With important implications for all language arts teachers, grades kindergarten through 12, this book is about what one teacher and her eighth grade students learned together as collaborating writers and readers. It is also a book about adolescents themselves: how they learn, what they believe and value, and what others can learn from and about them. It offers practical details for establishing the classroom as a writing and reading workshop. Section one is explanatory and describes how the teacher questioned and changed what was happening in her classroom and began to learn from the students. Section two discusses the writing workshop, with chapters titled: "Getting Ready"; "Getting Started"; "Responding to Writers and Writing"; and "Writing Mini-Lessons." Section three discusses the reading workshop, with chapters titled: "Building a Dining Room Table, Part One--Reading Workshop"; "Building a Dining Room Table, Part Two--Responding to Readers and Reading"; and "Reading Mini-Lessons." Section four demonstrates how writers learn to write from other writers and shares five stories that show the writing and reading development of eighth grade students. Appendixes include information on materials for writing and publishing, ways to publish student work, kinds of writing from writing workshops, writing and reading surveys, favorite adolescent fiction, various forms of dialogue in journals about reading, strategies for introducing the writing process in other schools, and a list of 10 things which are happening in the best writing workshop classrooms. Sixty-six references are attached. (MG)