Marlys Mayfield

Marlys Mayfield has recently received the 2016 McGuffey Longevity Award in Humanities from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association for her textbook, Thinking for Yourself, now in its 9th edition. The award is named in honor of the McGuffey readers which, for over 100 years, were used in U.S. schools.

Marlys has published two books of poetry and was the author (with artist Dorr Bothwell) of a design textbook, (Notan The Dark-Light Principle of Design) first published (and still in print) since 1968.

She also began teaching English and humanities in Peralta Colleges at this time and by the 1980's her attention turned to the question as to whether thinking could be taught directly as a skill, and, moreover, improved through the mirror of writing. Thinking for Yourself was the product of that inquiry, first published by Wadsworth in 1987. For the last 29 years it has offered instructors and students a unique pedagogy based on a gradient of exercises designed to heighten awareness of the thinking/perceiving process together with a method for fully integrating critical thinking skills and standards with the skills of composition and reading.