Atwell begins her text book with her own story. I like the way that she does this because it shows us how she grew and changed as a teacher throughout her career. She talks about learning to focus on the students' learning, rather than her teaching which I think is an extremely important thing for all of us to consider.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have this dream image of this dream classroom with these dream students who love completing my dream assignments. In all reality, what I think the students will love and take to is probably a far stretch from what in reality they will like to do.
This shows that we all need to be receptive of our students, and not forget to make sure we aren't losing kids because there is a gap in our "systems." Probably my favorite thing that Atwell said the whole chapter was on the seventh page; "I assigned topics because I believed that most kids were so intimidated by expressing themselves on paper that they wouldn't write without a prompt, and because I believed that direction and structure from the teacher was necessary to write well." [emphasis mine] We study so many ways to teach and become passionate about them before we ever enter the classroom that we believe that they are tested, tried and true for every child in our future classrooms. While this is true for some students, other students like Atwell's example "Jeff" broke the mold for her, and made it clear that what she believed and reality were two very different things.
With this experience and others, Atwell shapes for us the building blocks of her career and shows very plainly (in the not difficult to read or understand sense of the word) her personal evolution as an English teacher teaching writing.
Erin
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