I confess. I started out as a creationist. The first days of every school year I created; for the next thirty-six weeks I maintained my creation. My curriculum. From behind my big desk I set it in motion, managed and maintained it all year long. I wanted to be a great teacher--systematic, purposeful, in control. I wanted great truths from my great practices. And I wanted to convince other teachers that this creation was superior stuff. So I studied my curriculum, conducting research designed to show its wonders. I did not learn in my classroom. I tended and taught my creation.

These days, I learn in my classroom. What happens there has changed; it continually changes. I have become an evolutionist, and the curriculum unfolds now as my kids and I learn together. My aims stay constant--I want us to go deep inside language, using it to know and shape and play with our worlds--but my practices evolve as eight graders and I go deeper. This going deeper is research, and these days my research shows me the wonders of my kids, not my methods. But it has also brought me full circle. What I learn with these students, collaborating with them as a writer and reader who wonders about writing and reading, makes me a better teacher--not great maybe, but at least grounded in the logic of learning, and growing.

    by Nancie Atwell     in In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents, 1987