As a sixth grade ELA teacher at the Gibbs School, Heather Mahoney knows it can be challenging for students to share their writing with others. “It’s a really vulnerable position to be in,” she said.
To better understand her students’ experience, Mahoney chose to put herself in their shoes during summer 2025. With support from the Arlington Education Foundation, she attended an intensive writing workshop in Sweet Grass County, Mont., which offered both an immersive learning experience for her and new ideas for her classroom.
“It was so valuable to be on the other side of the experience,” said Mahoney, who has taught in Arlington since 2013. “It’s really hard to be a middle-schooler, especially if someone is trying to make you participate in a certain way, and find your voice in a public way, and so I wanted to have that experience myself.”
The Montana setting of Heather Mahoney’s August 2025 workshop (photo courtesy of Heather Mahoney).
The weeklong workshop focused on the adult participants’ own writing as well as the poetry of Mary Oliver, and emphasized the need for both rigor and community among writers. Mahoney said she has brought those paired concepts — rigor and community — back to her own classroom. Because the relationship students have with each other, and with her, affects their willingness to share their work and their ability to hear criticism of it, a rigorous approach to reading and writing requires a strong community culture.
“We have very short classes of 46 minutes, so we have to be very careful at Gibbs about what we’re putting time toward,” she said, adding that “Having the framework of community and rigor gives me a good framework.”
The summer experience also left Mahoney feeling renewed and excited for the school year to come. “So much of teaching is personal, and for teachers, our ability to teach well is limited by our own horizons,” she said. “When we can expand our own horizons, and attend workshops or seminars, we bring that back in our classrooms, and it’s so valuable to have a more expansive understanding.”
Mahoney is among dozens of teachers from across Arlington Public Schools who have received Continuing Scholar Awards grants from AEF. These grants allow teachers and staff members to receive up to $2,500 for personal and professional enrichment experiences that, in turn, benefit Arlington students.
