All That Matters What Is It We

All That Matters examines learning and evaluation and the need to bring the two together in more relevant ways. Rief and Barbieri invite us to consider how we might best develop our students' strengths, presenting a collection of truly useful―and often novel―approaches.

The voices recorded in All That Matters are those of risk takers: teachers who seek greater insight into, and respect for, children; enthusiasts who incorporate the unexpected into their teaching―art, music, gardening, foreign languages, and more. Above all, they are the voices of lifelong learners who share their passion with students and colleagues, parents and family. These teachers are willing to chance failure because they understand that learning is as essential to our survival as breathing; learning is what keeps us alive. From them, we learn ways to:

• examine the potential of portfolios to reflect different kinds of intelligence
• balance individual needs with those of the entire class
• discover ways to enhance professional development within school walls
• involve parents in meaningful, ongoing evaluation
• recognize and honor students' and teachers' passions in the classroom and beyond.

Woven in among their classroom stories are "Interludes," where teacher-writers reflect on what matters most in their lives. What makes a teacher write a poem honoring a town's courage in the face of bigotry? What makes another teacher reminisce about her mother's garden or a community's loyalty or a father's faith?

Rief and Barbieri believe that teachers like these, who know what they really cherish, can help us all better define what we value for our students. More important, they help us achieve it.

Linda Rief left the classroom in June of 2019 after 40 years of teaching Language Arts with eighth graders. She misses their energy and their apathy, their curiosity and their complacency, their confidence and their insecurities. But mostly, she misses their passionate, powerful voices as writers and readers. 

She is an instructor in the University of New Hampshire's Summer Literacy Institute and a national and international presenter on issues of adolescent literacy.

She is the author of Whispering in the Wind: A Guide to Deeper Reading and Writing Through Poetry (2022), The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing (2018), Read Write Teach: Choice and Challenge in the Reading-Writing Workshop (2014), The Writer’s-Reader’s Notebook (2007), Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007), 100 Quickwrites (Scholastic, 2003), Vision and Voice: Extending the Literacy Spectrum (1999), and Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents (1992); she is co-editor (Beers, Probst, and Rief) of Adolescent Literacy (2007). For five years she co-edited with Maureen Barbieri Voices from the Middle, a journal for middle school teachers published by the National Council of Teachers of English.

In 2021 she was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from NCTE and in 2020  received the Kent Williamson Exemplary Leader Award from the Conference on English Leadership, in recognition of outstanding leadership in the English Language Arts. A recipient of NCTE’s Edwin A. Hoey Award for Outstanding Middle School Educator in ELA, her classroom was featured in the series Making Meaning in Literature produced by Maryland Public Television for Annenberg/CPB. For three years she chaired the first Early Adolescence English/Language Arts Standards Committee of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In 1988 she was the recipient of one of two Kennedy Center Fellowships for Teachers of the Arts. She spent a month at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, writing prose and poetry based on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She read her writing in performance at the Kennedy Center, a program later broadcast on NPR.

Maureen Barbieri has taught middle school in New Hampshire, Ohio, and South Carolina. Since coming to New York, she has been a staff developer in District 2 and a divisional head at Marymount, an all girls' independent school. In addition to frequent consulting, she now teaches literacy courses in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education, where she co-directs the summer writing institute. Her book, Sounds from the Heart: Learning to Listen to Girls (Heinemann, 1995), received the James N. Britton Award for Inquiry with the English Language Arts from the National Council of Teachers of English as well as the International Educator's Award from the Delta Kappa Gamma Society.