Editors’ NoteThis article is adapted from the prefaceof the twentieth-anniversary edition ofWriting: Teachers and Children at Work.*We want to thank Don for allowing us toreprint it here to provide a frame for thisthemed issue on writing workshop in aworld of standards. Don looks back atthe history of writing workshop in ele-mentary classrooms, considers currenttrends, and provides a sense of possibil-ity for the future.

“Children want to write.” Thesewords are just as true now as theywere 20 years ago when I firstwrote them at the beginning ofWriting: Teachers and Children atWork (1983). I would only add,“. . . if we let them.” For the class-room environment has changed.Teachers are expected to teachtwice as much curriculum withinthe same number of hours underthe scrutiny of any number ofclassroom specialists. Time is inshort supply—especially for writing.Further, the presidential administra-tion’s definition of literacy neglectsthe powerful connection betweenwriting and reading, focusing ex-clusively on reading. Still, there issome incredible student work out

there, particularly in the readingand writing classrooms of teacherswho are conscious of their ownprofessional development. Morechildren and teachers are publish-ing now than ever before.

Much has changed in my ownthinking since Writing: Teachersand Children at Work was firstpublished. At the same time, cer-tain basic principles we discoveredin our research in Atkinson, New

Hampshire, still hold true. Let meshare some of those changes andreiterate some of those principles.

CHANGES IN MY THINKING

I am still haunted by my response toProfessor Margaret Salter’s query atthe London Institute in 1980. “Andwhat did you find in your researchabout the relationship between writ-ing and reading?” she asked. “Noth-ing at all,” I replied confidently.

Donald Graves

Twenty years of teaching writing have brought many

changes in our understandings, but some principles

still hold true.

Language Arts, Vol. 82 No. 2, November 2004

88

What I’ve Learned

What I’ve Learned from Teachersof Writing

*Copyright © 2003 by Donald H. Graves. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. Used by permission of the publisher.

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 88

Questions are usually based onknowledge, and Margaret’s wasposed in the midst of a career de-voted to examining both processes.My answer was at least honest—wehadn’t examined children’s readingduring our three-year study of writ-ing. Although the classrooms inAtkinson included some reading ofliterature, there was no reliable in-vestigation of children’s reading inrelation to their writing. Still, sensingthe importance of Margaret’s ques-tion and a real need to examine therelationship, Jane Hansen, a Univer-sity of New Hampshire reading pro-fessor at the time, and I decided toexplore children’s development asreaders and writers. Our eight yearsof work gave rise to my five books inthe Reading/Writing Teacher’s Com-panion series (1987 to 1992) andJane’s When Writers Read (1987;second edition 2001).

Every study that I’ve conducted sinceour original Atkinson research hasconfirmed that we underestimatewhat children can do. The hundredsof teachers publishing books, articles,and especially their students’ workhave proven that expectations can beraised. As I continued to observechildren in the classroom, otherteachers and researchers steered mythinking in new directions.

I shall forever be grateful to LucyCalkins (1986), now affiliated withthe Teachers College Reading andWriting Project, for her very origi-nal work on writing in which shedeveloped the concept of mini-lessons. Up until that point, thewriting conference was the primaryvehicle for writing process instruc-tion, but the strain was too much.There simply wasn’t enough time.Her very practical way of teasingout skills through short demonstra-tions raised the quality of children’swriting immeasurably. Other writersand professionals have expandedand refined this format.

I am indebted to the New HampshireWriting Project, under the directionof Tom Newkirk, for showing mehow important it is for teachersthemselves to write. Observing theproject over the last 22 years, I

noted the gradual emphasis onteachers’ own writing in relation topedagogy. We simply can’t teachwriting if we haven’t experiencedthe process as well as the joy offashioning a text for our peers.Writing with and for their studentsis one of the best uses of instruc-tional time there is, even when timeis in short supply.

Nancie Atwell (1998), founder of theCenter for Teaching and Learning inEdgecomb, Maine, and Linda Rief(1992), English teacher in Durham,New Hampshire, have raised our ex-pectations of what middle schoolstudents can do. What strikes meabout these remarkable women isthe importance of their own literacy.They recognize that the teachermakes a far greater difference thanany methodology. We’ve alwaysknown that, but we need to be re-minded. Strangely, researchersspend endless hours trying to proveone methodology superior to an-other. Some politicians encouragesuch research, driven by the mis-guided hope that if the right methodcan be employed, then better learn-ing will result. But whenevermethod supersedes teacher judg-ment, teachers are relegated tobeing mere mechanics.

I am grateful to Frank Smith for hisinsight in Writing and the Writer(1982) when he says that every actin writing is a convention: puttingspaces between words, writing atext from left to right, following

grammatical rules, spelling words,and shaping letters. These conven-tions exist so that readers can un-derstand their own text andcommunicate with others. Youngwriters move from egocentric scrib-

bles with few conventions to moreintricate texts in which they markoff more complex meaning. Smith’ssimple statement leads us to helpchildren track their first uses ofconventions on through their profi-cient uses of those conventions.Through this record keeping, chil-dren grow to understand the pur-pose and place of conventions.

For nearly 20 years, teachers havestruggled with my statement that“children should choose theirtopics.” My logic was simple: “Writ-ers can only write about what theyknow.” But when children maketheir own choices, they tend tolatch on to stale TV plots, violentaction scenarios, or insipid senti-ments involving Care Bears—thekinds of stories they encounter ontelevision and in computer games.My response didn’t help. I simplysaid, “Take their writing where it isand show them how to make itbetter.” What was missing was aricher menu from which to choose.To that end, I instituted a processknown as “reading the world,” inwhich the teacher examines the im-mediate world surrounding the chil-dren where, in fact, dramatic thingsare always happening. (Paulo Freirefirst used the term “reading theworld,” but I am using it in a verydifferent way.) In addition, theworld of literature reveals how pro-fessional writers select ordinary in-cidents that parallel the children’sown lives.

89

What I’ve Learned

Every study that I’ve conducted since our originalAtkinson research has confirmed that we

underestimate what children can do.

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 89

Most of the writing I encourage inWriting is personal narrative. I stillbelieve that for most children, thisis the easiest way to begin. Thewriter has much more control whentelling her own stories. Of course,there is more to writing than per-sonal narrative: writing is, after all,a medium for learning to think. Asimple statement by Shirley BriceHeath, “The letter is the origin ofthe essay,” gave me a new glimpseinto the relationship of these two

genres. Though letters are more in-formal, they can contain very pow-erful personal statements and areusually written for one person. Rec-ognizing that the essay is more in-clusive and usually contains moreviewpoints than the letter helped mebetter understand the importance of“point of view” in a student’s devel-opment as a thinker. At first, chil-dren are caught up in their ownthinking, finding it difficult to in-clude the thoughts and opinions ofothers. Gradually, through the pro-cess of sharing their writing andshowing it to others, they begin toacknowledge other ways of think-ing. Understanding point of view isa lifetime journey in both readingand writing. Under the best of cir-cumstances, the learner developsher own point of view in the midstof recognizing other ways of think-ing. The essay is unique in develop-ing this kind of thinking.

In the rush to test children on“intake,” their sense of self-expression is often lost. I havelearned that writing flourishes whenchildren’s expression is valued in allits forms. In Picturing Learning(1994), Karen Ernst writes about her

work in Westport, Connecticut, andhow she discovered that a newdepth of thinking arises when writ-ing and artwork are combined.Writing belongs in every subjectand every field. To help childrenmove into fiction, nonfiction, andpoetry, I wrote the Writing/ReadingTeacher’s Companion series, and Irefined some of this thinking in AFresh Look at Writing (1995).

I am indebted to Tom Romano forimparting a far richer understandingof genre in Writing with Passion(1995) and Blending Genre, AlteringStyle (2000). These works andCamille Allen’s The Multigenre Re-search Paper: Voice, Passion, andDiscovery in Grades 4–6 (2001) pro-vide children with many more entrypoints for written expression. In ad-dition, these books prove that stu-dents are highly capable of longthinking, thinking that penetrates asubject and enables them to beginto understand what it means toknow in an unusual way (writing asJoan of Arc instead of about Joan ofArc, for example).

One of the early problems we facedfollowing the publication of Writingwas a sudden epidemic of orthodox-ies. Artful response, listening, flexi-bility in decision making, werereplaced by attempts to regularizethe process. I once overheard oneteacher comment to another, “Doyou use the five-step or the seven-step Graves?” Writing theory wasbypassed for brainstorming onMonday, writing leads on Tuesday,churning out a first draft on Wednes-day, revising on Thursday, and pub-lishing the final copy on Friday.Similar orthodoxies included (1) chil-dren should write only personal nar-rative, (2) children should choose alltheir topics, and (3) spelling, gram-mar, and punctuation are unimpor-tant. (See “The Enemy Is Orthodoxy”in my book A Researcher Learns toWrite, 1984.)

These orthodoxies made my col-leagues and me reevaluate the termwriting process, which wrongly sug-gests that there must be very identi-fiable steps from first conception toend result. We abandoned the termin favor of, simply, writing. Writing,like any form of artistic expression,is a very messy operation. There isindeed a general process from be-ginning to end, but who can predictthe intervals? I find that teacherswho write themselves as well aswrite with their students offer theirstudents greater flexibility and un-derstanding. We quickly learned thatsome writing ought to be abandoned(with dignity) for a fresh start.

Shortly after Writing was published,the “But my children don’t want torevise” complaints also began pour-ing in. Writing stresses revision asan important part of a writer’s life. Ishow how even very young childrencan and do revise. Teachers came tobelieve yet another orthodoxy, per-haps the biggest one of all: “Chil-dren must revise.” If they aren’trevising each piece, then they aren’treally becoming writers. I fumbledthe issue, trying to show that somewriting ought to remain just a firstdraft and that starting an entirelydifferent piece is the most extensiveform revision can take. Not until Iwas in the middle of the manuscriptof A Fresh Look at Writing did theproblem finally strike me: studentshadn’t been shown how to rereadtheir work. Until children are able toreread their work critically, revisionis anathema. Children need to beshown with real texts how to locatethe sentence that best reflects whatthe piece is about. Subsequent read-ings show them how to examinetheir verbs, introduce strong nouns,and delete extraneous sentences.Admittedly, it is hard for any writerto shift to a more distant view andread his or her own words objec-tively. There are literally dozens of

90

What I’ve Learned

Language Arts, Vol. 82 No. 2, November 2004

Until children are able to reread their

work critically, revisionis anathema.

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 90

ways to rediscover a piece that hasjust been written. Much more workremains to be done in this impor-tant area.

One spring in the early ’80s, LindaRief did a short eight-week study ofher students’ ability to evaluatetheir own work and the work ofother writers. She first established abaseline by asking her students toevaluate the work of students fromanother school. Then, during thenext six weeks, she had her studentsevaluate their own work, scaling thewriting from best to least best andmaking extensive comments aboutneeded improvements. At the end ofsix weeks, Linda brought in a newbatch of outside papers for the stu-dents to evaluate, papers that hadalso been evaluated by top-notchwriting teachers and professionalwriters. Her students’ ability to eval-uate had improved remarkably.Most were as good as the teachersof writing, and some of them wereable to match the evaluative judg-ments of the professional writers.More important, these student writ-ers were able to apply their discrim-inations to their own texts. (It is notcoincidental that most of this typeof work involves the refinement ofvery sophisticated reading abilities.)Such teaching is a beacon to allteachers, revealing what youngwriters are capable of achieving.

For some time I have been botheredby the way students fail to developcharacter in their own writing andby the way characters are short-changed in the teaching of reading.Too often the focus is on plot, notcharacter. Furthermore, in science,history, and other content subjects,the notion that people make these

important decisions and discoveriesis left out. In short, when people areignored, students’ ability to identifywith thinking, discriminating char-

acters is lost. Professional writers,for the most part, believe that char-acter exists in any genre.

A few years ago, I led a Bible studygroup in a discussion of the book ofGenesis. My background readingcarried me into David Rosenberg’s(1996) collection of such contempo-rary writers as Arthur Miller,Michael Dorris, James Carroll, andEdward Hirsh, who have commentedon both the writing and charactersin Genesis. In particular, JamesCarroll’s discussion of characterprompted me to take a new look atcurriculum, using people as myprincipal lens. I saw that our high-speed society and hyperactivecurriculum was neglecting themuch-needed rich study of people.People, whether in real life or cur-riculum, take time. A person’s wantssoon produce both choices and re-actions. (Neil Simon [1992] statesthat plot is the result of peoplewanting things—badly.) And eventhough some of these wants are re-solved, some element of paradox re-mains. Carroll’s structure becamethe basis for my book Bring Lifeinto Learning (1999).

WHAT REMAINS THE SAME

The following fundamentals haveremained unchanged in the teachingof writing:

1. Children need to choose most oftheir own topics. But we need toshow them all the places writingcomes from, that it is often trig-gered by simple everyday events.

2. Children need regular response totheir writing from both the teacherand other readers.

3. Children need to write a minimumof three days out of five. Four or fivedays are ideal.

4. Children need to publish, whetherby sharing, collecting, or postingtheir work.

5. Children need to hear their teachertalk through what she is doing asshe writes on the overhead or thechalkboard. In this way, the childrenwitness their teacher’s thinking.

6. Children need to maintain collec-tions of their work to establish awriting history. Collections showthat history when they are used as amedium for evaluation.

Very early in our research, I heardMary Ellen Giacobbe tell a group ofteachers: “Focus on the writer andthe writing will come.” From theoutset, the children in Atkinsonwrote in abundance because we fo-cused on them, responding to theirtexts with encouragement. Most ofthis encouragement was spokenrather than written on their papers. Ifind that responding orally is stillthe best way to help; writers need tohear the effect of their texts onothers in order to go on.

The “day one” I describe in Writingis still how I would begin today. Weteachers need to move around,showing children that we are inter-ested in their texts. They still needto hear our interest in what is ontheir pages. Above all, we must takethe person seriously and look forgood words and phrases well used.When we notice and approve whatappears in students’ texts, wedemonstrate what they need to ap-preciate in their own writing. I stilltell teachers they can never knowenough about children if they aregoing to be able to respond appro-priately to their texts. A child needs

91

What I’ve Learned

I saw that our high-speed society and hyperactive curriculum was neglecting the

much-needed rich study of people.

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 91

to understand that he is an impor-tant human being quite apart fromwhat might appear in his writing.

If the child possesses solid informa-tion and has a good story to tell, weautomatically place the child in aposition of power. The child leads,and we follow with questions re-quiring clarification: “And how didhe feel after he scored the winninggoal? What happened next?” Thisdoes not mean that all topics arestudent chosen. Teachers can en-courage students to seek out usefulinformation through reading andinterviewing. But the child is stillthe teacher. The writer’s job,whether that writer is a child or anadult, is to teach and pass along in-formation in such a way that thereader genuinely wants to read whathas been written. In the years sinceWriting was first published, I havecome up with three statements thestudent can make to orient theteacher and shorten writing confer-ences: (1) this is “what my piece isabout”; (2) “this is where I am in thedraft”; (3) “this is what will happennext, I’m writing next, or I needhelp with.” The student is still theteacher in the process of writing,helping us help her or him.

In the midst of a talk to a largegathering in Maine, cosponsored byNancie Atwell and her Center forTeaching and Learning and the Uni-versity of Maine, it suddenlydawned on me what Nancie andother first-rate teachers do:

1. They are highly literate. Good teach-ers are voracious readers who readfor personal and professional enjoy-ment. They write for themselves, fortheir students, and for broader audi-ences through publication.

2. They are intensely interested in theirstudents. Good teachers take a per-sonal interest in their students’ lives,always looking for signs of what

each student wishes to become.They skillfully arrange literacy sothat it is the instrument throughwhich students engage in self-exploration. They are fascinated bythe stories their children want totell. Their students know they arevalued, independent of their ability.

3. Their students have a primary placein the classroom. A student’s senseof place within the community con-tributes to classroom dynamics.Good teachers continually point tostudent abilities, however varied, toestablish student competence withinthe room. The ultimate goal, ofcourse, is for the students to recog-nize these abilities as well.

4. They instill a sense of responsibilityin their students. Good teachersshow their students how to acceptresponsibility for making readingand writing choices, evaluating theirwork, and reaching other audiences.

5. They have high expectations. Withexperience, good teachers continueto raise the expectations they haveof their students. They look forpotential, whether in a word, aphrase, or an interest. Students areaware that their talents have beenuncovered. When expectations aretangible, it’s a matter of living up to one’s potential, not just pleasingthe teacher.

6. They teach by showing. Good teach-ers conduct their lessons usingeither their or their students’ texts.Students acquire much of theirlearning by observing as theirteacher or their peers share theirwork in process.

These were the very conditions weset up in Atkinson when we con-ducted our original research, andthey are far more important thanany single methodology.

Teachers like Linda Rief (1992) andthe entire staff at the Manhattan

New School in New York City (Har-wayne, 2001) work on and celebratesimilar conditions. These classesand schools have a shared languageto talk about books and writing. Infact, the teacher and the principalsare instrumental in establishing ahighly literate atmosphere. Theirown writing and reading set thetone. They live literacy. Childrenexperiment, try new ideas and newgenres, knowing that even if theydon’t succeed immediately, theywill always be encouraged to tryagain. They know their teacher willbe able to redirect their experi-ments, temper the risks they’vetaken, and eventually lead them tosuccess. The children know theywill be honored regardless of theirabilities and, in some cases, success.This is love in the tough sense, andit embodies high expectations forindependence and effective self-evaluation. The teacher rejoices instudent progress so that students, inturn, may welcome the progress oftheir classmates.

We still need to learn the twincrafts: teaching and writing. It isstill a good foundation for thinkingabout our efforts to help childrenwrite. The word craft suggests arough shaping, moving towardgreater refinement. But as in anycraft, we hone our skills for a life-time as we offer something to theworld that is never quite finished.But there is always the sense of joyat discovering new learning fromchildren, colleagues, and other writ-ers. Let’s enjoy the trip.

Note

Adapted from Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Twentieth-Anniversary Edition, by Donald H.Graves. Copyright © 2003 by Donald H. Graves. Published by Heinemann,Portsmouth, NH. Used by permission of the publisher.

92

What I’ve Learned

Language Arts, Vol. 82 No. 2, November 2004

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 92

93

What I’ve Learned

Our Sidebar Team is part of an ongoing research com-munity, the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group,where expertise is shared, questions arise from allmembers, and theory—method relationships are re-sources used to talk about, examine, and share ourworlds with others. Through sharing with others, wealso learn about their life-worlds, creating global con-nections through our local stories and research. We il-lustrate how the community works by sharing SabrinaTuyay’s journey, framed by the set of questions we usewhen we enter classrooms as ethnographers:

• Who can say/do what with whom? Being a memberof the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group al-lowed me to consider new possibilities. I entered thisresearch community in 1992 as an elementary bilin-gual teacher, not knowing for sure what the worddiscourse meant or how I would fit. I was, after all,“just” a teacher, not a researcher. What was immedi-ately apparent was that collaboration was thenorm—members worked together in various ways.At first, I worked primarily with Carol, a university-based researcher, and Louise, a graduate student, incollecting data in my classroom. Together we madedecisions about data collection even though ourquestions and purposes for analysis were often dif-ferent. We presented at four national conferencesand published two articles. As a result, I began tosee myself as a teacher–researcher.

• In what ways, for what purposes, under what condi-tions? My role gradually shifted from teacher tograduate student and now to teacher–researcher inthe university’s teacher education program. Theseshifting roles allowed me to collaborate with othersin different ways. For example, as a graduate stu-dent, I re-entered the ethnographic data previouslycollected in my bilingual classroom to explore howacademic literacies were socially constructed. Al-though I was interested in academic literacy as abilingual teacher, I was not fully aware of its signifi-cance or the range of opportunities I provided forstudents to become academically literate and to

learn academic content. In my new role as teachereducator, I was able to use the understandings frommy research in designing courses and in researchingmy own practice in this new context.

• With what consequences? While the community’soriginal goals were to develop positive cases ofwhat was possible with linguistically and culturallydiverse students, changing conditions led to newgoals and directions. Two policy changes shiftedthese conditions—the passage of Proposition 227(virtually eliminating bilingual education in California)and the adoption of a highly scripted language artsprogram in our local school districts. These changesbrought an end to the ways in which we had beenworking with students, leading us to explore the im-plications of such changes for K–12 students, teach-ers, teacher education students, and researchers.

• With what outcomes? Over the past 14 years, thegroup continued to expand. Through our work to-gether, there have been countless conference pre-sentations, journal articles, and dissertations. Thecommunity also developed the Center for Teachingfor Social Justice. Current members are creating andresearching new ways for teachers and students towork collaboratively with others, locally and globally,using technological advancements (http://www.education.ucsb.edu/socialjustice). Through my affiliation with this group, I have become a teacher–researcher. Our ongoing conversations and collabo-rations provided me with multiple opportunities forexploring my own questions and those of others, an-alyzing data from various theoretical orientations andwith various analytic tools, learning how to discussand debate from various positions, challenging myown thinking as well as that of others, presenting/publishing what I have come to understand, and con-sidering new possibilities. I could not have made thisjourney alone.

—Santa Barbara Discourse Group: Sabrina Tuyay and Judith Green

Learning with Others: Being a Member of a Research Community

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 93

ReferencesAllen, C. (2001). The multigenre research

paper: Voice, passion, and discovery ingrades 4–6. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle: New under-standings about writing, reading, andlearning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L. (1986). The art of teaching writ-ing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Ernst, K. (1994). Picturing learning: Artistsand writers in the classroom. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers & children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1984). A researcher learns towrite. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1987). Experiment with fiction.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1987). Investigate nonfiction.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1990). Discover your own literacy.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1991). Build a literate classroom.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1992). Explore poetry. Ports-mouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1995). A fresh look at writing.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1999). Bring life into learning.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (2003). Writing: Teachers & chil-dren at work (20th anniversary ed.).Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hansen, J. (1987/2001). When writers read.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Harwayne, S. (2001). Writing through childhood: Rethinking process and product. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Rief, L. (1992). Seeking diversity. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Romano, T. (1995). Writing with passion.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Romano, T. (2000). Blending genre, alteringstyle. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Rosenberg, D. (1996). Genesis: Contempo-rary writers on our first stories. New York:HarperCollins.

Simon, N. (1992, Winter). The art of the theatre. Paris Review, 125.

Smith, F. (1982). Writing and the writer. NewYork: Holt, Reinhart & Winston.

94

What I’ve Learned

Language Arts, Vol. 82 No. 2, November 2004

Donald Graves is retired Professor Emeri-tus from the University of New Hampshirein Durham.

Author Biography

The NCTE Reading Initiative, a study-group-based profes-sional development program founded on the best of whatwe know about learning, is successfully increasing theknowledge of teachers and the achievement of students.Come to the NCTE Annual Convention in Indianapolis, No-vember 18–23, to hear how this program could enhanceyour K–12 teachers’ classroom practice! Look for the fa-miliar logo in the convention program, or visit our Website (www.ncte.org/profdev/onsite/readinit) for full infor-mation. Sessions include:

• The RI Forum, Thursday, November 18, 3:30–4:30 p.m.The get-together is open to all.

• Literacy as Social Practice and New Visions for LinkingLiterature and Mathematics

• When Teachers Work Together: Solving the ReadingProblem in Middle and High School Classrooms

• Living through the Harlem Renaissance: Creating Cur-riculum from a Multimodal Perspective

• Creating Curriculum of Significance: Teacher Transfor-mation through the South Carolina Reading Initiative

• Looking Back from the Future: The Significance ofTeacher Learning Six Years Later

• Professional Growth: Teachers in Schools Who AreMaking a Difference

• Organizing Curriculum to Support Focused and FlexibleInquiry

• Shaping Classroom Curriculum: Children as SignificantPartners

• Secondary Literacy Coaching: What, Why, and How?• Solving the Reading Problem: High School Teachers Ex-

plain What Works• Reading Initiative Fall Institute

NCTE READING INITIATIVE STUDY GROUPS SHARE SUCCESSES & CHALLENGESAT ANNUAL CONVENTION

NOV-LA2.QXD 9/29/2004 2:57 PM Page 94