Letter to Our Readers

By: Art Peterson
Publication: The Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3-4
Date: 2005

Endings and Beginnings

"The end is where we start from," wrote T.S. Eliot, an apt description for the changes taking place at NWP publications. With this issue of the National Writing Project Quarterly, we conclude a run of our print journal begun in 1978. At the same time, we are beginning to develop an online journal, venturing into a medium no one would have predicted in that year.

Where We Came From

To be precise, The Quarterly was not The Quarterly at first; it was the eight-page National Writing Project Network News. And "network news" pretty much described its content ("National Network Established," "New Bay Area Writing Project Publications Announced"). There were also, however, pieces that discussed the nuts and bolts of writing project work ("Inservice Must Be Teacher Centered," "Heuristics for a Summer Institute"). In 1978, there were forty-one NWP sites in twenty-four states. And the audience for the Network News was mostly the directors of these sites and their collaborators. However, before long the publication––which became The Quarterly in 1986—had become a vehicle for discussion of Big Ideas in the teaching of writing. Theoreticians like James Moffett, Maxine Greene, and James Britton contributed. Also in 1986, after the National Writing Project established a collaboration with The Center for the Study of Writing (CSW), The Quarterly had available a new source of scholarly expertise. The Center, which shared NWP's goal to build learning bridges between academics and classroom practitioners, was a natural partner for our publication, and The Quarterly was increasingly able to draw on the work of university scholars like Linda Flower, Anne Haas Dyson, and Sarah Warshauer Freedman.

A Journal for Teachers by Teachers

For a number of years the National Writing Project had been bringing together university and K–12 teachers into a discussion of major concepts important to the teaching of writing. The Quarterly took advantage of this alliance by providing a forum where teachers of all grade levels could publish their ideas, their research, and their classroom practice in a single journal. Though most university-level teachers were not new to publishing, The Quarterly broke ground when it responded to the NWP assumption that significant expertise resides in the hands of classroom teachers by giving K-12 teachers a vehicle to write about that expertise. In our pages teachers have argued to support—and have generated classroom-based research to demonstrate—principles such as these: authentic writing springs from students' interests and concerns; successful writing takes time; peer groups—properly managed—can help a piece of writing develop; technology in the classroom has the potential to advance students' writing skills; writing teachers must learn to work appropriately with students with different skills and from varied backgrounds; writing is key to learning at every grade level and in every subject; the fairest and most productive way to evaluate a student's work is to examine a collection of that work; and teachers who want to understand, at a gut level, how to teach writing, need to write.

It's this last point that has made The Quarterly vital to writing teachers' lives. The publication has provided teachers with someplace to go with their writing, a public forum to express their concerns and work out their teaching problems. What can a teacher do when the journal topics she proposes to her students generate bland writing? How can ELL students from diverse cultures share what they are learning? Is it possible to teach voice? How can a teacher supplement a mandated literacy program with her own strategies that she knows work? How can a writing teacher work successfully with a student whose ideas violate her values?

As writers have explored questions such as these, readers have collected many practical suggestions to improve learning in their classrooms, but, in general, the goal of The Quarterly has not been to provide nuts and bolts lesson plans. Rather it has been to provide examples of teachers thinking as they learn to do things better.

About This Issue

The sixteen articles in this issue have all appeared in The Quarterly before, the first in 1979, the most recent in 2004. While we admire all these articles, they were not chosen because they are "the best" of The Quarterly. Rather they have been selected because they are representative of concepts about the teaching of writing that are central to the work of NWP, principles such as the importance of teacher research and inquiry to professional growth, the role of equity as an element in school reform, and indeed, the writing project model itself as a vital tool in the struggle to advance professional development. This focus means that we had to pass over many brilliantly conceived, highly literate, and decidedly useful pieces. Readers should take some solace, however, in knowing that part of our new online thrust will be to better organize and make more accessible the archives of our publications.

Readers can also be assured that we will maintain many of the features they have come to appreciate in The Quarterly. The in-depth exploration of fresh and important literacy-related ideas, the focus on inquiry and teacher research, the respect for scholarship, the careful attention to language—all these will be part of our new publication. We are going to move one step beyond T. S. Eliot. The end will not be merely where we start; it will inspire, inform, and direct our new beginning.

ART PETERSON

Senior Editor
National Writing Project

Acknowledgments By our reckoning, The Quarterly has published the work of more than 1,000 contributors since 1978. Some of these writers have died; others, as will be evident from the brief biographies that follow the articles we have included here, have moved on to other significant accomplishments in literacy education. All deserve our sincere thanks for their work in advancing the discussion of those concepts crucial to helping students become more accomplished writers and learners. And, at the risk of appearing immodest, it's fair to say that none of this excellent work would have made it into print without shepherding by an impressive progression of Quarterly editors. Working forward from 1978, the list of editors includes KEITH CALDWELL, JERRY CAMP, MELANIE SPERLING, MIRIAM YLVISAKER, ART PETERSON, PEGGY LOOFBOURROW, BARBARA YODER, AND AMY BAUMAN. Most of these word mavens have now moved on to other pursuits: one is a college professor, another is the proprietor of a second-hand book store, another has returned to teaching second grade. But all shared a common desire to work with teachers to help them be the best writers they could be. One more person deserves special recognition here: photographer ELIZABETH CREWS, who has contributed to NWP publications for ten years and has the ability to catch images of classroom moments in ways that have made the pages of The Quarterly almost breathe. The editors