A this year's National Council of Teachers of English conference in Philadelphia, PA I saw three wonderful presentations and participated in many interesting conversations beyond the boundaries of the conference.

On Friday, I heard Jim Fredriksen, Anne Whitney, and Leah Zuidema talk about teachers as writers, and about what and how teachers draw on in the way of resources to be persuasive in different contexts. A powerful presentation for all of us who are advocates for teachers' voices, and I especially liked the format, which allowed the audience to participate in conversations around data excerpts shared by the presenters.

The presentation reminded me of a heuristic used by Carlin Borsheim and Kelly Merritt at Michigan State with our English teacher candidates: Form = Audience + Purpose. While this is a heuristic that I and others have found useful, it doesn't include Genre. That seems like an important omission because, without genre, the heuristic becomes individualistic, as if a writer's personal conception of audience and purpose alone led to a choice of form. Consider, though, what happens when I choose my outfit for the day: it's true that I pick my clothes based on whether I'm heading off to teach or out to hang with my friends, that I choose things that are warmer in winter and cooler in summer. But it's also true that I'm constrained by what "matches," what's "in style," or even what's available in the store. Likewise, I think writers' and teachers' choices about how to communicate are shaped by patterns we and others participate in, sometimes without realizing it. That's not to say that those patterns determine what we say and do. But they refract our sense of audience and purpose in ways beyond our control, as anyone knows who's gone shopping for clothes lately. :)