The Road to Participation: The construction of a literacy practice in a learning community of linguistically diverse learners. Kong, A., & Pearson, P. D. (2003)

From Ailing Kong
David and I published this article in Research in the Teaching of English in 2003. It was about how Ellen, a classroom teacher, engaged her students from diverse backgrounds in learning to read, to think, to write about and discuss about what they read. This piece was granted the Alan C. Purves Award from NCTE. The following is a quote from the talk we gave at the 2004 NCTE Annual Conference upon receiving the award, which describes some of the support and guidance I received from David in the actual drafting process that led to the publication of the paper:
“…we sat down together and went through the manuscript line by line. David would stop to explain why he thought certain changes were needed, from elaborating on ideas to using graphics, to correcting grammatical errors and changing word choices. This gave me the opportunity to witness how he, a veteran researcher and writer, worked on revising and editing a paper. We later discussed the revisions, mainly through email and sometimes by phone. We would send each other our revised drafts with all changes tracked. I remember looking forward to receiving his revised versions, and each time I would carefully read the changes he made and compare to see how his changes made the ideas more concise and better tied together, and how the language came to flow. Through the exchange of the revision drafts, I learned immensely from David. I also felt validated and encouraged because he always affirmed my thoughts while helping to improve them.” (Kong & Pearson, 2005, p.228)
Thank you, David! You have inspired me to always do my best for my students as well!