Donald Graves was one of the greatest voices of his generation, a plain spoken, thoughtful genius. He was an educator, a writer, an outspoken advocate for educational best practices. His death was a loss too great to put into words for people the world over, whether they were aware of it or not. A Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, Donald Graves, with the help of mentor Donald Murray and contemporaries like Lucy Calkins and Ralph Fletcher, revolutionized writing instruction in the U.S. with the widespread practice of practical workshop-based language arts instruction. In his decades at the forefront of writing instruction research, Donald offered numerous works that continue to shape the face of instruction today and for the foreseeable future.
A must read for all educators. It reaffirms all I know to be true about teaching and learning. I really miss Don's voice in our current education landscape.
I wish I had the chance to meet Donald Graves when he was alive. This text was a collection of short essays about topics in writing education. The essay I found the most interesting was the child as an evaluator of their work. In this text, Donald Graves references his other text the Energy to Teach published in 2001. I know this is a text I will read soon. Deep thinking text for my teacher friends but I would recommend to all.
This was m first Donald Graves book and I am looking forward to reading more of his work. He validated many of my teaching practices, in particular our commitment to writing EVERY DAY.... he says, when children write every day they think about the writing even when they are away from it and the writing stays in motion. Skip a day or two and it's like starting over. How true.
Alright, I had to read this short piece for a graduate course, but it speaks the truth. This isn't anything an education practitioner wouldn't want to read, but for me, it has influenced my own growing research and background on the politics of education. A very telling, truthful scholarly work.