This
book illustrates how teachers of elementary-age writers bring their
beliefs about teaching and learning to life―through the visions they
hold for writers, writing, and the world, as well as through the
decisions they make every day in their classrooms. Teachers today face
contextual challenges and pressures that may conflict with their
visions of effective teaching. Katie Van Sluys demonstrates how to
(re)claim our professional practice to ensure that young people have
the opportunity to become competent, constantly growing writers who use
writing to think, communicate, and pose as well as solve problems.
Using NCTE’s Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing as a starting point
for understandings about writing research and what it can tell us about
effective writing practices in elementary classrooms, Van Sluys invites
us to articulate our own beliefs as we explore why and what we write,
how we write and how we teach, how we assess progress, and how we
advocate for the practices we believe in. Through real classroom
examples and teacher and student reflections, she helps us understand
how the decisions that both we and our students make today can help
them not only learn to write well but also to use writing to create the
world they want to live in.
