Teaching as a Composing Process

Abstract

Recently I spent a semester as a participant observer in three high-school English classes. Although I have changed their names, the teachers who were the subjects of my case studies are genuine, caring teachers. Mary Auden is a sixth-year teacher. The mother of a preschooler, she spends her evenings reading bedtime stories, grading papers, and attending graduate classes. In spare moments she writes poetry and fiction, and several of her poems have been published. Randy Berryman has been teaching for fifteen years. He has a master's degree in counseling, is an avid sports fan and an occasional coach. His parents were teachers, his brothers and sisters are teachers, and his wife is a first-grade teacher. A Vietnam veteran, Randy is committed to a promise that if he ever got out of Nam alive, he would become a good teacher. When John Conrad became a teacher twenty years ago, it was his love of literature that prompted him to choose English. Although he still has an unbridled respect for Shakespeare and Milton, the teaching of writing dominates his lesson plans. He has a master's degree in administration, chairs his twenty-four-member English department, and directs the computer writing lab. John and his wife, who also is an English teacher, have three children.