The Quarterly
Vol. 17, No. 1, 1995
Going Back: An Open Letter
By Keith Caldwell
Keith Caldwell spent the years 1978 to 1982 as editor of The Quarterly and as a roving ambassador for the National Writing Project....
Revisited article: Beating the "Writing Systems" on Our Own Ground
By Mary K. Healy
Revisited article: Confessions of an Ex-College Freshman
By James Moffett
In this reprint of an article first published in The Quarterly in 1980, James Moffett tells how he flunked his first theme in college and gained a new understanding: writing isn't, as he learned in high school, producing adult-sounding, teacher-pleasing prose; writing is saying what you really think and feel or what you really want to put over....
Revisited article: Joining the Debate: Shouldn't Writing Teachers Write?
By Tim Gillespie
In this 1991 article, Tim Gillespie responds to Karen Jost's English Journal article "Why High School English Teachers Should Not Write....
Revisited article: Moffett, Freshman Comp and the Teaching of Writing
By Richard Murphy
James Moffett's 1980 article "Confessions of an Ex–College Freshman" prompted this response—also written in 1980—from college teacher Richard Murphy....
Revisited article: New Professor Collides with Real Students
By Frederick Crews
Crews reminisces about his first teaching experience, in which he encountered "bright, agreeable, but wary" freshmen writers and their pointed responses to the assumptions behind his instructions....
Revisited article: One Student's Writing Process
By Alice Kawazoe
Kawazoe describes the process through which a response partner helps a Cambodian English language learner to tell his story; then she looks into the essence of dialogue as a technique for teaching writing....
Revisited article: Re-embedding "Disembedded" Visions of Young Children's Writing Dev't
By Anne Haas Dyson
In this 1988 Quarterly piece Anne Haas Dyson discusses the theories of Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, looks at children's use of writing, drawing and talking in early schooling—with recorded examples from her classes—and considers the implications, for teacher of writing to young children, of the developmental picture that emerges....
Revisited article: Reformers Proceed with Caution: Real Teachers Ahead
By Art Peterson
This is a reprint from a 1986 article by Art Peterson, current senior editor of The Quarterly....
Revisited article: School Culture
By Miles Myers
This article examines the relationship between classroom teachers and university researchers, making the claim that teacher authority is based on knowledge gained by experience in the schools, an experience not generally available to university researchers....
Revisited article: Tennis Anyone? Or Whose Paper Is It?
By Jim Hahn
In 1980 Jim Hahn of the Bay Area Writing Project, stopped "fixing" student papers in his English classes and revised his teaching methods to make the students more responsible for their own work....
Revisited article: The Mission of the Center
By Anne Haas Dyson, Linda Flower, Sarah Warshauer Freedman
Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Anne Haas Dyson, and Linda Flower articulate the mission of the National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy: "to help teachers transmit to our future generations not just the skill but the art of writing....
Revisited article: The Wall
By Jane Juska
Juska describes the plight of her remedial students and the improvement that using computers brought about and offers a list of her insights to assist other teachers....
Revisited article: Twenty Minutes of Fluency - A Test
By James Gray
In this 1979 article, National Writing Project founder Jim Gray recounts his impressions as a reader for the College Board's English Achievement test, an experience that left him asking questions about the validity of the timed essay question as a means of assessment....
Revisited article: Worshipping False Gods
By Bob Niebuhr
Niebuhr lays out what it means to be a "process teacher....
Revisited Article: Writing Fiction: A Self Interview
By Donald Murray
Murray revisits a self-interview written in 1983, in which he lets us in on writing advice he gives himself and his students, addressing such questions as "What do you mean by voice?" and "How do you organize a story?"....
