Writing across the curriculum in secondary education

Academic writing is an undervalued practice in secondary education. Many teachers outside of the English Language Arts struggle to implement writing into their curriculum due to their lack of confidence in teaching different writing skills and the amount of time teaching and assessing writing can require. Writing is extremely beneficial to students developing content knowledge and discursive writing skills; however, because not many teaching emphasize the importance of writing, students do not develop necessary writing skills. In California, 49.88 percent of students in grades 3-11 who participated in the California Assessment of Students Performance and Progress (CAASPP) did not meet the standards in English Language Arts (Torlakson, 2018). This study researches secondary education teachers in Northern California to understand how they teach writing and areas where they need support to more successfully bring writing into their classrooms to promote student literacy