ABSTRACT
Metal desk chair legs scrape across the floor, orphaned loose-leaf papers flutter to the ground, and the incessant unzipping sound of opening backpacks across the room accompany my ninth-grade students’ excited chatter. Their eagerness to get into their assigned small groups would please me, their freshmen English teacher, if I actually believed that their class experiences would lead to a whole 45-minute class period designed to allow them to talk to each other without my having to ask them to be quiet and pay attention. It is February, it is a survey English I course at a large public high school on the South Side of Chicago, and on this particular day, it is the classroom activity that every English teacher I know finds most difficult to teach successfully: the peer writing conference.
