Statement of Purpose of The Story Workshop Institute

The Story Workshop Institute is an independent educational and professional trade association, organized specifically to train and provide certification for teachers in the use of the Story Workshop approach, to promote the use of Story Workshop approaches, and to conduct Story Workshop programs for education and business.

The Story Workshop Institute is a not-for-profit corporation under the laws of the State of Illinois.

About Story Workshop Certification

Certification carries the movement of Story Workshop teaching toward assured professionalism. It establishes standards and ways of maintaining standards. It promotes coherence and heightened exploration. In an employment context, certification establishes immediately a distinction between someone who has demonstrated significant Story Workshop teaching ability to the satisfaction of authorities in the field of Story Workshop teaching and someone who, without adequate training, claims she or he has Story Workshop experience. Certification gives authority and positive promotion.

Certification tells the world who has been found competent for conducting and coaching Story Workshop classes, formats, and activities and getting the student writing results that would be expected of a trained, experienced, and certified Story Workshop teacher.

Programs for Schools and Arts Organizations

The Story Workshop Institute arranges Story Workshop programs and workshop, customized intensives of different durations (two week, one week, weekend, and so on) for schools, business, arts, and community organizations.

Story Workshop Training and Certification

Teachers of all kinds of writing classes, not specifically Story Workshop-trained, have taken suggestions, exercises, and wisdom from Story Workshop approaches and from Writing from Start to Finish and The Teacher's Manual for Writing from Start to Finish.

Trained and certification in the Story Workshop Method is offered through The Story Workshop Institute, and through certified Story Workshop Master Teachers and Directors at such institutions as Columbia College Chicago and wherever they may be conducting Story Workshop classes and programs.