In Memoriam
Miles A. Myers
Lecturer in Education, Emeritus
UC Berkeley
1931-2015
Miles Myers, teacher, researcher, author, advocate for public education and for teachers, died on December 15, 2015.
Born on February 4, 1931 in Newton, Kansas, Myers moved with his family to Pomona, California, where he graduated from high school in 1949. During the Korean War, he served in the U.S. Army.
In 1957, Myers began his renowned career teaching English in the Oakland public schools, where he stayed for 17 years. In his own words, “It was a very, very exciting time and boy, we had some gangbuster teachers and they worked hard and they cared and we literally were taking a school system which hadn’t paid very much attention to the minority students and turning it around.”
During this time, Myers earned two master's degrees and a doctorate in rhetoric and composition at the University of California, Berkeley, where he met James Gray. Together, they hatched the idea of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), a professional development program based on the revolutionary principle that the best teacher of teachers is another teacher. In 1974, when a Time magazine cover proclaimed, “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” Myers and 24 other highly-regarded classroom teachers participated in the first five-week BAWP summer institute, an event that was eventually the catalyst for the California Writing Project and also for the National Writing Project. Today, there are 175 local National Writing Project sites, serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Every year 95,000 K-16 teachers take part in writing project programs.
For more than a decade, Myers served as administrative director of the Bay Area, California, and National Writing Projects. In an interview chronicling those formative years — now housed in the Bancroft Library archives — Myers describes the initial grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which he deemed “a little grant to start building something.” He worked tirelessly in the early years of the writing project to “build it up and add things to it.” He chronicles the rapid growth of BAWP’s professional development programs following the first summer institute: “We got more and more programs. We were inundated with programs. We had more programs than we could handle.” In his book, Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Writing Project, writing project founder James Gray noted that Myers was instrumental in the creative financing of these programs: “We needed money to jump-start our programs, and Miles Myers had a gift for finding it.” Gray also notes in connection with Myers’ grant writing skills, “the writing project has survived and thrived because we have been able to explain our work to those who manage the purse strings.” While launching the project with sufficient funding was essential to Myers, he also took great pride in the fact that the entire enterprise began at UC Berkeley: “We were public school people and we wanted this to be a public university program, at least in its inception.”
In 1985, Myers took on a new role as president of the California Federation of Teachers, another opportunity to advance the professionalism of teachers. In 1990, he became executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). In this position, Myers brought NCTE and the International Reading Association (IRA) together in the first substantial collaboration between the two major language arts organizations to develop and jointly publish a set of English language arts standards for educators and educational policy makers.
Myers’ professional service was extensive. He served five years on the Board of the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative and 30 years on the Curriculum Study Commission, an affiliate of the Central California Council of Teachers of English (CCCTE) and the California Teachers of English (CATE). He also served as chair of the NCTE Research Foundation, prior to his term as executive director.
In addition, Myers was a major scholar, with 22 publications in the field of English education. His writing advanced his vision of and powerful devotion to effective teaching and learning and to teachers as leaders of both. For example, Myers promoted the idea that K-12 teachers become researchers in their own classrooms in his book, The Teacher Researcher: How to Study Writing in the Classroom (1985). His seminal work, Changing Our Minds: Negotiating English and Literacy (1996) traces the historical evolution of literacy systems and practices in the United States.
The energy Myers brought to his professional and personal life was legendary. Colleagues report that while directing NCTE, Myers stayed late in the evening, reading and writing, wrapped in his parka to stave off the cold resulting from the building’s antiquated heating system. Following a heart bypass procedure, he joined an aerobics class which he faithfully attended for over two decades, bobbing up and down in the last row, cheered on by his mostly-female classmates. According to his wife, he bought tens of thousands of books, all of which he read and kept. During a final tribute at his memorial service, one family member, understanding all he had accomplished, questioned whether Myers could possibly have been just one man.
Myers is survived by his wife of 59 years, Celeste; his three children, Royce, Brant, and Roz; three sisters, Jean McClard, Joan Hope (Cecil), and Patti Gatlin (Dennis); six grandchildren; and one great grandchild. He was preceded in death by his sister Roxye Gelden.
Mary Ann Smith
Sandra Murphy
2020
Born on February 4, 1931 in Newton, Kansas, Myers moved with his family to Pomona, California, where he graduated from high school in 1949. During the Korean War, he served in the U.S. Army.
In 1957, Myers began his renowned career teaching English in the Oakland public schools, where he stayed for 17 years. In his own words, “It was a very, very exciting time and boy, we had some gangbuster teachers and they worked hard and they cared and we literally were taking a school system which hadn’t paid very much attention to the minority students and turning it around.”
During this time, Myers earned two master's degrees and a doctorate in rhetoric and composition at the University of California, Berkeley, where he met James Gray. Together, they hatched the idea of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), a professional development program based on the revolutionary principle that the best teacher of teachers is another teacher. In 1974, when a Time magazine cover proclaimed, “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” Myers and 24 other highly-regarded classroom teachers participated in the first five-week BAWP summer institute, an event that was eventually the catalyst for the California Writing Project and also for the National Writing Project. Today, there are 175 local National Writing Project sites, serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Every year 95,000 K-16 teachers take part in writing project programs.
For more than a decade, Myers served as administrative director of the Bay Area, California, and National Writing Projects. In an interview chronicling those formative years — now housed in the Bancroft Library archives — Myers describes the initial grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which he deemed “a little grant to start building something.” He worked tirelessly in the early years of the writing project to “build it up and add things to it.” He chronicles the rapid growth of BAWP’s professional development programs following the first summer institute: “We got more and more programs. We were inundated with programs. We had more programs than we could handle.” In his book, Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Writing Project, writing project founder James Gray noted that Myers was instrumental in the creative financing of these programs: “We needed money to jump-start our programs, and Miles Myers had a gift for finding it.” Gray also notes in connection with Myers’ grant writing skills, “the writing project has survived and thrived because we have been able to explain our work to those who manage the purse strings.” While launching the project with sufficient funding was essential to Myers, he also took great pride in the fact that the entire enterprise began at UC Berkeley: “We were public school people and we wanted this to be a public university program, at least in its inception.”
In 1985, Myers took on a new role as president of the California Federation of Teachers, another opportunity to advance the professionalism of teachers. In 1990, he became executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). In this position, Myers brought NCTE and the International Reading Association (IRA) together in the first substantial collaboration between the two major language arts organizations to develop and jointly publish a set of English language arts standards for educators and educational policy makers.
Myers’ professional service was extensive. He served five years on the Board of the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative and 30 years on the Curriculum Study Commission, an affiliate of the Central California Council of Teachers of English (CCCTE) and the California Teachers of English (CATE). He also served as chair of the NCTE Research Foundation, prior to his term as executive director.
In addition, Myers was a major scholar, with 22 publications in the field of English education. His writing advanced his vision of and powerful devotion to effective teaching and learning and to teachers as leaders of both. For example, Myers promoted the idea that K-12 teachers become researchers in their own classrooms in his book, The Teacher Researcher: How to Study Writing in the Classroom (1985). His seminal work, Changing Our Minds: Negotiating English and Literacy (1996) traces the historical evolution of literacy systems and practices in the United States.
The energy Myers brought to his professional and personal life was legendary. Colleagues report that while directing NCTE, Myers stayed late in the evening, reading and writing, wrapped in his parka to stave off the cold resulting from the building’s antiquated heating system. Following a heart bypass procedure, he joined an aerobics class which he faithfully attended for over two decades, bobbing up and down in the last row, cheered on by his mostly-female classmates. According to his wife, he bought tens of thousands of books, all of which he read and kept. During a final tribute at his memorial service, one family member, understanding all he had accomplished, questioned whether Myers could possibly have been just one man.
Myers is survived by his wife of 59 years, Celeste; his three children, Royce, Brant, and Roz; three sisters, Jean McClard, Joan Hope (Cecil), and Patti Gatlin (Dennis); six grandchildren; and one great grandchild. He was preceded in death by his sister Roxye Gelden.
Mary Ann Smith
Sandra Murphy
2020
