ABSTRACT
The author's journey beyond her own classroom and beloved students into a larger world of learning and teaching challenges began in the early 1980s. However, her desire to question and experiment with learning started long before that point. The author realized there was not an adequate program for the lowest ability level students in English or history. These students never seemed to have enough time to complete what they were working on, and many did not have time outside school to do so. When educators take risks, they are asking for more work and more trouble than if they had taken a safer path. Since the early 1980s, the concepts of writing across the curriculum, writing centers, and using computers as tools to teach writing have been woven in and out of her experiences to stitch together a tapestry of professional risk-taking.
