ABSTRACT
I (Brandi Mathers, first author) started my teaching career in an elementary classroom. It was there I realized that not all students liked to write and that, although some students considered themselves successful
5 writers, many others saw themselves as failures. When I began teaching at the college level, I realized that things did not change as students grew older. I guess I should not have been too surprised by this, and yet it still dismayed me. Perhaps it was because I taught for
10 the College of Education, surrounded by students aspiring to become educators, that I assumed all my students would be confident writers. After all, it would not be long before they would be in classrooms, responsible for instructing young students of their own in the
15 intricacies of composition. Slitkin (1997) summed up my concern, contending,
"The idea of a 'nonwriter' teaching students to write well is as implausible as being taught to drive by someone who has never been behind the wheel" (p.
