Above and Beyond the Writing Workshop is filled with original, joyful writing challenges designed to bring back the spirit of the writing workshop model while encouraging educators to enhance it through invention, innovation, and inspiration. These challenges are meant to generate other lessons and projects, as teachers come to realize that teaching writing is not only possible but perhaps to most important, relevant, and gratifying part of their instruction. This thoughtful book promotes the belief that chilren who write what matters to them — their experience, their beliefs, their observations — will find their lives enhanced. It seeks to raise activists who, by becoming more aware of the world and asking why things are the way they are, will be empowered to make it better.