sional development, part artist collaboration, andpart not-for-profit publisher.

SPI has supported a wide variety of publishingprojects over the last four years, some of which I willhighlight in this article. To date, we have publishedover thirty books representing the work of over onethousand student authors. Each project is a uniquecollaboration and, as such, the form, content, andprocesses of the books resist categorization. Never-theless, as I describe some of the innovative projectsour partnering teachers are designing, some com-mon threads and organizing principles that guidethe work will become apparent.

Rethinking Genre Studies

Conventional school publications are largely self-selecting. While the newspaper and literary magazineostensibly offer publishing opportunities to all, it istoo often the already-acknowledged academic elitewho see their work in print. This was my experienceboth as a student (and reticent writer) and later as amiddle and high school teacher. Curriculum-basedclassroom publications always appealed to me as anexciting opportunity to engage all students in writ-ing processes. Early on, we published anthologies inwhich each student selected his or her best piecefrom writing workshop. But the culminatingbooks––a collection of multiple genres without aunifying theme––predictably lacked cohesion and aclear sense of readership. The first revision to mypublishing curriculum was to work within a singlegenre for an extended period of time. Gradually, I

hen teachers talk about “studentpublication,” it seems to mean oneof three things: the school newspa-per; the literary magazine; or the

less-common classroom publication, which is oftenthe culmination of a creative writing unit or work-shop. It is this last category––classroom publica-tion––that has pervaded my thoughts, teachingpractice, and academic life for over fifteen years. Mypersonal journey from small-press publisher, toclassroom teacher, to teacher of teachers led to mycurrent work as the founding director of the Stu-dent Press Initiative (SPI). At SPI we believe thatcurriculum-based publications that grow fromhighly specified genre studies in the classroom notonly democratize students’ opportunities to publishbut also, more importantly, raise the bar for what,how, and why students write.

In collaboration with Ruth Vinz, professor ofEnglish education and director of the Morse Centerfor the Professional Education of Teachers at Teach-ers College, SPI promotes publication in variousforms: through onsite partnerships with New YorkCity public school teachers, in a special teaching-for-publication methods course and institutes atTeachers College, and with the distribution of agrowing inventory of exemplary student publica-tions to be used as classroom models around thecountry. In fall 2005, we published our first in aseries of curriculum guides called SPI Project Notes,a narrative curriculum series written by masterteachers using publication in new and excitingways. We think of the SPI program as part profes-

Erick Gordon, founding director of the Student Press Initiative, illustrates collaborations withteachers and students that have motivated students to invest themselves in the process andproduct of writing, including research, oral history, revision, and an immersion in and commitmentto community.

Erick Gordon

Raising the Bar for ClassroomPublication: Building a StudentPress Initiative

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replaced broad and unwieldy genre studies such as“poetry” or “nonfiction” with increasingly focusedand specific subgenres that were creative and off-beat. This move allowed me to more adequatelysupport and scaffold success. What I found, quiteby surprise, was the tremendous motivating force ofconnecting students with readers through focusedsubgenre studies. The kind of investment thatcomes from taking writing public for specific audi-ences transformed my writing curriculum and theculture of my classroom.

I remember Alex, one of those eighth graderswhose body language and posture immediatelyasserted his skepticism, as if to say to any adult hecame in contact with, “This better be good.” In thefirst week of school, Alex boldly proclaimed, withonly a hint of humor, “I don’t revise.” True to hisword, he resisted classroom writing with pugnacity.

Alex was not likely to be motivated by the ideaof a published collection of nonfiction essays. Butwhen I introduced a niche of the nonfiction market,one he was familiar with from many New York mag-azines, he was intrigued. We began investigating“best-of” reviews—a popular subgenre for our localmagazines’ competitive consumer culture. This six-week publication unit culminated in a professionallydesigned, perfect-bound edition of Coring the Apple:The Best of New York, a publication intended as anexpanded version of a Zagat guide written and pro-duced by thirteen-year-olds. We immersed ourselvesin the genre, devouring reviews of all kinds—music,food, literature, art, shopping, sporting venues—inall available sources—the New York Press, Time Out,New York, the Village Voice, and more. Students wrote

and read in the genre, workingto understand and articulatethe elements of a successfulbest-of review.

The first hint of Alex’sinterest emerged as we dis-cussed persuasion. He becamevisibly excited that a readermight actually act on the

advice offered in his review, for he clearly had somestrong opinions on his chosen topic: video games.Adding the seemingly offbeat best-of genre to mywriting curriculum allowed students to identifytheir nascent and too often unexplored expertiseand lent purpose to their writing. A few days into

the publication project, Alex proposed forming a“distribution committee,” a student-led committeethat would work to place our books in local book-stores. He even offered to look into obtaining alicense to sell books to tourists in Times Square.Later in the unit, during a minilesson on titlingthat focused on alliteration in newspaper headlines,Alex suggested that sometimes the “less subtleapproach” was effective, citing his favorite titlesfrom Game Zone magazine.

With the deadlineapproaching, Alex cameto me almost every day forthree weeks with a differ-ent draft of his review.“Can you look at my newending? Do you like thewordplay in the last sen-tence?” His piece, “BestPlace to Get Gamed,” wasabout a small video-gametournament, a subject heknew well––too well in fact, according to hisfather, who had to fight with Alex to put aside thejoystick and finish his homework. An avid gamer,Alex had never been permitted to bring this inter-est to school before, never had the opportunity todraw from his expertise to reveal his intimateinsider’s knowledge of the world of video games.Moreover, it didn’t take Alex long to realize thatwriting a review for a published book meant thatnot only would his classmates read it but so woulda potentially vast audience. This knowledge gavehim the unprecedented opportunity to persuadeand convert a new band of gamers. Alex was begin-ning to glean the possibilities for real-world appli-cations of the printed word, and this is why I saythat writing for real audiences raises the bar for stu-dent publications. When a local bookstore dis-played copies of our book, Alex checked in day afterday to see how copies were selling, reporting backto the class after each visit.

As the students worked to define the shapeand form of our particular brand of best-of review,we began to sculpt a new genre that blended overtelements of memoir with more conventionalreview. These reviews are a blend of careful researchand creative flair. Take, for example, “The BestPlace to Be Attacked by Toads and Tied-up Crabs,”

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The kind of investmentthat comes from taking

writing public for specificaudiences transformed mywriting curriculum and the

culture of my classroom.

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in which Katerine Chan weaves personal adventureswith a detailed appraisal of the Hai Thanh SeafoodMarket in her Chinatown neighborhood. OrAlexandra Ilyashov’s unique and hilarious Frenchfry review, “The Best Place to Snack on GourmetFries and Convince People That Ben Affleck Is YourGrandma.” Developing this niche genre trans-formed what might have been flat description ofthe corner pizza parlor into rich, personalized anec-dotes infused with a lively sense of voice.

Ultimately, the Coring the Apple curriculum isan invitation for students to dig into their communi-ties, explore, research, inform, persuade, and enter-tain others. For some, this meant going public with asubject already important to them; for others, itmeant an opportunity to investigate something com-pletely new. Each subsequent year that I publishedCoring the Apple, it was more recognized in theschool’s community, eventually becoming a rite ofpassage from eighth grade to high school. My goalwas not simply to make each new edition more aes-thetically pleasing than the last; it was a matter ofraising the stakes by valuing the smallest of details.What I have learned is that making this investmentin the product of publication inspires students’ invest-ment in the entire process of carefully crafting writing.

Aligning Publication with the Curriculum

SPI enters into collaboration knowing that everyteacher with whom we work has highly individual-ized talents and needs; what we bring to the part-nership is an expertise in aligning classroompublication projects with a teacher’s strengths andstudents’ abilities and interests. Mary Whittemore,for example, is passionate about issues of social jus-tice. When she began teaching a twelfth-grade classcalled Literature of Social Justice at the BeaconSchool in New York City, together we puzzled overhow to get students directly involved in local issues.Specifically, we wanted to encourage students to beactive participants in their communities ratherthan passive observers within their high school.Further, we wanted students to choose and definetheir issues of concern.

Beacon is a school with a history of alternativeassessment practices. For several years, it was one ofonly a small number of New York City schoolsgranted waivers from the State Regents Exam.

Instead, the school relied on a rigorous system ofportfolio assessment, including a yearly review andsenior defense. In the spirit of the school’s history,Mary and I agreed that a class publication shouldrequire students to not only research and report butalso invest themselves in an important issue in theirlives. What followed was a semester-long curricu-lum investigating community leaders and thoseworking to create a positive impact on our societyin both historical and con-temporary contexts. Studentsstudied social activism in fic-tion and nonfiction and honedtheir interests while beingasked to take stances them-selves. For fifteen weeks, stu-dents learned to conductinterviews, worked methodi-cally on transcription, and struggled through draftafter draft of what many of them cited as the mostimportant—and difficult—writing of their lives.They studied with an SPI teaching artist to developphotography skills and learn about different typesof portraiture. Ultimately, each student profiled,interviewed, and photographed a communityactivist of his or her choosing—over sixty total—ranging from a graffiti artist who tags politicalmessages, to filmmaker Spike Lee (who even helpeddirect the student author in composing his portrait),to a priest providing meals for many New Yorkerswithout homes. In the resultant About Face: Por-traits of Activism, students not only rendered anactivist in image and text but also successfully pub-licized a social issue they deemed important. In sodoing, they were engaged in the cause as well.

A Genre and Its Target Market

In this project-based work, genre and audience areinextricably bound. With this in mind, we work tobring audience to the forefront in ways that willpush writing forward, to motivate, direct, and givepurpose to students’ composing processes. Weexplore the often-abstract notion of audience-at-large by identifying real readers and formulatingquestions about them and their potential expecta-tions of the genre. The more precise and detailedthe teachers are able to be about the genre—locat-ing or creating models themselves—the better able

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Students studied socialactivism in fiction andnonfiction and honedtheir interests while beingasked to take stancesthemselves.

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they are to identify the skills necessary to succeedwithin the genre, to plan their curriculum accord-ingly, and to investigate (alongside their students)the genre’s potential audience.

Finding the right genre to begin a publicationproject is a delicate and artistic process. In the exam-

ple of About Face, the genrechosen to organize the writtencomponents is profile. Profile isa particularly challenginggenre: representing a liferequires grace and sensitivity.A profile writer must be ableto research, develop rapportwith a subject, conduct andintegrate interviews into thewriting and, above all, craft anengaging narrative in a limitedamount of space. It is also a

vast genre—to the editors at the New Yorker, profilemeans something different than it does at People. Inbuilding curriculum, Mary Whittemore worked tolocate and examine models within the genre thatbest spoke to her particular publication’s goals.

Once the genre is established and models aregathered, the class begins investigating both thegenre’s conventions and its potential audience. Thisprocess of identifying a “target market,” so to speak,encourages the teacher to choose a lively genre that inturn motivates student writers to work to articulatethe who and why of a piece—the driving purpose ofwhat their final writing is meant to accomplish.

Setting Up for Success

My favorite classroom stories all lead back to publi-cation and the sense of purposeful engagement thatwriting for an audience engenders. I believe thatconnecting writers to readers is an essential part offostering literacy. Nowhere was this dynamic moresalient for me than in SPI’s first collaboration withHorizon Academy, the Department of Correction/Department of Education high school at RikersIsland. All of the participants in this classroom proj-ect were inmates awaiting trial, transfer to a long-term prison, or release from jail. Each hadpreviously dropped out of school and was attendingthe jail’s high school to complete credits towardeither diplomas or equivalency exams. Students’

skills ranged from a third-grade reading level to anavid journal-keeper who always had a novel tuckedinto the back pocket of his institutional greens.Teacher Dave Iasevoli valued the rich storytellingskills that his students revealed. Oral expression wasa powerful and unavoidable part of the curriculumin his classroom. But he revealed to me that manystudents lacked the ability to represent themselveson paper with the same flair and confidence as theydemonstrated in class. For certain students, compos-ing one paragraph presented a major challenge.

In planning a publication project with Dave,oral history presented itself as an appealing genre.First, it recognized and built on the rich spokennarratives revealed in class daily. Second, it pre-sented a rich array of accessible and cogent models,ranging from the dramatizations of Anna DeavereSmith to the oral histories gathered by StudsTerkel. The curriculum that evolved was a uniqueand fascinating experience. By first recording andtranscribing students’ stories, then using their tran-scripts as primary texts, we were able to engagelearners in the process of writing, structuring, andrevising lengthy personal narratives. Oral history,in this case, was a point of departure rather than anend. It was the first step in a process of drafting,revising, editing and, ultimately, publishing.

Killing the Sky:Oral Histories from Hori-zon Academy, RikersIsland does more thanmerely put the storiesof inmates into print.When you read Red’sor Craig’s or BurnellM.’s story, you get asense of these students’energy and compulsionto express themselves.But you also get a sense of the anger and violence thatarise out of the conditions they have survived inschool and on the streets. These are tales written witha keen awareness of mortality; the title Killing the Skyrefers to a practice of firing guns into the sky in honorof deceased friends. There is wisdom and insight inthese stories. The project successfully built on thestudents’ existing literacies while structuring lessonsaimed at improving some basic skills. Working withtranscripts that, by students’ admission, lacked coher-

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Raising the Bar for Classroom Publication: Building a Student Press Initiative

By first recording andtranscribing students’

stories, then using theirtranscripts as primarytexts, we were able toengage learners in the

process of writing,structuring, and revising

lengthy personalnarratives.

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ence, they were motivated to revise and they usedboth classroom time and cell time to meet deadlines.Students with long histories of academic failuregained a measure of comfort with the written word.

At Millennium Art Academy, a different type oforal history project paired senior citizens living in theBronx with a neighboring public high school. Overthe course of this yearlong project, eleventh-grade stu-dents interviewed a group of eight elders and culledtheir reflections for a collection of life histories with aunifying theme of work. The culminating publicationis titled Speak to Us of Work (see photo). This uniqueintergenerational collaboration involved extensivework with transcription, revision, and editing. Duringthe reading celebration at a Barnes and Noble, a par-ent remarked that she couldn’t believe that her sonbegan the school year a failing student and ended it asa published author. His academic career, once riddledwith school suspensions and truancy, is now best char-acterized by his editorial prowess.

Continuing the Work

SPI books are working their way across the disci-plines, covering a vast array of subject matter fromoral histories that explore thematic connectionsbetween literary texts and contemporary society(Linking Literature), to Beacon Science, a science jour-nal in which students publish a review of literaturefrom their twelve-week experiments with topicsranging from Pavlovian conditioning to the use ofnicotine as a herbicide. We recently published abook for incoming ninth graders, written by twelfthgraders, filled with advice on how to survive highschool (Temporary Identity) and another book writtenfor new teachers by eighth graders, discussing whatthey value most in education (Filling in the Blanks).

The SPI program is built on the premise thatpublishing the work of student writers is notmerely a final step of the writing process; in the SPImodel, publication is a driving force throughoutthe curriculum. SPI teacher-collaborators share ourbelief that publication can have a lasting effect onmotivation and morale, on the construction ofknowledge and, ultimately, on students’ actions inand on the world. I feel fortunate to work in class-rooms where publication is alive. As more andmore teachers use our books as classroom texts,allowing students to study the work of their peersas primary sources in the classroom, it cannot helpbut infuse the school with the sense that students’voices matter.

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Photograph by Ryan Brenizer. Courtesy of the Student PressInitiative.

Erick Gordon’s background as a small-press publisher led him to classroom teaching, first in Northern California and then NewYork City. In 2002, he joined the faculty of the English education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, where hecurrently heads up SPI. For over fifteen years, he has worked on student press literacy projects and has helped support thou-sands of young authors. email: epg10@columbia.edu.

READWRITETHINK CONNECTION

Gordon discusses the need to expand the definition of genre and find a place for nontraditional genres in theclassroom, including reviews. The ReadWriteThink lesson plan “So What Do You Think? Writing a Review”challenges students to explore a new genre and to develop critical-thinking skills. It combines analytical writingwith personal reflection, providing an opportunity for students to speak their minds—and to enjoy being heard.http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=876

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