At MI Write, one of our favorite things is do is highlight a client and thank them for their hard work in their classrooms with MI Write. We want to show our appreciation for everything that educators do for the students in their schools, districts, and states. It is our goal to always serve the teachers who are feet on the ground in schools, working with students every day to improve understanding, skills, and scores. 

Last December, we gave a shout out to Amy Ramsburg of Wood County, West Virginia for being an advocate for our program in her classroom and her district and for the way she creatively uses the tools and features within the program to support major growth in her students. We recently reached out to Amy to get the scoop on how she accomplishes this in her school. 

As an 8th grade English language arts teacher, Amy knows the struggle it can be to get students engaged in writing. “While my students would avoid writing altogether if I let them, they do like having MI Write to help them edit and revise their essays before finally submitting them to me.” She has also created her own graphic organizer called “The Ramsburger” to allow her students to brainstorm and organize their thoughts before they begin drafting. 

Getting students involved in writing isn’t the only struggle teachers often have. Amy says, “ MI Write has helped me show students that writing is a process. They can’t just write and submit something without rereading it.” Her students are realizing that “good writing requires multiple revisions.” Because of her creative integration of MI Write into her own instruction, “the quality of [her students’] writing has greatly improved since using this program.”

In addition to increased motivation for her students, Amy enjoys being allowed to “spend more time digging into the content of the essays” instead of “weeding through their grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors,” which are errors that the program catches and gives feedback for automatically. MI Write also gives teachers the ability to create their own prompts, which is one of the features that Amy really likes. She creates prompts “to match my instruction for essays or constructed responses to literature or non-fiction.”

Amy teaches in Wood County, West Virginia, one of the counties that participated in a state-wide pilot of MI Write in the spring of 2019. Their students were given a pre-test and a post-test and Amy’s class showed great improvement throughout the trial period. But the pilot wasn’t only for the students. The teachers were able to give feedback about the program during their usage. “MI Write has made many of the changes that we suggested. I really like that they listen to the teachers that are using the program. I appreciated that they are always open to feedback.”

In a little over a year, Amy has been able to use MI Write with her 8th grade students and see remarkable growth. While we love to see improvement in student motivation, confidence, and scores, we also enjoy hearing about creative uses and favorite features that our teachers are implementing successfully in their classrooms. Thank you, Amy, for putting your students’ growth first and your support of MI Write.

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