Joining the Literacy Club

"The Literacy Club," Frank Smith's metaphor describing the social nature of literacy learning, has become widely used in recent years. The essays in this collection reflect Smith's belief that we learn from other people, not so much through conscious emulation as by "joining the club" of people we see ourselves as being like, and by being helped to engage in their activities. The general theme holding the essays together is that the most significant people in every learner's life are teachers the formal teachers of the classroom, the informal (and less frequently acknowledged) teachers in the world outside school, and the teachers (scarcely ever recognized) who are the authors of the books we read.