I retired from teaching in August, 2018. In the fall semester of that academic year, I taught a section of Basic Writing (now called "Workshop in Composition"), one of the courses I taught in the fall of 1975, my first year at the University of Pittsburgh. This essay is a documentary account of that course, including writing assignments…

Against a Racial Real backdrop, I argue for consciously adopting a sociocultural approach to style in linguistically and racially diverse Basic Writing classrooms. To make this argument, I focus on a multilingual writer named Tejada, who reveals how she had internalized a racialized stereotypical discourse about herself as a minority--a discourse…

Presents the results of a questionnaire which asked students to distinguish the most helpful instructional factors and activities aiding their writing progress. Concludes that the student's voice is his/her most accessible tool for progress, that acceptance of the student's voice is crucial, and that the speaking-writing connection is the most…

Explains how and why three crises caused a paradigm shift in one professor's way of teaching new teaching assistants to teach writing. Explains how as teachers and students became a family--a community of writers--each person in that community found a voice. (MG)

Describes a method for reorienting the deeply ingrained attitudes of teaching assistants toward writing by introducing them to a variety of writing problems that will give them insights into the difficulties both teachers and students encounter in the classroom. (HTH)