Many years and a long time ago, I was struggling to find ways to enable my students to take charge of their own learning. I had begun to think about this under the influence of a Zen Buddhist at the University of Hawaii but had not found any comparable support back in New York. Then in the late 1980's, a teacher-consultant from the New York City Writing Project was assigned to my school and my professional life (and personal) as well changed.

In conjunction with this wonderful, supportive person, I began to explore classroom structures that meshed with my own thinking, began to use instructional pedagogy that helped to reshape my classroom and assisted in the further evolution of my thinking. I was respected as a professional and the voices of my students began to take on an additional voice.

Before long, I became one of these teacher-consultants of the New York City Writing Project and over the course of the next decade worked in about a dozen of schools sharing what I had learned with teachers who were interested in exploring their practice. One of the basic tenets of the Writing Projects is that teachers are professional and that mandating participation in any kind of staff development program is contrary to professionalism. For most New York City teachers this was revolutionary news and many came out of their classroom closets as word of this kind of staff development spread in the halls, the lunchroom, she subway and the carpools. I have worked with many teachers over the years, and while I cannot honestly say that everyone was transformed, most probably were and remained involved with the Project and brought the ideas of the Project to t he various places they worked. And of course the true measurement of the success of any program is its impact on students. As with my own students, I witnessed the writing - both formal and informal - of these students emerge as they found their voices. Teachers rarely receive long term feedback from their students. Often they are the mercy of formulaic observation reports of their supervisors. But I am certain that teachers who have participated in the work of the Writing Project and those students who have been served by these participants have been touched. I recently had dinner with a former student of mine who was present in the first class I taught as participant in the Writing Project. Over twenty years later he can still recall activities that were done in the classroom and that, as he reflects now, helped him to take part in his learning.