high-school

The call for papers for this release of The Writing Instructor asked teachers, scholars, and students working in middle and secondary education to explore theories and methods of teaching media literacy and popular culture to adolescents. The essays, editorials, hypertexts, and on-line conversations we have included address issues of current interest and debate in the field of media literacy education, particularly in connection to composition studies and writing pedagogy. So what is media literacy?

Introduction

H. I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity offers an instructive observation, even though his purpose is to describe the relationship among the three strata of teachers within the Roman educational system of two thousand years ago. There were clear demarcations among the grammaticus (the lower or primary teacher), the grammarian (the middle level teacher), and the rhetor (the upper level teacher).

“The best approach to frogs is on their own level. Leave the meadow its milkweed and August asters, and instead belly up to the pond’s bank in an inner tube. . . .” (Swain 250).

Introduction

In the 1970s, as I completed my undergraduate degree in English education at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, I worked at Copley Square High School as a student teacher. One of my practice teaching classes, under the guidance of senior teacher Steve Gordon, was the college preparatory writing course for seniors. I had already worked in the Northeastern University Writing Center as an undergraduate tutor, and had colleagues teaching first-year composition there.

At the 2001 CCCC, a special interest group met for the first time. Jonathan Bush and Janet Alsup were the co-founders of this SIG, and members were primarily English educators who had completed graduate studies in rhetoric and composition; why else would they be attending the C’s? Five years later, the group—currently known as Composition/English Education Connections—has plans to meet at both CCCC and NCTE, and it is still evolving; however, “professional profile” patterns of participants have begun to emerge.

Introduction

Recently, there has been increased interest in the teaching and mentoring of new composition teachers who will work both at the secondary and university levels, as evidenced by recent publications including Thompson’s Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and Collaborations (NCTE, 2002) and Tremmel and Broz’s Teaching Writing Teachers of High School English and First-Year Composition (Boynton/Cook, 2002).