Focusing on a two-year period, this informally written book describes the efforts of several rural elementary teachers to establish a writing center based on a unified language arts curriculum. The book relates the authors' background experiences, outlines the structure of the writing program, offers typical writing experiences and classroom procedures, and describes the school setting, teachers, and students involved in the project. In addition, chapters are devoted to special writing experiments, such as having students write descriptions of persons, devise parodies, and teach writing classes. The book stresses the importance of the teacher-student relationship in producing growth in writing ability and uses numerous student writing samples to illustrate ideas throughout the text. An appendix presents more student writing samples representing autobiographies, poetry, narratives, and drama. (MAI)