News & Events

Write Beside Them Wins NCTE Britton Award

Congratulations to Penny Kittle! She has won the 2009 NCTE’s James N. Britton Award for Write Beside Them. Penny will receive the Britton Award on November 20th at NCTE’s annual conference in Philadelphia.

Penny will receive the award at the Conference on English Education (CEE) luncheon and will give a talk about the book at the CEE awards session just before it.

CEE sponsors the Britton Award, which is given to encourage English language teacher development by promoting reflective professional inquiry. Penny’s Write Beside Them is a comprehensive guide to teaching writing to adolescents. As Penny writes in her introduction:

"This book is about teaching writing and the gritty particulars of teaching adolescents. But it is also the planning, the thinking, the writing, the journey: all I’ve been putting into my teaching for the last two decades. This is the book I wanted when I was first given ninth graders and a list of novels to teach. This is a book of vision and hope and joy, but it is also a book of genre units and minilessons and actual conferences with students."

Please join us in congratulating Penny on this wonderful honor.

Click here to see Penny being given the James Britton Award at the 2009 NCTE Convention, followed by her Award Speech.