ABSTRACT
When I walked, into the meeting room at the Hyatt in Phoenix where the basic writing workshop was to be held, I saw a room filled with round tables and chairs far participants and a microphone and lecture stand for the speakers. Because it seemed to me inappropriate to “lecture from above” on the topic of social class, I suggested that John, Elizabeth, and I just sit at one of the tables near the middle of the room so that our voices could be heard and so that we would be a part of the workshop. This worked well. And the presence of several workshop participants at our table as we talked gave me the feeling that a conversation was taking place. I began by pointing out that I would talk for a very few minutes about social class generally and about our feeling that teachers must attend to their own social class before bringing class into their classrooms, that John would talk, again briefly, about the power of storytelling in discussions of class, and that Elizabeth would then act as our teacher and give us all a writing assignment, the responses to which would be discussed later as the core of this portion of the workshop. Here is what I said:
