Recognizing the achievements of outstanding teachers is important, and I want to take this space to tell you about an exciting new teaching resource and to recognize its co-author, Dr. Dawn Latta Kirby.Dawn, in addition to being a GCTE Executive Board Member, is the Director of the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and Professor of English Education at Kennesaw State University.  Dawn and Dan Kirby (former UGA English Education Professor) are co-authors of a new book from Heinemann that I think English/Language Arts teachers from elementary through the college level are going to find extremely useful. New Directions in Teaching Memoir: A Studio Workshop Approach, is that rare work that gracefully bridges the gap between scholarly research and easy-to-apply practicality.  It presents current research into the best practices of composition instruction in a style that makes it accessible to teachers from the elementary level through graduate school.

Specifically, the book begins with a brief discussion of memoir as a genre that includes an overview of the different types memoir including contemporary memoir.  From this overview, you move to a thorough description of studio-styled teaching that is valuable for the teaching of any genre of writing.  What follows is an extremely practical discussion of memoir writing that contains multiple teaching strategies that you’ll be able to implement easily in your writing classrooms.  The text concludes with a realistic and thought-provoking discussion of the evaluation of students’ memoirs.  Also extremely valuable is the book’s list of bibliographies of different types of memoirs.  In short, this is a book that you’ll want for your professional library.  The fact that it was co-written by a GCTE member just makes it that much better.