can handle the material, then that’s great, too!

I’m accepting 25 beta testers and need applications by Friday, August 24, 2018.

If you’d like to help me out and get free curriculum for a full high-school semester of writing instruction, then please read this letter for more details and then fill out the application to be a beta tester here.