During the last decade, the impact of social sciences on educational theory and practice, and anthropology, in particular, have changed the way in which educators view classrooms, teachers, students, and learning itself. Classrooms are subcultures that require particular behaviors, linguistic patterns, and mind sets for members to succeed; teachers are ethnographers who write descriptions of student behaviors during classroom practices. This close attention to student activity and ability has shifted the focus to a "student-centered" curriculum. A graduate course was designed for teachers to work on their own writing through lessons learned from the recollections of well-known authors. Students read and discuss specific authors and their retrospectives on literacy, share experiences with the writing process in classrooms, and write stories from their own lives. Students learn that they must help children become constant readers, show them the benefits of writing and exploring life experiences about which to write, and promote authorship through book-making and journal writing. (Contains four references.) (CR)