Suggests that personal writing poses both opportunities and risks in writing classrooms. Discusses the experiences of two children in a fifth/sixth-grade writing process classroom. Notes that benefits of personal writing are opportunities for authenticity, finding voice, and a therapeutic value; whereas risks include coercion of students who are…

While most students in a secondary language arts methods course found writing and reading each other's critical literacy autobiographies interesting and helpful to their understanding of literacy, they struggled with how to respond to their classmates' autobiographies. That struggle emerged within a teacher inquiry project whose central question…

Lifewriting is a form of autobiographical composition in which the non-expert, or even the beginning writer, tries to capture on paper the raw experiences of a lifetime. The intersections between family history and social or political events provide one set of starting points for the lifewriter who sets out on the neverending journey to capture a…