This lively volume is based on a series of workshops held for seven years in Traverse Bay, Michigan. Nearly one hundred teachers participated in “The Traverse Bay Writing Camp for Teachers” each year, attending sessions in creative writing and pedagogy. The book offers an inside-out view of teaching; to effectively teach writing, a teacher should experience writing. Teachers are at first invited to become students again; contributors such as Steven Tchudi and Ann-Marie Oomen encourage teachers to write creatively for self-enrichment and personal growth, and also to empathize with their students as working writers. Later chapters present suggestions for approaching subject matter, content, and responding to writing; Robert L. Root, Jr., suggests ways of integrating popular media in the classroom, and Alan Weber examines the relationship between “good grammar” and “good writing.”
Detailed throughout with ideas and suggestions for classroom application, this practical book will be a valuable resource for the classroom and for personal libraries. The diverse views and voices of the contributors are highly informational as well as enjoyable, and the teachers’ writing samples presented throughout the book will inspire writers of all levels.
Comments and Reviews
"The book instructs and inspires as it reveals writers teaching and being taught. It is rich with techniques of instruction but goes on to publish the writing that comes from each teaching method in addition to excerpts from teacher's logs, and the responses of teachers to their instruction. Root and Steinberg will be on the shelf near my desk that holds the most important books about the teaching of writing." -- Donald Murray, A Writer Teaches Writing and
Write to Learn
"Traverse Bay workshop participants taught, wrote, and tutored; shared processes, drafts, and products; and took these lessons back to their classrooms and their lives. I'm impressed with the way this book invites us to do the same." -- Wendy Bishop
"Those Who Do, Can" is a book of exquisite words: words that present compelling rationales for teaching writing, words that set forth scores of concrete writing ideas, words that tell in poetry, story, and essay the urgent meanings of our lives. The ideas shared here can be used in classrooms tomorrow and in the lives of teachers forever." -- Tom Romano
