Designed to facilitate teachers' efforts to meet the actual challenges and dilemmas they face in their classrooms, Becoming a Teacher Researcher in Literacy Teaching and Learning: * provides background information and key concepts in teacher research * covers the "how-to" strategies of the teacher research process from the initial proposal to writing up the report as publishable or presentable work * illustrates a range of literacy topics and grade levels * features twelve reports by teacher researchers who have gone through the process, and their candid remarks about how activities helped (or not) * helps teachers understand how knowledge is constructed socially in their classrooms so that they can create instructional communities that promote all students' learning. Addressing the importance of teacher research for better instruction, reform, and political action, this text emphasizes strategies teachers can use to support and strengthen their voices as they dialogue with others in the educational community, so that their ideas and perspectives may have an impact on educational practice both locally in their schools and districts and more broadly.

Designed to facilitate teachers' efforts to meet the actual challenges and dilemmas they face in their classrooms, Becoming a Teacher Researcher in Literacy Teaching and Learning: * provides background information and key concepts in teacher research * covers the "how-to" strategies of the teacher research process from the initial proposal to writing up the report as publishable or presentable work * illustrates a range of literacy topics and grade levels * features twelve reports by teacher researchers who have gone through the process, and their candid remarks about how activities helped (or not) * helps teachers understand how knowledge is constructed socially in their classrooms so that they can create instructional communities that promote all students' learning. Addressing the importance of teacher research for better instruction, reform, and political action, this text emphasizes strategies teachers can use to support and strengthen their voices as they dialogue with others in the educational community, so that their ideas and perspectives may have an impact on educational practice both locally in their schools and districts and more broadly.

Despite the rustic charm of their settings, the bitingly humorous short stories of Dorothy Thomas (1898-1990) challenge stereotypes of good-hearted country people-a harried woman tries to rid herself of her impertinent son as he refuses to cooperate with her plans to leave him and his father for another man; an old woman given a late second chance to marry the man she loves loses out once more because of her literal mindedness; a child's fib grows into a detailed fiction leading one family to embarrassment and another to stretch beyond their means; and two little girls with childish ingenuity foil their step-mother's opportunity for a romantic fling when their father is away.

In these twelve stories Thomas is most concerned with the flaws in familial relationships, but her analysis never turns bitter. Thomas used what she called "telling detail" to animate her characters as they repeatedly trump their family's needs with their own desires, and children are often the most prescient of all about the self-destructive plans of the adults around them.

Dorothy Thomas dropped out of high school and taught school in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to help support her family. While living in western Nebraska, she began to write short stories inspired by the insights afforded by her position as a live-in teacher in the homes of her students. She began to publish her stories in magazines such as the "New Yorker" and "Atlantic Monthly" and eventually gave up teaching to write full time. She also published two books--"Ma Jeeter's Girls" and "The Home Place," both available in Bison Books edition--and became part of the writing community centered around the literary magazine "Prairie Schooner."