This document traces the steps take by a rural school district to design and implement a research-based staff development program to train all teachers, K-12, to be teachers of writing and to produce students who would be writers. The three-step process involved: (1) needs assessment; (2) staff development planning; and (3) evaluation. Public pressures became acute when a 1985-86 statewide basic skills competency test, which included a writing sample, revealed that more than half of the students could not write well enough to receive a passing score. Analysis of the writing sample results was the first activity in the needs assessment step. The second part of the needs assessment was to review the strategies teachers used to teach writing. The review of test data and teaching strategies indicated that teaching methods employed in the district were not effective for a majority of the students. The second step of the process involved the establishment of a staff development program designed to produce identified outcomes. The traditional "one shot" before-school inservice training was abandoned in favor of one training session before school started and four separate follow-up sessions during the school year. The final step on the program development involved an evaluation of the program's effectiveness, indicated that teacher reactions were positive and student performance improved. (JD)