Activity One

Select a teacher who is willing to talk through a personal breakthrough story with the group. (Depending on the forum, the talk could be a video/flipgrid of 3 - 4 minutes.)
Ask participants about what they notice:
- What ideas does the story bring up for you?
- Think about your own breakthroughs. When have students, colleagues, systems, and/or personal circumstances influenced you to do something differently?

Activity Two

Suggest prompts to play around with.
Ask the question: “Is there a prompt that calls to you?”
Write for 3-4 minutes and share with a partner or small group.
Offer response:
- As a listener, what interests you?
- What might you say or ask that would help the writer further develop this idea(s) for a breakthroughs story?

Create and distribute a “tip sheet” for continued support.

“We started talking and it hit me…”
“Those words (print or oral) just jumped out at me…”
“I participated in a workshop, and oh man…!”
“I was doing the laundry when…”
“Students said/wrote, and...whoa. Okay, now what?”
“We had to do something differently; we soon discovered we are better together...”
“Well, of course....I wish I was the one who had thought that up…” Brilliant.

Treat your breakthrough as a story with a setting (where is your classroom?) and characters (who are your students?) and action (what happened?)
Include student writing, student conversations, and/or other evidence that illustrates the result of your breakthrough, as appropriate.
Talk about the highlights and the lowlights. Be real. Even our best attempts at teaching writing run into a certain number of roadblocks.
Use first person, active voice, and a conversational tone.
Consider adding references to research, as appropriate.