NCTE honors the legacy of Dr. Sheridan Blau, a Past NCTE President and beloved colleague whose profound contributions to the literacy field are widely celebrated in and well beyond our community.
Sheridan served as NCTE’s President in 1997–98 and then an extended term. His service on the Presidential Team spanned 1995–2000. He commemorated his extended role with a gavel that read “Past Perfect NCTE President,” which he proudly displayed on his desk. In January NCTE published Building Literate Communities: In Conversation with Sheridan Blau, a rich collection of essays that honor and extend his contributions to English education. The book describes how Sheridan’s work has influenced communities of students, teachers, and scholars since the 1960s—promoting a richer, more collaborative approach to literacy learning and education—and how his principles and practices continue to inform fields from composition and literature studies to mentorship and professional learning. The 2024 NCTE Annual Convention in Boston included the well-attended session “Heart, Hope, and Humanity: A Tribute to Sheridan Blau.”
Sheridan was instrumental in launching and co-chairing the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Commission on the History of English Education. He also participated in the first two CEE Leadership and Policy Summits in the mid-2000s, which evolved into the biennial ELATE summer conference. In 2004, his influential book The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers received the ELATE Richard A. Meade Award, which recognizes outstanding research-based work that promotes English language arts teacher development.
NCTE member Dr. Anne Whitney, a professor of education at Penn State University and former high school English teacher, said, “With Sheridan I learned to trust what I saw in classrooms, trust what I saw in teachers and kids, trust what I intuited in my own mind. If I ever did anything good in education at all, I learned it from him.”
In 1979, Sheridan founded and became director of the South Coast Writing Project (SCWriP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. He served as director for nearly four decades and was a professor emeritus in education and English at UCSB.
Sheridan resided in New York City, where he was a professor emeritus of practice at Teachers College, Columbia University. Teachers College shared remembrances from his students, including this one: “If I can make any of my students feel as smart and interesting as Sheridan made me feel, that will be the greatest testament to his legacy that I could offer.”
The sad news of Sheridan’s passing was confirmed by his wife Cheryl Hogue Smith, a professor of English at Kingsborough Community College, Past Chair of the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), and a former Executive Board Member for the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and NCTE. She said, “As you think of Sheridan, always remember that reading Milton’s Paradise Lost will help you understand the dangers of consuming false knowledge (and will help you solve life’s mysteries), teaching is the enemy of learning, and embracing confusion leads to an advanced state of understanding. Interrupt often when you hear injustices and disagree loudly when your principles are offended. And, always, write.”