Nourishing Words
Bridging Private Reading and Public Teaching
Alternative formats available from:
Exploring the very human and moving autobiographies of teachers, and the promising insights of feminist and critical reading theory, this book asks how we can oppose the alienation and distancing that so often characterize curriculum in schools.
Description
By exploring the very human and moving autobiographies of teachers, and the promising insights of feminist and critical reading theory, Atwell-Vasey asks how we can oppose the alienation and distancing that so often characterize curriculum in schools. She links the hopes and concerns of teachers with curriculum forms that reverberate with the drive, love and conflict, characteristic of the rich experiences of life. These curriculum forms include theater work, intense negotiation and trust among readers, and projects that ask students to use texts to pursue and reconceptualize unresolved issues and social obligations in the real world.
Wendy Atwell-Vasey is Assistant Professor of Education at Mary Washington College.
Reviews
"The theme and title of Nourishing Words cut across life and the various areas of the curriculum. Although the focus is on language arts, much of the book has relevance for schooling, parenting, and community building.
"The book is generative, inviting thinking, creating, conversing, and transforming. The author writes in a manner that exemplifies the theory she is espousing. The reader gets the feeling that the author knows her subject and 'practices what she preaches. ' The author has developed a compelling and fresh theory. " — Louise M. Berman, coauthor of Toward Curriculum for Being: Voices of Educators
"Its well-theorized issues are carefully laid out and thoughtfully argued, and selections from teachers' narratives add richness and texture. Atwell-Vasey dives deeply to bring forth a gem. " — Diane Brunner, author of Inquiry and Reflection: Framing Narrative Practice in Education