Because of her unfamiliarity with the culture, an experienced creative writing instructor in her first year of teaching on the big island of Hawaii decided to use the standard writing workshop model. The University of Hawaii Hilo draws a diverse mix of students, returning students, and local students who speak Creole. Some students were uncertain…

A collaborative, oral-history, writer's workshop was held in an undergraduate college reading class. Sixty-five students each taped an interview on literacy life-experiences with a self-described reluctant reader at the middle or high school level, and wrote a narrative based on the interview. Students worked together in groups on their…

This paper explains Bradley University's (Peoria, Illinois) neophyte Writing across the Curriculum Program, which has been in existence since December of 1997. Noting that the Program started with no outside money and with just a dream of developing undergraduate students' fluencies in their writing, the paper states that the goal was to encourage…

This paper profiles the Academic Writing Center at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, which, although influenced by writing centers in American universities, is less dependent on tutorials. The university writing center has only three academicians for 13,000 students, and most of their time is spent teaching how-to-do-it workshops and classes…

Describes events of the Maine Writing Project Summer Institute. Notes that what happened in this past summer's institute can serve as a model for the ways poetry can be integrated throughout educators' work with students and throughout the lives of educators. (SG)

Offers six descriptions from middle school, high school, and college teachers regarding how they handle grading and evaluation in the reading/writing workshop. (SR)

Argues that faculty writing groups are the single most effective way to change faculty attitudes about writing and to build support for writing across the curriculum. Discusses challenges facing colleges or universities that decide to develop a writing program across the disciplines. (RS)

Describes the New Jersey Writing Project, a total immersion in writing, theory, and practices offered as two three-credit summer courses at Rutgers University. Suggests that the power and authority people gain from writing workshops is so dramatic that once teachers have experienced it they have no choice but to learn to use workshops in their own…

Presents six teachers' responses to the "Private Eye" workshop (which encourages thinking by analogy and incorporating writing in many forms into content area teaching). Notes that the workshop was described in two articles in the November/December 1993 issue of this journal. Notes the energy that flows out of the teachers' writing about…

Describes a "dialogic" (Bakhtin, 1981) writing workshop that is responsive to the social priorities of children and that reconsiders dilemmas within an alternative framework. Notes that the experiences and tests of two writers in third grade highlight the way identity and sense of self can be developed and explored in a writing community that…

This chapter describes an innovative writing program at Simon Fraser University that has implications for fostering transformative learning.

Drawing on theory and practice, the authors argue that, rather than trying to "cover" all grammatical skills, something traditionally done in many classrooms, and with limited results, teachers can more successfully teach less grammar with better results by focusing on key grammatical options and skills in the context of actual writing, throughout…

Between 1999 and 2003, the Western Massachusetts Writing Project experienced a series of changes that made it question whether it could survive as a writing project site. The convergence of retirement, unexpected death, and withdrawal of long-term financial support forced the existing leadership to develop a process to look deeply into the work of…

Two important schools of thought in the teaching of writing are those of the "writing workshop" and "critical pedagogy." Both encourage expression on the part of the student, but while writing workshop advocates assume that the student writes from a stable, unitary, autonomous self, the critical pedagogy advocates do not.…

Suggests that educators fundamentally change the way they teach grammar. Offers the author's experience with some curious success with students taking on grammar as part of their writing process, and gives some ideas about starting the teaching of grammar in a radically different place and as a radical agent. Speaks against using student writing…