Lucy Calkins

Lucy Calkins, author of ten books including The Art of Teaching Reading, The Art of Teaching Writing, and Raising Lifelong Learners: A Parent's Guide is Professor of Curriculum and Teaching and the Founding Director of The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. The Project is a think-tank, developing state-of-the-art methods, and a provider of professional development for hundreds of schools. As the leader of this world-renowned organization, Lucy works closely with superintendents, district leaders and school principals to re-imagine what is possible when school leadership is closely aligned with professional development (Brenda et al. 120-125). She, meanwhile, also works closely with particular teachers and their vibrant, quirky classes full of children. This series of books grows especially out of Lucy's work with a handful of her staff, and with a small cadre of New York City's teachers who joined her in a year-long study group in primary writing (Kathryn et al. 218-223).

She is the author of the popular firsthand classroom materials Units of Study for Primary Writing and Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3 - 5, as well as the companion DVD Big Lessons from Small Writers (Brenda et al. 120-125). In addition, Lucy is the author of numerous foundational professional texts with Heinemann, including The Art of Teaching Writing and One to One. She is also the author of The Art of Teaching Reading. She is the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University's Teachers College. For more than twenty-five years, the Project has been both a think tank - developing state of the art teaching methods - and a provider of professional development. In these capacities, the Project has supported hundreds of thousands of educators. As the leader of this world renowned organization, Lucy works closely with policy-makers, superintendents, district leaders and school principals to instigate and sustain school-wide and system-wide educational reforms. But above all, Lucy works closely with teachers and with their classrooms full of wise and wonderful children (Kathryn et al. 218-223). Lucy is also the Richard Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, where she leads the Literacy Specialist program. Lucy and her husband John are the parents of two sons, Miles and Evan.

The visionary founding director of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Begun in 1981, the think tank and teacher training institute has since trained hundreds of thousands of educators across the country (Charles 98-120). Calkins is one of the original architects of the "workshop" approach to teaching writing to children, which holds that writing is a process, with distinct phases, and that all children, not just those with innate talent, can learn to write well (Kathryn et al. 218-223). She is author of some 20 books, including the best-selling The Art of Teaching Writing (250,000 sold). According to the project web site, books by its leaders are "widely regarded as foundational to language arts education throughout the English-speaking world." (Brenda et al. 120-125)

While her influence is geographically broad, Calkins is perhaps nowhere ...