Book Description

In this collection of 32 narrative essays, scholars and teachers of English and English education share their excitement as they reflect on their professional growth over the last 30 years. The firsthand stories in the collection represent "a study of theory and applied theory, grounded in personal experience and academic study over many years." The essays are: (1) "Facing Yourself" (J. Tompkins); (2) "Surprising Myself as a Teacher in Houghton, America" (A. Young); (3) "Becoming a College English Teacher--More by Accident than Design"" (D.C. Stewart); (4) "On (Not) Being Taken In" (H.T. McCracken); (5) "How Do the Electrons Get Across the Two Plates of the Capacitor?" (D. Bleich); (6)"Teaching as a Profession" (A.S. Bayer); (7) "Going Back" (S. Hudson-Ross); (8) "I Did It My Way...With a Little Help from My Friends" (P. Smagorinsky); (9) "Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard" (P. Elbow); (10) "Disrupting the Transmission Cycle in College Teaching" (G.M. Pradl); (11) "Out and About in English Education" (R.E. Shafer); (12) "Beyond the Obvious" (V.R. Monseau); (13) "My English Education" (S. Hynds); (14) "From Reading to Writing, from Elementary to Graduate Students" (S. Stotsky); (15) "Living with Tension: Doing English, etc." (J. Milner); (16) "What's A Story?" (M.C. Savage); (17) "Two 'Women's Ways of Knowing' Teaching Writing" (R.C. Grego and N.S. Thompson); (18) "The Teaching and Learning of English in the College Classroom: Creating a Unified Whole" (B.M. Greene); (19) "On English Teaching as Poetry, 'or,' Samuel T., You'll Never Know What Organic Unity Did for Me" (M.L. Angelotti); (20) "Learning to Love Being a Second-Class Citizen" (W.R. Winterowd); (21) "Falling into Narrative" (P. Donahue); (22) "English in Education: An English Educationist at Work" (H.M. Foster); (23) "Downshifting to Fourth" (T. Fulwiler); (24) "Connecting the Teaching of Reading, Writing, and Speech in Programs for Developmental Students" (J. Entes); (25) "Reuniting Grammar and Composition" (J.L. Collins); (26) "Confessions of a Teacher Who Has Not Learned about Teaching" (R.L. Larson); (27) "Teaching and Learning English: Two Views" (C. Moran and "College Writing" Students); (28) "The Way I Was/The Way I Am/And What I Learned in Between" (L.L. Meeks); (29) "Collaborative Computer Encounters: Teaching Ourselves, Teaching Our Students" (G.E. Hawisher and C.L. Selfe); (30) "Ideological Crosscurrents in English Studies and English Education: A Report of a National Survey of Professors' Beliefs and Practices" (C. Dilworth and N.M. McCracken); (31) "Interpreting the Reflective Stories: The Forces of Influence in Our Essayists' Lives" (R.L. Larson); and (32) "Interpreting Stories: Rebels in the Professoriate" (H.T. McCracken). (NKA)