The author's career in professional education is intertwined with the history of language arts education in the United States and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The author joined NCTE in the 1960s, though she was already teaching for about 10 years with a well-developed constructivist perspective on teaching and learning. Throughout the same period, however, the transmission model of teaching was very much in evidence. Over the years, the two models, transmission and constructivist, have ebbed and flowed but neither completely dominated. The author believes that both models maintain their influences on language arts teaching and learning and that they have become more or less prominent for theoretical, social, and political reasons. At the same time, many teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers swing with the political winds without examining what they are asked to do. Sometimes, as in the current era, that may be a means of surviving. But the professionalization of literacy teaching and the development of literacy learning depends on teachers who understand and are committed to what they know is best for their students. Beginning in the 1950s and going to the present, the author traces the intersection of her teaching career and movements in literacy education.