Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing

Write Beside Them is written with voice, humor, and humility. Penny Kittle does not tell us she has the perfect class with the perfect student. She tells us how to stick with what we believe to help our students achieve their fullest potential.
I teach third grade (self-contained) and still gained so much insight into writing workshop with a constructivist approach by reading Penny's book.
The dvd is phenomenal! It has her first day of class, her conferring with students, student work . . .
I think writing teachers of grades 3 and up can gain from this book although it is geared to high school English teachers.
Penny also refers to the work of other great writing teachers - Don Murray, Don Graves, Tom Romano, Tom Newkirk, Linda Reif, Nancy Atwell; it helps to have all these resources that readers can turn to for more information.

Writer's Workshop. The term has almost become cliché among English teachers, and it means very different things to different educators. For a new take on this now-old warhorse (though Nancie Atwell shall be forever young in our minds!), teachers should revisit the writer's workshop as Penny Kittle runs it in her New Hampshire classroom.


In fact, this book will appeal to teachers across a wide spectrum: those who have never tried writer's workshop for a myriad of reasons, those who sampled the waters and ran out due to the chill of chaos, and those who still consider themselves practitioners but have nagging doubts about its effectiveness with the students. The benefit here is that Kittle is a borrower. She unapologetically stands on the shoulders of some familiar giants of the teaching/research field, including not only Atwell but the two Don's (Murray and Graves), the two Tom's (Newkirk and Romano), Jim Burke, Kylene Beers, Linda Rief, Lucy Calkins, and many others. As she describes how her classroom is an amalgam of their philosophies and puts her own imprint on them, Kittle literally "shares the wealth" and saves the reader a lot of personal research by showing highlights of their work in practice.

Though the workshop described is based on a half-year semester for seniors, it can be customized for any grade. Kittle assigns a short personal narrative followed by a longer one focusing on the elusive (for young writers) "So What?" as seen in a memoir. Then she turns to persuasion and argument, followed by a unit on multiple genres. As a foundation to her workshop, she uses a writer's notebook (quick writes) and model texts. Also essential (thus, the title) is the notion of writing WITH the students, then sharing the frustration, successes, and strategies that come with the hard work of writing.

Most teachers have mastered the mini-lesson, but the numbers are legion among those who struggle with conferencing. This book, which includes a generous DVD-ROM showing Kittle teaching her class, provides the good, the bad, and the ugly of struggling not only with conferences but with the workshop in general. In fact, Kittle's frank tone (yes, things sometimes go wrong and she provides graphic evidence!) is one of the book's strengths. It goes deeper than Atwell's seminal book from yesteryear, IN THE MIDDLE, and admits that some students can confound even the best of us with the best of strategies and intentions. In other words, it's not one of those rose-colored narratives where all the students are charming, hard-working, and cooperative. Kittle shares good with bad and earns our respect along the way because it looks much like the classrooms WE teach day to day.

Ultimately, Kittle's is an appeal on behalf of the students. She puts us in their shoes as students and as writers -- both very vulnerable entities. She helps us see the harm of commenting heavily on mechanics and lightly on content. She points out the foolhardiness of keeping papers forever, or of only marking up the final drafts. It all makes sense, of course, but we teachers are often so caught up in our own daily struggles (which can be depressingly enormous) that we often forget to walk a mile in their shoes.

Trying those shoes on is worth it -- as is this book. I can't imagine any English teacher who cares about writing skipping this. Agree or disagree with Kittle, you should at least hear her out. My suspicion is that many will be as convinced and as grateful as I was when I turned the last page knowing full well that this would become dog-earred in future years. Recommendation: buy and use.