Writing From the Margins

Kristine E. Pytash is an Associate Professor in Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies at Kent State University’s College of Education, Health, and Human Services where she co-directs the secondary Integrated Language Arts teacher preparation program. A former high school English teacher, her research focuses on the literacy practices of youth in alternative schools and juvenile detention facilities, disciplinary writing, and preparing preservice teachers to teach writing.

With her important new text on writing instruction that best serves adolescents, Kristy Pytash pays attention to young people and their perspectives on and experiences with writing, gathering lessons so that we—and our young charges—might all be better served. Kristy recognizes that, as a scholar, she has a duty to live the pedagogies and ideals she is espousing—she’s one of that new generation of pedagogues, academic activists, and researchers who knows that our inquiries and examination must be lived and the result of collaborations with the full range of constituents of our schools. Perhaps most importantly, Kristy bases her merged teacher education and youth intervention efforts in contexts where the most disenfranchised adolescents make their schooling homes, believing that youths whose voices are least often heard might be the ones to whom researchers, future teachers, and we all should listen most. Kristy’s book offers compelling features to which those of us interested in making writing more than a school-based task simply must pay attention.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: The Myth of the Struggling WritingChapter 2: Reading like a WriterChapter 3: Shying Away from Sad: Identity and WritingChapter 4: “Sometimes Gun Violence is ‘Good’”Chapter 5: The Art of Composing and Re-conceptualizing WritingChapter 6: Risky EndeavorsReferencesAbout the Author