Clearing the Way is written for English teachers whose job is to help teenagers become better writers. Tom Romano, a full time high school English teacher when he wrote this book, has worked with hundreds of teenage writers. He knows well the problems and triumphs of teaching writing. In Clearing the Way teachers will find specific ideas and strategies, a workable philosophy for teaching writing, and, best of all, vivid stories and case histories of real teenagers.

Romano discusses the importance of respecting students' words, the use of writing to learn and discover, the teacher-student conference, writing processes in theory and practice, the evaluation and grading of writing, the place of writing in literature classes, and the powerful creative current that can be transmitted among teenage writers. Whatever the topic, Romano illustrates his ideas with many examples of teenagers' own writing.