Academic Writing

Charles Bazerman

Charles Bazerman is one of the world’s leading scholars on writing-across-the-curriculum , writing in the academic community, and genre theory. He is widely regarded as the leading American authority on research methodology and the history of research in composition, and is the senior editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Research in Composition and Rhetoric. His award-winning book, Shaping Written Knowledge: the Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (1988), is regarded as a seminal study by scholars throughout the world. His more recent books include The Languages of Edison’s Light (1999), a study of how intersecting discourses foster and produce new knowledge; and Constructing Experience, a collection of influential articles he has written over a period of twenty years on the teaching and learning of writing and on problematic issues in rhetoric and composition. He is also the author of a widely used Freshman English textbook, The Informed Writer, and a series of textbooks for basic skills students under the general title of English Skills Handbook. He began his teaching career as a primary grades teacher in Brooklyn, NY. Later, he served for many years as Professor of English at Baruch College and, more recently, Professor of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is presently Professor of Education at UCSB.

Storytelling as a Bridge to Literacy

Lois Brandts

Lois Brandts is a legendary elementary teacher who has taught for over thirty years in the Goleta School District. She became a Fellow of SCWriP in 1984 and was subsequently a returning Fellow, a Fellow of SCWriP’s Literature Institute for Teachers, and an expert teacher-consultant for SCWriP inservice and continuity programs, introducing the SCWriP community to the value of story telling as a bridge to literacy and bringing to our area some of the nation’s leading storytellers and trainers in story telling. From 1997-2002 Lois was on leave from her school to serve as a full-time Co-Director of SCWriP and Director for three years of regional inservice institutes on the teaching of reading in the elementary grades. During that period Lois also organized a series of SCWriP advanced Institutes on reading and chaired a series of memorable and highly successful SCWriP Winter Literacy Conferences, featuring workshops by SCWriP teacher-leaders and keynote presentations by some of America’s leading researchers on reading and many of the most influential authors of young adult and children’s literature. A founding member of the research team known as the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, Lois was involved in several ethnographic studies of her classroom and is the co-author of a number of published articles based on her work as a teacher-researcher. She has also served as a member of leadership teams for special programs of the California and National Writing Projects.

Beyond Standards

Joni Chancer

Joni Chancer, who teaches fourth grade at Montecito Union School and serves as a SCWriP Co-Director, has been a Fellow and teacher-leader of SCWriP for over 20 years. As one of this country's most influential teacher-educators, she is known for her widely used book for teachers, Moon Journals (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook) and for her popular professional development workshops. She is also a teacher-researcher in her own classroom and the recipient of the National Writing Project's prestigious Fred Hechinger Award. The award recognizes an exemplary teacher-leader who has made important contributions to professional knowledge through research and the application of research to teaching. Joni conducts numerous workshops for SCWriP, including Writing and Art summer workshop tours to such locations as Italy and France.

Intro to Writing Groups

Joan Cotich

Joan Cotich teaches English and ESL at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara.  For the past decade she has been one of the most active teacher-leaders of the South Coast Writing Project in conducting inservice programs and in leading professional development institutes for secondary teachers. She also served as the Director of  SCWriP's Ventura County open-enrollment institute for K-12 teachers. A dynamic and professionally knowledgeable expert on the teaching of reading and writing to adolescents and young adults, she is a frequent presenter at prestigious state and national professional conferences and has published articles in several professional journals. 

Strategic Writing

Deborah Dean

Deborah Dean is a former secondary English teacher who always wanted to teach the writing classes. Now a professor at Brigham Young University, she teaches pre-service and practicing teachers about writing and has taught remediation courses at a local high school as a volunteer. She is the author of Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and Beyond in the Secondary Classroom and numerous articles in national and regional journals. She has presented at numerous conferences and served as a consultant to several school districts, working with language arts teachers as well as teachers in content areas to develop writing instruction and improve students’ writing skills.

Writing Assessment

Tim Dewar

Tim Dewar, a veteran of 15 years teaching in high school classrooms, is presently a co-director of SCWriP and the supervisor of teacher education in English in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB. A Fellow and teacher-leader of SCWriP since 1994, Tim has participated in numerous SCWriP advanced institutes, and for the past several years has served as a frequent presenter, classroom coach, and coordinator for SCWriP inservice programs in schools.  He has been a member of the California Writing Project’s Institute for the Study of Academic Writing and a coordinator for a major research project, sponsored by the National Writing Project to assess the impact of SCWriP inservice programs in schools. Tim will receive his PhD in English education in June 2007 and in September will begin his new appointment as Assistant Professor of Education at the State University of New York, in New Paltz, NY, where he will teach in the English education program and join the leadership team of the Hudson Valley Writing Project.

Students Succeeding Against the Odds

Jessica Singer Early

Jessica Singer taught high school English for several years in Portland, Oregon, where she was also an active member of Portland Rethinking Schools, an activist organization committed to making progressive change in public education. Her teaching and her work as a social activist in Portland  is reflected in her first book, Stirring Up Justice: Writing and Reading to Change the World (Heinemann, 2006). For the past five years she has been a doctoral student in English education at UCSB, where she has been teaching in the UCSB Writing Program and completing her dissertation on Chicano students who are highly accomplished college writers. In the course of her doctoral work she has published several scholarly articles and presented her research at a number of national professional conferences. Jessie will receive her PhD in June and will then move to Arizona where she has been appointed an Assistant Professor in English Education at Arizona State University.

Genres for Student Publication

Erick Gordon

Erick Gordon is the director of the Student Press Initiative at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he is also an instructor in the Teaching of English Program. His seven years of teaching experience at the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Education along with his previous experience for four years as a small press publisher earned him an expertise in classroom publishing projects that has become the cornerstone of the Student Press Initiative (SPI), a professional development organization of Teachers College. His approach to curriculum-based publication ensures that all students publish their work. And in the SPI model, publication is not just the final step of the writing process; it is a recursive idea that offers an opportunity to explore the relationship between writer, genre, and audience. Innovative and highly specific genre studies result from what has been referred to as audience-driven work. "Best-of" reviews written by eighth graders, profiles of social activists by high school seniors, and a multimedia collection of “Shakespearian hip-hop,” by tenth graders are just some of the books published by and for students and their communities. A growing number of these books are being used in classrooms across the country as primary texts. Together with Ruth Vinz, Eric co-authored Becoming (Other)wise: Enhancing Critical Reading Perspectives.

Writing Arguments

George Hillocks

George Hillocks is Professor of English (emeritus) at the University of Chicago, where for many years he headed the MAT program in English and the English education doctoral program, and served as the mentor for many of the most productive researchers presently publishing in the field of English education. As a researcher in English education he is also the mentor and exemplar for the entire field. His half a dozen books have shaped theory and have had a profound influence on practice in the teaching of writing, literature, critical thinking, and in the assessment of student performance in the language arts. He has won most of the major research awards available in the fields of English education and English studies, including the most prestigious David Russell Award. His most recent influential books include the now classic, Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice (1995), and The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning (2002). His most recent book, on the teaching of narrative is forthcoming from Heinemann later this year. A book written by his former students and intellectual heirs, celebrating and documenting his powerful influence on theory and practice in English education was recently published by Heinemann under the title Reflective Teaching, Reflective Learning: How to Develop Critically Engaged Readers.

The Sociology of Argument

Karen Lunsford

Karen Lunsford is Assistant Professor of Writing in the UCSB Writing Program and a faculty member in the program in Language, Literacy and Composition in the Department of Education. Her publications include articles in Written Communication, Computers and the Humanities, and the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. Her research employs interdisciplinary approaches to understand the writing practices that people engage in within evolving knowledge ecologies, how argumentation is situated within those ecologies, and what roles technologies play in these contexts.

The Reading-Writing Connection

Carol Olson

Carol Olson is Director of the UC Irvine Writing Project and a member of the faculty at UC Irvine. She is well-known for the numerous advanced institutes her project has conducted for teacher-consultants from the UCI Writing Project and other NWP sites on such topics as Writing and Critical Thinking and The Teaching of Multicultural Literature. Under her intellectual and editorial leadership her project has published several books that have had a widespread influence on the teaching of the English Language Arts. These include Practical Ideas for Teaching Writing as a Process (Calif. Dept. of Ed.), Fostering Critical Thinking Through Writing (Harper & Collins), and Reading, Thinking, and Writing About Culturally Diverse Literature (UC Irvine). Her own most recent book is called The Reading/Writing Connection (Allyn and Bacon, 2002).

Becoming a Writer

Amada Irma Perez

Amada Irma Perez taught elementary grades in Oxnard for twenty years before coning to the SCWriP Summer Institute of 1998. She then became a SCWriP teacher-consultant and has for the past several years conducted inservice workshops sponsored by SCWriP and served as a lead teacher in SCWriP Young Writers Camps in Ventura County.  Through her participation as a Fellow of the SCWriP Summer Institute of 1998, Ms. Perez also found her opportunity she had longed dreamed of to become a write. During that summer   she completed the first draft of what became her first published book, My Very Own Room/Mi Propio Cuartito, a prize-winning bi-lingual children's book.  This was soon followed by My Diary from Here to There/Mi Diario De Aqui Hasta Alla, another bi-lingual book that has garnered additional literary prizes for its author. Her third bi-lingual book, Nana's Chicken Coop Surprise/Nana, Que Sorpresa will be coming out in Fall 2007. She is also currently at work on a book of poems for children and a novel for adult readers. Amada Irma is now a widely celebrated author who travels all over America and abroad inspiring children and teachers with her books and with her personal story as an immigrant from Mexico, who entered school not speaking a word of English and overcame the obstacles of severe poverty to become a successful classroom teacher and internationally celebrated author of books for children.

Committing a Poem

Barry Spacks

Barry Spacks, now retired from his long-term position as Professor of Literature at M.I.T., has taught in recent years at the University of Kentucky, UC Berkeley, and UCSB. In 1980 he served as a writer-in-residence in SCWriP's second Summer Institute in Composition and he has returned every summer since to conduct a workshop in writing poetry.  He has published two novels, a collection of short stories, and nine volumes of poetry over the past 30 years, including a volume called Spacks Street, a collection of selected poems published by Johns Hopkins University Press. His poems have also appeared in every important American journal of poetry and in many anthologies of leading American poets. Over the past 25 years he has been a frequent and much-loved visitor at Writing Projects throughout California and in many K-12 classrooms.