Discusses 11 books that present thought-provoking ideas to help classroom teachers, parents, and administrators understand the world of developing literacy. Addresses a variety of professional books ranging from texts that focus on issues of race, to books that take up emergent literacy, to texts on beginning teaching. (SR)

Offers a visual, graphic, and textual autobiographical montage that explores living a literate life that includes being a teacher and a teacher educator. (SR)

Explores how family literacy practices are connected to social institutions that sustain or transform participants' awareness or reproduction of class identities and the inequities inherent in these interactions. Looks at the complexity of one African-American, working-poor family's literacy practices in their connections to social institutions.…

Introduces "Language Arts" readers to a remarkable and inspirational woman whose contributions over more than four decades added immeasurably to the understandings of children's oral language, critical reading, and writing. Lists multiple ways that Martha L. King's impact on the field of language arts is reflected. (SG)

Challenges two widely accepted ideas infused throughout many writers' workshops: deeply personal writing has transformative power in society; and all literacy is inherently political. Argues that being fluent in many written forms is the best way to provide students with a useful, lifelong tool. (SR)

Considers what role professional organizations play in helping educators live their lives as intellectuals. Notes that being an intellectual means engaging the world, acting on it and in it, reflecting on and learning from the events around them and from their interactions with others. Concludes that to experience being an intellectual, a…

Addresses the challenge for increased understanding of reading failure by sharing the experiences and reflections of one of the authors, who encountered great difficulty in her literacy development. Encourages teachers to give exceptional students, specifically those with reading difficulties, the kind of attention that may enable them to…

Examines changes in the definitions and purposes of literacy that have evolved in response to changes in the history of the United States. Discusses literacy as a skill; literacy-as-school-knowledge; and literacy as a social and cultural construct. Argues for no singular history or definition of literacy, but rather multiple definitions, purposes,…

Discusses new ideas about teacher education, specifically, the need to develop a literate community of teachers who are familiar with the most current educational philosophy and theories. (SRT)

Relates the author's experiences with literacy in another medium during 18 months of concentrated music study. Describes how this experience produced insights about the student/teacher relationship, about learning, and about the writing process. (SR)

Analyzes the value of "time on the carpet" by examining how a class of first and second graders negotiate and construct meanings of letters from penpals (university preservice teacher candidates) during whole-class sharing time. Describes two functions of these meetings: sociocognitive re/construction and enculturation of textural norms…

Presents an accessible overview of modernism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. Describes their characteristics, identifies how conceptions of literacy have changed as an outcome of post-structural and postmodern influences, and describes what literacy instruction looks like within each movement. (SR)

Presents an interview with researcher and teacher educator Carole Edelsky, named Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts by the National Council of Teachers of English. Discusses her work in sociolinguistics and in literacy education, her perspectives on literacy theory and pedagogy, how her political perspective permeates her work, her…

Explains how a teacher education course (designed by the author using an adaptation of Paulo Freire's problem-posing methods) actually hampered students' development and learning. Describes how together the class and teacher recognized the discrepancy between the teacher's rhetoric and the course realities and adjusted the course to fit students'…

Presents brief reviews, in roundtable discussion form, of seven professional books relating to the theme "being a progressive educator in conservative times" and spanning many topics encompassing how learning and different teaching styles and attitudes can influence what happens in and out of the classroom. (SR)