ABSTRACT
Back when I started to teach writing, my first students were mostly middle and upper middle class White kids. What I was learning at the time about the teaching of writing, the theories behind various approaches, and the supporting philosophies, I was applying to a fairly privileged group of students and was gratified by the results. When I moved from teaching that group and began to teach at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and became familiar with the work of Mina Shaughnessy, Marie Ponsot, Rosemary Dean, and others, I discovered that what I had learned about teaching writing continued to apply in classrooms of so-called basic writers and somewhat advanced ESL students. I didn’t realize that immediately. I thought I needed to teach basic writers and ESL students lots of grammar and how to write sentences so someday they could write paragraphs, and then compositions, some day even discourses. I discovered how wrong I was. I often believe that the students of BMCC taught me more than I taught them.
