Closing the Gap: English Educators Address the Tensions Between Teacher Preparation and Teaching Writing in Secondary Schools

Without contraries there is no progression. ---William Blake

This is a book about reality and hope. Its chapters reframe the concept of gap, acknowledging distances (for example, acknowledging old insights and theory while also honoring teacher discovery). However, it refuses to bow under the weight of these challenges. Its contributors focus, instead on how to overcome acknowledged inadequacies in learning how to teach writing as well as how to practice principled literacy instruction. These contributors see gaps not as unbridgeable chasms, but rather as opportunities to educate their students to use writing to understand the broader context of their education and pre-service candidates to adapt curriculum creatively.

Contributors include new and seasoned secondary school teachers, graduate students, and university faculty who together remind us of “old insights needing to be passed along” (Villanueva) and show us new practices that challenge the conventions of the status quo and promote social justice. To close the gaps, in short, they demonstrate how rhetoric and truth are intertwined. In a time when too many children continue to be left behind, this book should be required reading for all literacy teachers because it is in our continued willingness to learn from each other that hope resides.