Outstanding in the Classroom

The Write Path was founded in 2003 by Marcia Grisanzio. After 15 dedicated years of teaching high school English and speech in the public schools, Marcia realized that the nature of the modern educational day didn't allow for the best learning opportunities for her students. Marcia saw up to 150 students each day, thus necessitating a shift in what she calls the "educational contact time" for each student. While instruction should be the center of the relationship between student and teacher, the sheer quantity of students did not allow for quality instruction to take place. The "educational contact" each student required had slowly shifted from time spent on instruction to time spent on assessment. Marcia resented the fact that 90% of her student contact time was devoted to evaluation and assessment, and if she was lucky, about 10% was spent on instruction. But when so many students stream through a traditional classroom, teachers are left with little choice. Quality instruction, she knew, was exactly the opposite. Prompted by these frustrations, she left the classroom, hoping to establish a more practical use of her