The Quarterly
Vol. 26, No. 3, 2004
Book Review: Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, by Sondra Perl
By Sheridan Blau
Sheridan Blau reviews Sondra Perl's Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, a book that guides writers to gain access to preverbal intuitive knowledge through attention to bodily experience....
Book Review: Politics, Language, and Culture: A Critical Look at School Reform, by J. Check
By Marcie Wolfe
Wolfe reviews Joseph Check's text, which critiques the "top-down" process of educational reform and focuses on the struggle for school reform in complex urban environments....
Book Review: Response to Student Writing, by Dana R. Ferris
By Gabriela Segade
Segade reviews Dana R....
Caring Comes First: A Personal Narrative
By Kathy Moran
In this time of intense pressure on teachers to accept standardization and hold students to strict measures, Kathy Moran argues that establishing personal connections is as important as following curriculum....
I Teach, (I Feel), I Write: The Effects of Emotion on Writing About Schooling
By Joe Check
Teachers who try to write about their practices often fail, says Joseph Check, when they start with the assumption that professional writing has no place for emotion and personality....
Joined at the Hip: The Joys and Travails of Teaching "Linked" Courses
By Matthew Teorey
Teorey describes how the practice of linking English courses with social or hard science seminars can create cooperative learning communities, and shares how he learned to develop a robust, interactive environment that benefits both students and instructors....
Learning a Lesson from The Girls Who Write Notes
By Janis Cramer
When the top scorers on the writing assessment were the girls who wrote long notes to boyfriends, Cramer created a journaling program in which students wrote without being graded, chose their topics, and collaboratively revised....
On the Experience of Writing Felt Sense: Writing with the Body
By Sondra Perl
Sondra Perl recounts the experience of creating the CD for her book, Felt Sense: Writing with the Body....
On the Experience of Writing Politics, Language, and Culture: Critical Look at School Reform
By Joe Check
Joseph Check describes how, by suspending his daily judgment about the quality of what he wrote, he freed himself to simply produce....
Once, I Almost Died in a Canoe: Knocking out the Story
By Tom Meyer
In this personal reflection, Tom Meyer describes his anguish as a tenth grade student struggling to write essays—only to have his teacher tell him, "You are one of my worst five students....
Peer Review Times Two
By Denise Marchionda
Noting that the classroom logistics of peer response to writing can get dicey, Denise Marchionda developed a two-peer editing strategy for her college composition class....
Pepper
By Kim Stafford
How does a writer make a happy story warm but not saccharine? Kim Stafford writes that the way to achieve this balance is to stay alert for images and details that create edge or contrast....
Teaching in the Time of Dogs
By Todd Goodson
This account of a classroom incident makes clear that it's the students who bring "the uncertainty that is the beauty and the challenge of teaching....
Uncovering Truths Beneath a Found Poem
By John Hundley
Hundley explains how he uses what could have been a throwaway day to help his students create "found poems," showing how a collaborative, student-centered learning environment promotes success....
When Was the Last Time Someone Read to You?
By Grace Hoffman
Grace Hoffman recounts her experiences of being read to as a child, reading to her own children, and listening to books on tape as she argues for the pleasures of listening to the written word....
Writing a Bicycle
By Kathleen O'Shaughnessy
O'Shaughnessy, a teacher of teachers, offers tips and exercises for other leaders of workshops so that the process of sharing classroom expertise can become easier for all....
