Print

xiii FOREWORD TO ACTS II The second edition of Acts of Teaching: How to Teach Writing is a splendid book. A well-thumbed copy should rest atop the desk of every teacher of English language arts as a nagging reminder of the infinite richness of the subject each professes. In it teachers will find no gimmickry, no facile suggestions on how to occupy students on those Monday mornings that threaten vacuity. As Janet Emig rightfully notes in her foreword to Acts I, readers will discover that solid research provides foundation for the book’s principles, which in turn spawn a myriad of pedagogical practices. Those practices can be trusted, based as they are not alone upon the best of scholarly research and thought but also upon the classroom experiences, direct and derived, of the two eminently gifted teachers who have authored the volume, Joyce Armstrong Carroll and Edward Wilson. As founders of the New Jersey Writing Project in Texas, now Abydos Learning International, the authors have worked with thousands of teachers since 1979, have been in hundreds of classrooms and scores of school dis- tricts, and, in keeping with the central purpose of the National Writing Project, have trained over 500 selected teachers to be teachers of fellow teachers. Students that they themselves are, what the authors did not know firsthand from their own years as exemplary classroom teachers they have been willing to learn from both direct observation of, and reports from, teachers in their workshops. The new edition of Acts of Teaching is replete with anecdotes about and detailed practices of scores of teachers whose work in the classroom is consonant with current scholarship. The word current is critical, for the world, and with it both scholarship and the profession of English, are in a time of accelerating change largely brought about by electronic technology. Cognizant of the rapidity of that change, the authors, who have long required that trainers for Abydos Learning International undergo additional education every three years to be recertified as teachers of teachers, have extensively revised Acts of Teaching for this new edition. Moreover, recognizing that students, like the world around them, are undergoing constant change, they provide readers with the full arc of students’ cognitive and linguistic development, from conception to adult- hood. The consequence is that teachers of English language arts can contextualize the dynamics of both their students and their curriculum, familiarizing themselves with what should have preceded their own teaching and anticipating what should follow once youngsters depart their classrooms. Finally, the authors provide teachers of other subjects ways by which writing can help students appropriate and construct knowledge in disciplines outside of English. If each teacher of English language arts attends to the contents of Acts of Teach- ing, his or her classroom, like every one of its antecedents and successors, will be rich with language activities. In it an observer will find students reading and writ- ing in a variety of modes and genres, conferring with peers, proudly sharing their work orally and visually, consistently taking ownership of their learning. In it, one