Teachers of young writers often feel pressure to focus on narrow, tested conventions, forms and processes of writing. These pressures can contribute to instruction that does not consider students' interests, experiences, language or cultures, but rather can further deficit views of students whose backgrounds do not closely align with those making…

This article seeks to answer two questions: what kinds of expertise are needed to lead an effective dissertation boot camp; and how can those outside the graduate student's discipline support their writing? Drawing on four years of application data and post-camp interviews, I reveal how writing process knowledge--similar to that described in the…

Despite extensive attention to peer review in composition studies literature, the activity remains challenging to design, in part because there are multiple potential goals for peer review. This article draws on existing literature to describe a variety of peer review goals and then presents interview data to illustrate the perceptions of…

This article argues that teaching writing can help graduate students become better writers. Each year, more than 100 graduate students from more than thirty departments participate in one of two training courses offered through Cornell's John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. This article describes some of how these courses…

The teaching and learning of writing in the elementary classroom setting is a complex process. As students participate in the classroom community and write, they engage not only in the cognitive task of academic writing, but in various social practices as well-negotiating positionality, developing identities, cultivating understandings of genre,…

Writing is recognized as a vital skill in education and the workplace; students in the United States finishing K-12 schooling are expected to be competent writers. Yet, "the Nation's Report Card" found that U.S. high school graduates coming into the workforce are particularly deficient in writing skills. Teachers serve as a crucial link…

After decades of use in creative writing programs, the workshop method has come under a recent wave of attacks and criticism. Though revising and enhancing the workshop process is necessary, the writing workshop should remain a tradition in the education of young writers.

In attempting to align all that we do as English teachers with current standards, expectations, standardized tests, and other educational stressors, we have overlooked one crucial element: developing our students as writers, not just because it is beneficial, but because it is good for their souls, their confidence, and their overall evaluation of…

In this era of high-stakes testing and densely packed state standards, it is too easy for writing to become a meaningless process, useful only for school. Many strategies can help to get all students writing, but this author set out to find a strategy to help students see the power of writing and to know that their voices matter. Writing groups…

Sixteen teachers. Sixteen journeys. All on a quest to become outstanding teachers of writing. All taking different paths to acquire and hone those skills that make a teacher effective. From kindergarten to college, teachers are faced with the daunting task of instilling the art of writing in their students. From creative writing to research, the…

At Southerland Institute (a pseudonym), in spite of the teacher's strong statements in favor of encouraging students to think for themselves and to work together, the writing program Southerland's teachers outline is formulaic with its required modes, prescribed five-paragraph-like essay form, and bell-curve grading practices. A new rhetorician…