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Gathering Ink: Instruction Through Encouragement
Welcome
Writing is a highly personal process. Providing feedback on a student’s work must be done in a way that values his or her contribution, yet guides the student on a course of steady improvement. As home educators, it’s often helpful to have someone other than a parent provide that feedback. GI’s tagline is “Instruction through encouragement” because that’s exactly what I do. If a student is afraid to produce content because it will be judged as incorrect or inadequate, then we have no starting point—nothing to work with.
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Angela Harris
Founder, Gathering Ink
Co-founder, Mosaic Freeschool
About me
In July of 2011 I co-founded the co-operative learning community, Mosaic Freeschool. We started in a library with 13 students and within the following school year had doubled our enrollment. When I began working with our students so long ago, I could not have imagined all of the diverse classroom experiences that now exist both in-person and online. When I left the Northeast in the spring of 2013 to move to the Houston, Texas area, I had only a vague idea of how I might continue to interact with all of my wonderful students.
Thankfully, I was given that opportunity in 2014 when we decided to pilot a year-long online literary analysis class for our high school students. The experience was surprisingly interactive and we quickly began to see the benefit of adding online classes to our normal on-site class offerings. I believe that a vast number of homeschoolers find online classes not only convenient, but valuable. While I hope the collaborative in-person experience is never fully replaced by online alternatives, I appreciate the opportunity to deliver high quality language arts classes to our homeschool community.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with students both in-person and on-line in the Houston area, as well.
Additional information
Angela Harris is co-founder of Mosaic Freeschool and a former homeschooling mom to two boys, ages 23 and 20. She started Gathering Ink in June of 2013 as an extension of the writing instruction and guidance she has provided students of many different ages and abilities. She has taught journalism, creative writing, and literary analysis to middle school and high school students and enjoys sharing her love for writing with others. Angela has been trained in the Brave Writer method and uses techniques inspired by Peter Elbow.
She is dedicated to the advancement of alternative education choices, creating the web-site Raising Autodidacts in 2011 to further explore the idea of fostering the self-taught individual. She has contributed to the on-line magazines, Education Revolution and The Homeschool Post.
In the fall of 2019, she began teaching language arts and history full time to middle school students at Great Oak School, a Waldorf-inspired private school with a holistic, natural approach. She has graduated four 8th grade classes and will graduate her fifth in 2024. She earned her Waldorf teaching certificate in July of 2022.
Contact Angela at angela@harris.li with questions or for further information on her approach to writing instruction. She is available for tutoring in 2023-24 on a limited basis.