Nourishing Words: Bridging Private Reading and Public Teaching

By exploring the very human and moving autobiographies of teachers, and the promising insights of feminist and critical reading theory, Atwell-Vasey asks how we can oppose the alienation and distancing that so often characterize curriculum in schools. She links the hopes and concerns of teachers with curriculum forms that reverberate with the drive, love and conflict, characteristic of the rich experiences of life. These curriculum forms include theater work, intense negotiation and trust among readers, and projects that ask students to use texts to pursue and reconceptualize unresolved issues and social obligations in the real world.