Name: Jonathan Lovell
Grade(s) taught: University-level, but taught 9th and 12th at Yerba Buena HS when I first started my present position at San José State University Subject(s) taught: Methods of Teaching English, Writing and the Young Writer, Literature for Young Adults, Advanced Composition, Service Learning School/district: San Jose State University Your local writing project: San Jose Area Writing Project (SJAWP) Twitter: @jlovellsjawp Blog: jlovellsjawp.com Website: www.sjawp.org |
Awards & Recognition
- SJAWP Director & Teacher Consultant
- CATE Classroom Excellence Award, 2009
Pretty much everything I do as a teacher, writer, or English Educator has been an outgrowth of my work as Director of the San Jose Area Writing Project. I had the good fortune of first learning about the Writing Project in 1977, when it was still fairly young. I was an Assistant Professor of English and Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and Richard Sterling and Sondra Perl (NYC Writing Project Co-Directors) were colleagues who later became good friends. Over the years, as I’ve grown with the Writing Project, it has become the single most important influence in my professional life. And not infrequently in my personal life as well, as my wife Ellen can readily attest!
Ten years ago I decided our Invitational Leadership Institutes would be significantly more effective if they were co-directed by a “troika” of TCs representing elementary, secondary, and college levels. And so began 8 years of collaboration with my good friends Laura Brown and Nancy Kennett. What I’d not realized at the time was how meaningful our “co-directors afternoon writing group” would become. Four of the half-dozen essays I’ve published over the past few years (most of them in California English) grew directly out of our afternoon writing group sessions, and I still run pretty much everything I’m considering publishing past Laura and Nancy before I make any final decisions on its shape and form.
More recently, I’ve been collaborating with two of the high school Teacher Consultants from our project--Marty Brandt and Kate Flowers--on a book project that we modestly hope will upend the teaching of secondary English as we know it. Stay tuned.
More recently, I’ve been collaborating with two of the high school Teacher Consultants from our project--Marty Brandt and Kate Flowers--on a book project that we modestly hope will upend the teaching of secondary English as we know it. Stay tuned.
Somewhat surprisingly, it took me a long time to fully “embrace” (as they like to say here in the SF Bay Area) my role as Director. Part of my reluctance stemmed from the experience I’d had, prior to coming to SJSU, as one of the co-directors of the Northern Nevada Writing Project. The NNWP served for me as a model of the strength and resilience of a K-12 teacher-led project, and I wanted to do everything I could to replicate this model at SJSU. I believe I’ve done this to a meaningful degree here at SJSU. I like to think of the SJAWP today as substantially more receptive to input from K-college Teacher Consultants than it would be without the influence of my prior NNWP experience. More recently, however, as all writing project sites have faced uncertain funding and significant challenges to the definition of what it is they do, I’ve found invaluable the historical perspective I’ve been able to provide as a rather long-in-the-tooth Director.
--I believe all young children wish to write and believe they can write, but that this early confidence is stifled by their subsequent school years, in which they are “taught to write.” Too often we teach writing to both younger and older writers in exactly the opposite manner from the way we encourage speech. If speech were treated similarly to writing, we would put our hands over the mouths of beginning speakers when they said “mama” or “papa” and tell them, “Don’t speak again until you are able to say the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ properly.” Is it any surprise that we have produced a nation of adults convinced of their inadequacy, essentially terrified of writing anything to anyone?
--Contrariwise, as Tweedledum and Tweedledee were wont to say, I believe writing affords us not only one of our greatest sources of personal pleasure and satisfaction, but also one of our most important avenues for reflective insight and deepened understanding.
--Contrariwise, as Tweedledum and Tweedledee were wont to say, I believe writing affords us not only one of our greatest sources of personal pleasure and satisfaction, but also one of our most important avenues for reflective insight and deepened understanding.
My cheeky answer to this question is “The one that Marty and Kate and I are in the process of writing”; my Why? being “Because it will upend the teaching of English at the middle and high school levels as we know it.”
My more studied answer is Ken Macrorie’s Searching Writing, later re-named The I-Search Paper. This ground-breaking book opened the path to significant and meaningful academic writing for students, without sacrificing the important goals of student voice and choice. This product of Ken’s later years also provided its readers with a flexible and savvy organizational structure through which their voice and choice could be exercised. This is a book we have yet to “catch up with” as a profession.
My more studied answer is Ken Macrorie’s Searching Writing, later re-named The I-Search Paper. This ground-breaking book opened the path to significant and meaningful academic writing for students, without sacrificing the important goals of student voice and choice. This product of Ken’s later years also provided its readers with a flexible and savvy organizational structure through which their voice and choice could be exercised. This is a book we have yet to “catch up with” as a profession.