Sheridan Blau, founding director of the South Coast Writing Project, enjoys a moment with his students.

Sheridan Blau, senior faculty member in English and education, is the founding director of UCSB’s South Coast Writing Project, which trains teachers in pedagogical approaches and research issues in order to teach composition. Former journalist Cissy Ross, a SCWriP Fellow in 2003 who is working for her doctorate in education, interviewed him on the ocassion of SCWriP’s recent celebration of its 25th anniversary.

Q: Has SCWriP changed over 25 years?

A: Initially, we thought it would only last about six years—long enough to train key teachers from every school district in our area in best practices in the teaching of writing. We didn’t realize that we were creating a community of teacher-leaders who would continue to learn together.

Q: Why did SCWriP survive when many other education programs come and go?

A: Because we are a professional community that functions as a learning community—the kind of community of scholars that the university has historically aspired to but in its modern, bureaucratized state rarely manages to become.

Q: Describe the SCWriP “learning community”.

A: Learning is nurtured, shared, and disseminated among colleagues for its own sake, and for the satisfaction of those who learn and thereby become more effective practitioners of their profession. The project provides a deeply satisfying intellectual and professional home for teachers, who tend to remain faithfully involved until they retire from teaching, and often after that. Right now we have several retired teachers running a winter Young Writers Camp in year-round schools in Oxnard.

Q: There are many laments about a lack of writing skills among students today. Do you think that is true?

A: Not any more than it’s ever been true. Students are probably writing more than ever before, given the widespread use of e-mail. But there are greater inequities in our culture between the educational haves and have-nots, and in terms of literacy and resources (like computers). In California and across the nation immigration brings into schools vast numbers of children who don’t speak English and whose families have few resources to support the development of literacy.

Q: What is SCWriP’s approach to best practices for teaching composition?

A: We don’t endorse any single practice or theory. We place our trust in expert, experienced teachers and in their deep commitment to helping their students. The most dangerous enemy of education I have seen in my lifetime are politicians who declare themselves the reformers of education and then ludicrously and arrogantly—based on half-baked understanding of some politically tainted research—try to tell teachers how to teach.

Q: The SAT is adding a brief essay requirement this spring, presumably to motivate more instruction. Do you think adding tests spurs better instruction in writing skills?

A: We surely don’t need more tests in public schools. Testing is replacing teaching and it is undoubtedly hurting learning and perverting the teaching process in many schools. But the SAT writing test isn’t given during the school day and is entirely voluntary, and has real use for the college admission process. It also helps to make clear to the public how important writing is to academic success in college. So, educationally, I think it’s a welcome addition.