English Education Special Themed Issue

Introduction
Janet Alsup and Lisa Schade Eckert

Composition Studies/English Education Connections
W. Douglas Baker, Elizabeth Brockman, Jonathan Bush, and Kia Jane Richmond

Notes of a Humbled WPA: Dialogue with High School Colleagues
Tiane Donahue

'Belly Up to the Pond': Teaching Teachers Creative Nonfiction in an Online Class
Roy F. Fox and Amy A. Lannin

Building Triangles: Research and the Realization of Self in Making Sense
Mary Godwin

Training ESOL Instructors and Tutors for Online Conferencing
Beth L. Hewett and Robert Lynn

Muted Voices: High School Teachers, Composition, and the College Imperative
Joseph Jones

Creating Reflective Teacher-Practitioners in the Midst of Standards
Joan Mullin and Dorothy Cashell

Introduction

Recently, there has been increased interest in the teaching and mentoring of new composition teachers who will work both at the secondary and university levels, as evidenced by recent publications including Thompson’s Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and Collaborations (NCTE, 2002) and Tremmel and Broz’s Teaching Writing Teachers of High School English and First-Year Composition (Boynton/Cook, 2002). In the last five years, the number of sessions and special interest groups dedicated to the topic at annual conferences and conventions has grown significantly. When we conceived of this special English education issue of The Writing Instructor, we asked the question, how can we most effectively prepare and mentor the teachers who will be teaching composition in the 21st century?

At the 2001 CCCC, a special interest group met for the first time. Jonathan Bush and Janet Alsup were the co-founders of this SIG, and members were primarily English educators who had completed graduate studies in rhetoric and composition; why else would they be attending the C’s?

Introduction

In the 1970s, as I completed my undergraduate degree in English education at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, I worked at Copley Square High School as a student teacher. One of my practice teaching classes, under the guidance of senior teacher Steve Gordon, was the college preparatory writing course for seniors. I had already worked in the Northeastern University Writing Center as an undergraduate tutor, and had colleagues teaching first-year composition there. I was able to bring seniors from Copley Square High to visit the first-year writing courses at Northeastern. I hoped instinctively at the time that exposure to college classes would first inspire the students to attend college and then ease their transition from high school to college. I felt privileged to be simultaneously in the high school classroom and close to the college writing classroom. My career took other paths and I ended up a university teacher, but I hear echoes of my first teaching experiences more and more frequently.

“The best approach to frogs is on their own level. Leave the meadow its milkweed and August asters, and instead belly up to the pond’s bank in an inner tube. . . .” (Swain 250).

Roger Swain is living for a time with the frogs. This allows him to take the reader with him into the pond, seeing the bulging frog eyes, and feeling with his toes the endangered pond of these frogs. He steps into the pond to give his reader information. He drifts into the frogs’ lives to show the seriousness of the situation which is no longer just about his day with the frogs, but about their losing a habitat, as similar ponds around the country have become endangered. He wades into a murky area where he is not just a journalist, nor a novelist, though he creates drama and teaches a lesson. He’s swimming in the literary-journalistic waters of creative nonfiction.

Working with first-year students at Purdue University, composition instructor Mary Godwin joined efforts with librarian Alexius Smith-Macklin to explore the efficacy of a collaborative approach to freshman writing instruction at the university level.

Introduction

Individualized conferencing, a situation where instructors and tutors work individually with students, is one traditional way in which students whose first language is not English (ESOL) can receive help as they learn and practice their English speaking and writing skills.

Introduction

H. I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity offers an instructive observation, even though his purpose is to describe the relationship among the three strata of teachers within the Roman educational system of two thousand years ago.

To teach is to change. Or at least to try to. . . . We want to make a difference. But what kind of difference, what kind of change? And, more specifically, who is supposed to be changed, in what ways, and how much? (Kameen 3)

Introduction

NCTE has been actively working to communicate effective writing theories and practices in nationwide conversations with the College Board and state and federal governing bodies.[1] Yet there is still a gap between research on writing and legislation enacted through state standardized tests.