This is a book about reality and hope. Its chapters reframe the concept of gap, acknowledging distances (for
example, acknowledging old insights and theory while also honoring teacher discovery). However, it refuses to
bow under the weight of these challenges. Its contributors focus, instead on how to overcome acknowledged
inadequacies in learning how to teach writing as well as how to practice principled literacy instruction. These
contributors see gaps not as unbridgeable chasms, but rather as opportunities to educate their students to use
writing to understand the broader context of their education and pre-service candidates to adapt curriculum
creatively.
Contributors include new and seasoned secondary school teachers, graduate students, and university faculty
who together remind us of "old insights needing to be passed along" (Villanueva) and show us new practices that challenge the conventions of the
status quo and promote social justice. To close the gaps, in short, they demonstrate how rhetoric and truth are intertwined. In a time when too many
children continue to be left behind, this book should be required reading for all literacy teachers because it is in our continued willingness to learn from
each other that hope resides.