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November, 2006
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Boise Businesswomen Win Distinguished Award in the
International STC Competition
by Teresa Sherman, STC-SRC Chapter
Congratulations to Boise, Idaho, residents Heather Glass and Natalie
Chavez! Their entry, the Write On! Instructor’s Manual, received
the Distinguished Technical Communication award in the Training Manuals
category of the STC’s 2005-2006 International Technical Publications
Competition. As a result, the manual was exhibited at the STC International
Conference in Las Vegas in May of 2006.
Entries of the Technical Publications Competition are evaluated on production,
design and typography, copy editing, content and organization, and graphics.
And like all STC competition entries, a winning entry must meet the purpose
for its intended audience.
Heather Glass, owner of Write On! Publishing, Inc., developed the material
and wrote the content of the manual while Natalie Chavez, creator of Chavez
Writing & Editing, Inc., formatted the manual and edited its content.
The manual is a 200-page book that guides parents and other volunteers
in leading after-school writing clubs for 4th- through 6th- graders. The
manual takes volunteers through a 14-week program in which children write
and illustrate a hardbound book. The manual is currently used in 18 Boise
schools and marketed to many more, and is being considered by a publishing
company.
When asked about the Write On! Instructor’s Manual, Heather
Glass says that it is unique from all other manuals written about writing
and publishing books. It approaches common problems students face when
creating a story. For example, students can write page after page of a
story and never have a purpose, direction, or point. The Write On! program
handles this problem with a proactive rather than reactive approach. In
this way, instructors are given teaching tools that help students avoid
excessive editing—a discouraging way to learn for a writer of any
age.
Heather comments that after going through the program, her statistician
calculated that there was a 332% increase in the number of visual images
that students used in their writing. This number was based on writing
samples that students completed both before and after going through the
program. Also, 98% of the surveyed students who attended writing clubs
said they would return the following year. Heather is very excited that
the manual is impacting the lives of young readers and writers.
Natalie Chavez, who taught high school English for ten years and started
Chavez Writing & Editing, Inc. in 1999, says she was thrilled when
Heather asked her to edit the manual. As a former member of the Snake
River Chapter, the recipient of an Excellence Award for a previous entry,
and a four-time judge in the Technical Publications Competition, Natalie
believed that Heather’s manual would do well in the competition.
She was also excited about the constructive feedback the judges would
provide to help enhance the Write On! program. From past experience, she
knew that input from the STC judges would be both professional and practical.
In addition to providing a winning manual, Heather and Natalie have also
given the program’s volunteers a wealth of supporting documents,
including sample stories, an illustration guide, and detailed instructions
on different aspects of student publishing. Since their success in the
competition, Heather and Write On! Publishing, Inc. have released a second
edition of the Write On! Instructor’s Manual. The changes were based
on observations Heather made after seeing the program in action. Natalie
also worked on it, and says she felt blessed to be able to edit this edition
of the manual. She is also a parent volunteer leading the after-school
writing club at Shadow Hills Elementary for the second year in a row.
Congratulations again to Heather and Natalie on their Distinguished Technical
Communication award. And a big thanks to you both for developing a program
that helps promote writing to young people and may even help to create
future technical communicators and STC members in the Boise area!
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