A good writer has a distinctive voice. A great writer has an inimitable one. Regardless of subject or place in time or space, good and great writers share one trait-they are true to their personalities, spirits, and characters. How do they do this? How can WE do this as teachers and writers? And how can we show our students what crafting an authentic voice entails? One of our premier writers on the writing process and writing workshop, Tom Romano, tells us. In a compelling and manageable text, he makes the case for giving special time and attention to voice as a means to get students involved and improve their writing, particularly expository writing. Using his own strong voice and trademark narrative style, he teaches by example-his own and his students'-how writers can be true to themselves and vivid on the page to pull readers in and keep them reading. More than that, Romano is an irresistible motivator to write well. His infectious enthusiasm, intellect, and heart shine through every chapter-from his tempting "antipasto" of stories and poems beginning each section of his book to the delicious courses that follow. He divides his text into small readable parts that consider the "delight and dilemma of voice," the qualities of voice, and the relationship of voice and identity. Many examples indicate ways to "trust the gush." And there are practical ideas here, too-strategies and techniques for immediate use in your teaching and writing. Read and take heed of Romano. Craft an authentic voice in your own writing. Teach students how they can do the same. Then revel in the candor and insight, the absorbing and entertaining stories, the clear thinking--the good, maybe even great, writing.

Crafting Authentic Voice

Reference

Romano, Tom

Words, Language & Grammar

Heinemann

I am not a natural-born teacher. I am not a writer of ease and facility. I've done a lot of zigzagging to get where I am. . . . I have to rethink, replan, revise. Adjusting my balance and positioning is ongoing.We ask our students to write authentically, in their own voice. We validate their knowledge and their experiences. We want them to know the depth and joy of a lifelong love of reading and writing. InZigzag Tom Romano writes his life, creating a model for us of the power that words - written, spoken, heard, read, taught - can have in shaping our professional, personal, and spiritual lives.Tom Romano has long been known for writing with one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in the field. Beginning with scenes of waxing the floor of his father's beer joint, Romano shows us how his voice evolved over time, how he found simpatico voices among friends, family, mentors, and literary writers, and how he wended a long, twisting road to helping students find their own voices. We have long cherished Romano'sClearing the Way, and here he shows us that the journey to that book led him down the same kinds of hallways we have walked, into the same kinds of classrooms we have taught in. InZigzag we also see how the episodes of Romano's life led him to discover the dynamic fusion of imagination, voice, and content that fuels his celebrated multigenre approach and energizes writing curricula around the country.Romano speaks to us directly, confronting the problems every educator faces, and even years later finding more evidence that success and failure are not opposites but opportunities to learn - always to learn. From student to teacher, Ohio to New Hampshire, from miracle to meltdown to milestones, Zigzag opens a window into the development of a writer, a teacher, a reader, a learner. It is the story of our educational values - sometimes lived easily, sometimes shakily - and of what can happen when we pass those values on to our students.

Zigzag: A Life of Reading and Writing, Teaching and Learning

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

"Multigenre writing is an immersion in a big topic of personal importance. I want students to taste such passionate immersion. I want them to experience how that immersion, combined with the possibility of multiple genres, can waken a boldness of expression in them. Students' subjective experience with multigenre will affect their attitude toward writing. It will affect your attitude toward teaching." -Tom Romano What does it mean to write fearlessly? Tom Romano illustrates the power of multigenre papers to push students beyond the "safety zone" of narrative and exposition into a place where fact meets imagination, and research meets creativity. A place to try the untried. Fearless Writing empowers students to leap into this personal, multifaceted take on research writing by giving you specific strategies and practical ideas to help students: <ul>
<li>Generate topic ideas </li> <li>Design research plans </li> <li>Develop core elements of a multigenre project </li> <li>Create innovative genres and "golden threads" of unifying elements. </li> </ul>
While multigenre papers address many Common Core writing standards, Tom's passionate response to both the strengths and weaknesses of the Common Core serves as a lightning bolt of awareness, and a rallying cry for a writing curriculum of genre diversity. Expand your notion of writing and teaching writing, fearlessly. Read sample chapters here.

Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire

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.

Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers

Many want to write. But sometimes they lose heart. They are cowed in the face of so many fine writers of fiction, memoir, poetry, columns, and creative nonfiction. Their confidence wanes. If you want to write, but are hesitant, let Tom Romano lift your confidence. In Write What Matters you will find discussions of writing processes that make sense, demonstrations of effective strategies to try, advice about developing productive habits to get your writing done, and examples of illuminating writing from fearless writers, both professional and novice. Your voice, your vision, your way with words matter. They are tied to your identity. You know that you are more alive when you put words on paper. Accept that you not only want to write. You need to write. Write What Matters will help you learn to dwell in your written words and craft them into writing worth reading by others.

Write What Matters: For Yourself, For Others

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Zigzag Publishing

Good writing takes passion. That passion may be purely intellectual or it may be driven by strong emotion. From this stance, from the necessity of writing what matters in his life, Tom Romano's new book has evolved. Writing with Passion resounds with Romano's passion for teaching, learning, reading, and writing as well as for the people who have influenced his life and his work. It is both visionary and practical. In one sense, Romano is philosophical, encouraging teachers to help students explore their world through language. He recommends looking beyond the tried and accepted to question arbitrary divisions about reading and writing and even, occasionally, to break standard rules and forms of writing. At the same time, he offers concrete ideas that you can attempt with your students-alternate style maneuvers, multigenre research papers, ways to nurture responses to literature, and genre exploration. All through the book you'll read Romano's personal stories. He writes about students who have been brave, articulate, and committed to their work; his own experience as a reader and writer; his father's emigration from Italy; the connections his daughter made to her deceased grandfather. Interspersed between the chapters are "Interludes" stories, poems, impressions, and mini-essays that set a tone, slip in information, or serve as examples. They represent many different genres, including persuasion, argumentation, exposition, narrative vignettes, poetry, and memoir. Sometimes Writing with Passion reads like a novel, sometimes like a memoir, sometimes like a persuasive essay. Whatever the genre, the ideas it espouses are always clear and accessible.

Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres

For Tom Romano, the multigenre paper is much more than a writing assignment. It is a multilayered, multivoiced literary experience. Genres of narrative thinking require writers to make an imaginative leap, melding the factual with the imaginative. Writers can't just tell. They must show. They must make their topics palpable. They must penetrate experience. Multigenre papers enable their authors to do that. 
 Blending Genre, Altering Style is the first book to address the practicalities of helping students compose multigenre papers. Romano discusses genres, subgenres, writing strategies, and stylistic maneuvers that students can use in their own multigenre papers. Each idea is supported with actual student writing, including five full-length multigenre papers that demonstrate the possibilities of a multigenre approach to writing. There are also discussions of writing poetry, fiction, and dialogue, in which readers will discover how students can create genres out of indelible moments, crucial processes, and important matters in the lives of the subject under inquiry. One chapter alone is devoted to helping writers create unity and coherence in their papers. 
 Imbued with Romano's passion for teaching, Blending Genre, Altering Style is an invaluable reference for any inservice or preservice English language arts teacher. The only prerequisite is a desire to help students write.

Blending Genre, Altering Style : Writing Multigenre Papers

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Jeweled Travelers of the Skies

Children's Books

Animals

World Audience, Inc.

A Boyhood at Red's: Growing Up in My Dad's Neighborhood Bar

Independently published

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Books by Romano, Tom