Tricia Baumer understands the need for a good foundation. She spent her time teaching the building blocks of good writing and reading skills to the freshmen in her English class as a member of the sixth cohort of ACE Teaching Fellows at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville, Florida. Even at the high school level, they started with the basics: the intricacies of the sentence, then the paragraph, and onward. For Tricia, it was imperative that her students accomplished each skill along the way. No one, even in the accelerated class, could move on until they had shown that they had mastered the foundational skills of writing. Students complained, of course, since not all of these important skills were especially fun or exciting, but Tricia knew the truth: some beginning rules are formulaic and almost mathematical in their nature, but good writing comes when students know how to use these rules effectively and when to break them to create the most impact on the reader.
