"Something to Have at Heart: Another Look at Memorization." The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (Winter 2003).

"'Enormous Lights and Mysteries': Rethinking Texts for Basic/First Year Composition." Conference on College Composition and Communication, Minneapolis (April 2000). As writing teachers, we are ambassadors, inviting students to explore a written world beyond their familiar borders. But too often we show them only the sad neighborhoods. Our students read about environmental degradation, economic and social injustice, erosion of privacy, and hate crimes. These deeply important issues must be addressed in our classrooms. However, a different kind of reading deserves at least equal time. My paper called for a shift in emphasis in basic/first year readings--for more pieces of writing, multicultural and crosscurricular, that invite students to consider the "enormous lights and mysteries" of life--for example the bizarre beauty of the natural world; the discipline and thrill of the arts; the lives of athletes, activists, builders, explorers, thinkers--readings that quicken students' pulses and bring them energy and wonder.

April, 1995, Tempe. National College Reading and Learning Association conference. "The Village, the Ranch, and the Mainstream Career Menu." Without glossing over the difficulties of such a choice, we can help students understand that they can choose lives not on the mainstream American menu, that they can, indeed, help change that menu and design lives that will strengthen rather than unravel their close familial ties, community purpose, and common cultural heritage. Before the days of multiculturalism, our schools offered students only mainstream literature. My roundtable paper invited discussion of ways educators can avoid a worse error: that of offering our students only mainstream lives.

April, 1995, Tempe. College Reading and Learning Association conference. Since Sputnik, a reaction against the excesses of rote learning (and, later, against a learning-by-heart canon that was parochial and often sentimental) has left our students at least in one regard impoverished. Where their ancestors knew by heart chants, ancestor lists, epics, spiritual texts, stories, passages from the great dramas, and dozens of poems and songs, many of our students know by heart only TV jingles and social security and ATM numbers. "That's what misery is," writes Wallace Stevens in "Poetry Is a Destructive Force," "Nothing to have at heart." In my paper, I explored the history, uses and psychological benefits of learning by heart and urged that this life-enchancing practice be restored, now multicultural and stripped of sentiment, to our classrooms.

March, 1994, Nashville. Conference on College Composition and Communication. In "Writing Home" I summarized a year's research into the lives and educational needs of the homeless (particularly homeless women) and into developmental writing projects at shelters across the country, as well as my own experience giving thirty writing workshops at three New Mexico shelters.

Book review of Writing as Revelation by Marjorie Ford and Jon Ford. Fall/Winter 1992 in Focuses, a national journal linking composition programs and writing center practices.

November, 1992, Albuquerque. New Mexico College Reading and Learning Association conference. In "Happiness and the Blank Page" I discussed the findings of University of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and their significance for the field of composition, specifically, for motivating reluctant or anxious writers.

October, 1992, Ogden. Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Association in conjunction with RMMLA. "Writers' Nights." Retention experts note that a central reason students drop out is because they lack the energy of deeply felt and clearly defined life goals. I explored the role writing centers can play in a university's effort to help students clarify academic, career, and personal goals.

Since 1993, over thirty journal workshops at four homeless shelters: using writing to explore personal, educational, and career goals.

In Circulation:

"The Iceberg and the Monument: The Arts of Losing in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop," an article
"The Glitch," a short story
"The Ali Baba Box," a contemporary ghost story for middle readers

In Circulation or Revision:

"'It Is for Cake That We All Run into Debt'," creative nonfiction essay
"A Prism," creative nonfiction essay
"Some Measure of Grace," creative nonfiction essay

Long-Term Project:

The Amateur of the City, a novel for middle readers etc.