IN THE MIDDLE
Nancie Atwell
IN THE MIDDLE
A Lifetime of Learning About Writing, Reading, and Adolescents
HEINEMANN
PORTSMOUTH, NH
Heinemann
361 Hanover Street
Portsmouth, NH 038013912
www.heinemann.com
Offices and agents throughout the world
2015 by Nancie Atwell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and with the exception of reproducible pages, which are identified by the In the Middle, Third Edition, credit line, and may be photocopied for classroom use only.
Dedicated to Teachers is a trademark of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
The author and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission to reprint borrowed material:
Excerpt from An Horatian Notion in Split Horizon by Thomas Lux. Copyright 1995 by Thomas Lux. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Ten Conditions for Engaged School Reading from The Reading Zone by Nancie Atwell. Copyright 2007 by Nancie Atwell. Published by Scholastic, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
How to Read History and Science for Understanding and Retention adapted from Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. Copyright 2009 by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. All rights reserved.
Girl Help from Poems Old and New, 19181978 by Janet Lewis. Copyright 1981 by Janet Lewis. This material is used by permission of Ohio University Press, www.ohioswallow.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atwell, Nancie.
In the middle : a lifetime of learning about writing, reading, and adolescents / Nancie Atwell. Third edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-325-02813-2
1. Language arts (Secondary)United States. 2. English languageStudy and teaching (Secondary) United States. 3. English languageUnited StatesComposition and exercises. I. Title.
LB1631.A72 2014
428.0071'2dc23
2014026845
Editor: Maureen Barbieri
Production : Patty Adams
Cover and interior designs: Lisa Fowler
Typesetter: Kim Arney
Manufacturing: Steve Bernier
e-ISBN: 978-0-325-07431-3
DEDICATION
This one is for Anne,
with love and admiration
and in anticipation
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My career and this book owe everything to the friends and associates who ushered in a golden age of research, pedagogy, and professional development in the language arts. How lucky was I to be in the classroom just as the old paradigms of English instruction were being fractured by article after speech after book reporting on real kids and teachers, real classrooms, and the real processes of writers and readers.
A large measure of my good fortune was to be a student of Dixie Goswamis at the Bread Loaf School of English. At the vanguard of the teacher-as-researcher movement, Dixie urged me to observe my students and make sense of my observations by writing about them. She also told me I could writeperhaps her greatest gift and, because of its effect on me, one I made sure to pass along to countless kids.
At Bread Loaf I met Peter Stillman and Bob Boynton of the publishing house Boynton/Cook. They gambled on a book by a middle school English teacher from Maine, and when Boynton/Cook became a part of Heinemann, I did, too. Ive been privileged to work with extraordinary executives and editors, people who respect teachers and put whats good for children above all else: Phillipa Stratton and Tom Seavey, Toby Gordon, Mike Gibbons, Lesa Scott, Lisa Fowler, Vicki Boyd, Lois Bridges, Leigh Peake, videographer Kevin Carlson, and Maureen Barbieri, the editor of this third edition. Maureens readings of a book-in-progress are a writers dream: careful, specific, insightful, and heartening. She made me want to go back to work, which is no small thing.
Im the teacher Ive become because of the writer and researcher Donald Graves. His influence is that direct and essential. Dons most significant leap of imagination, writing workshop, gave teachers and our students a scaffolda structure to support authentic self-expression in the classroom. Thirty-five years down the road, it is still strong and essential.
Graves and the writer Donald Murray, in residence together at the University of New Hampshire in the 1980s and 90s, created a mecca for a new breed of teachers and researchers. The curiosity and generosity of the Dons encouraged my work and that of many others. Through them I met and learned from Susan Sowers and Lucy Calkins, Jane Hansen, Brenda Powers, Ruth Hubbard, Linda Rief, Maureen Barbieri, my boon companion Mary Ellen Giacobbe, and the genius of us all, Tom Newkirk, whose friendship and support are unstinting.
Glenda Bissex and Janet Emig introduced me to the concept of children as intentional writers engaged in a process of making meaning, whether preschooler or twelfth grader. The sure instincts of the teacher and humanist Shelley Harwayne have been a touchstone, as have Frank Smiths insights about, well, everything. I learned from Ken Macrorie, Georgia Heard and Ron Padgett, Toby Fulwiler and Art Young, and Alice Trillin about, respectively, plain style, poetry, writing as a mode of learning, and how to help teachers understand writers and writing.
Closer to home, Im grateful to decades of seventh and eighth graders, whose prose and poetry are the heart of this book, and to my K6 colleagues at the Center for Teaching and Learning, who nurture and transform our students as writers and readers. I thank Helene Coffin, Caroline Bond, Ted DeMille, Jill Cotta, and Glenn Powers for their smart work with children, professionalism, and easy laughter.
My daughter, Anne Atwell-McLeod, is a new member of the crew. When I retired at the end of my fortieth year as an educator, the faculty hired her as CTLs teacher of grades 78 writing, reading, and history. Her previous experiences as a student in and a teacher of writingreading workshop, combined with her appreciation of teaching as an intellectual enterprise and her responsiveness to kids, give me hope for the future of the profession. In the words of Walt Whitman, no pressure, Anne, but Im Leaving it to you to prove and define it, / Expecting the main things from you.
I thank Anne for typing this manuscript, since I still write everything in longhand. Im indebted to Patty Adams, my production editor, who is beyond helpful and conscientious; to Lisa Fowler for yet another clean, elegant design as well as her photographs that reveal both my students and the pleasure Lisa takes in kids and classrooms; to editorial coordinator Anthony Marvullo for his work behind the scenes; and to Eric Chalek and Rachel Small for getting the word out with thoughtfulness and enthusiasm.
Finally, I am luckiest to be married to Toby McLeod, the most literate person I know. From him I learned how to read literature, love it, and share my passion for poems and books with my students. He teaches me always, and he makes sure our house is a place I can write and get the job done.