She has faced earthquakes as a teacher in Peru, taught primary students in England, and instructed the children of migrant workers in Brockport, New York. She has served as associate editor of the TESOL Journal and provided staff development for both pre-service and in-service teachers. She currently studies the processes children use as they write nonfiction and teaches students in the K-8 credential and master's degree program at California's San Jose University. "One of the things I miss most is time to read," says Katharine Samway ('87, Ph.D.), not surprisingly!

Following her graduation from the University of Rochester's School of Education (now the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development), Samway accepted a position in California, in part due to that state's enlightened approach to literacy education. "They had frameworks far ahead of 'skill and drill,' " she says. Nevertheless, she found that only small pockets of teachers had adopted learner-centered teaching approaches. In fact, she had difficulty locating teachers for a study investigating the beliefs and instructional practices of self-described whole language teachers. Samway believes that the distinction being made today between whole language and a phonics approach is artificial. Whole language, she says, is a philosophy of teaching, while phonics is one tool for teaching reading. The more important focus, she says, is to support teachers so that they are able to assess students on an ongoing basis. She thinks teachers need time to plan and implement instruction that builds on students' strengths and knowledge, and matches their needs.

Today she finds that California educators grapple with some of the same challenges the rest of the nation faces. Samway believes that among the most critical are the tendency for educators to operate from a deficit view of low-income and minority students, district-wide adoption of a limited number of curriculum options, and the tendency to allow the standards movement to dictate what to teach and how to teach it. "Children are not at the center of these discussions," she says.

Yet Samway thinks that standards have their place in an effective education system. She believes in accountability and feels that standards can be very good reminders of what skills and strategies need reinforcing. "When standards dictate what we teach, though, we've got it all wrong." Describing restrictive state and district requirements (e.g., limiting the instructional materials teachers may use) as "straightjacket regulations," she argues that they reduce professionalism. While they may be designed to provide consistency between classrooms, she thinks they also reflect a "teacher-proofing" attitude on the part of government and school boards--often composed of non-educators--that she finds damaging. To Samway, teaching is an intellectual pursuit that requires making individualized and informed decisions that can't be reached by consulting a one-size-fits-all script.

She walks the talk, spending two afternoons per week working in an Oakland school with struggling 5th-grade readers from minority and low-income backgrounds. "I'm learning a lot," she ex- plains, "not just gathering information." Her experiences has taught her not only that all children can learn, but also that they all learn in different ways and at different rates.

To prepare teachers who can succeed in classrooms today and in the future, Samway thinks teacher education pro- grams ought to emphasize approaches that encourage teachers to gauge what children can do, as well as what challenges them. In the end, she acknowledges that regardless of what teachers themselves are taught or what they try in their own classrooms, not every approach will work for every teacher or every child. The most effective "yard stick" teachers can us to evaluate their performance, according to Samway is " 'would I want it for my children?' If it isn't good enough for them, it isn't good enough for anybody's children."