[Being With Children] might be misread as still another romantic critique of repression and lack of creativity in the public schools, or as a string of recipes for teaching creative writing by a teacher who could afford to be creative…. After all, Lopate simply recounts his experiences of being hired as a supervisor for a funded program in New York's P.S. 90, which was sponsored by the Writers and Teachers Collaborative and Columbia University for "training graduate students to be writing specialists in public schools." If this were all the book was about, it would be directed to a specialized audience indeed. But it is a good deal more.

It is a sometimes funny, sometimes tedious, but generally insightful series of questions and reflections about teaching and writing. Seriously committed teachers, Lopate and his associates progressively explore the logic of their classroom behavior. The book could be aptly...