The Life and Times of the Curriculum Study Commission
Central California Council of Teachers of English 1949-2000

    When you enter your group at an Asilomar Conference, you will be continuing a conversation that started in 1949 by participants at the first Asilomar Conference convened by the Curriculum Study Commission. It is a conversation that has deepened over the decades.

    From its inception, the Commission has always prized the sharing of practical knowledge, and the annual Asilomar conference was originally designed to provide a forum for the ideas and knowledge that arise from practical experience. Generally undervalued in an age dominated by faith in so-called “objective” or scientific knowledge, the kind of practical knowledge exchanged at Asilomar conferences is rich in content, tied to specific contexts, and tested under fire.

    Over the last five decades, many changes have occurred in the language arts curriculum, in teacher accountability, in students’ rights, in legislative controls, and in community politics. We have attempted to meet such challenges and improve language arts instruction by pooling our intelligence and capitalizing on our professional wisdom through a unique collaborative conference format which has become the “Asilomar model.” On the last weekend of September for fifty years, teachers from all levels of English instruction have convened at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, meeting in small groups to identify problems, propose remedies, and share resources. In the democratic spirit of our groups, every learner is a teacher, and every teacher is also a learner. We have modeled the processes of mutual learning -- teachers teaching teachers -- using group discussion as the matrix of our professional activities. The special value of the Asilomar approach has been identified by James Squire, formerly Executive Secretary of the National Council of Teachers of English and a founder of the Curriculum Study Commission: “The original Asilomar conference idea -- using small groups, with adequate resources, to explore a single topic together in depth -- was and still is a unique experience among professional conferences....”

The Original Vision

    Through the inspired collaboration of a small group of socially-concerned, professionally committed English/language arts teachers, the annual Asilomar conference was conceived and brought to life. Myrtle Gustafson (Oakland Public Schools) recalled its birth:

        I remember the original planning meeting [for Asilomar 1] in Eason Monroe’s office [at SF 
    State] as if it were yesterday. I wonder if at 94 I am the only living member of the original
    planning committee.
        We met on a Saturday morning....A professor from Stanford, whose name I do not 
    remember [Al Grommon], and Margaret Heaton [San Francisco Public Schools] were  
    there. The Stanford professor advocated and insisted on a structured meeting whose
    purpose  was publication.
        I remember that Walter [Loban, U.C., Berkeley] and I objected. We wanted the purpose
    to be sharing and inspiration -- an informal type of meeting. Fortunately, we prevailed.
        In Oakland, I requested that teachers be excused on hour early to allow time to arrive at 
    Asilomar for the dinner hour and evening planning session. Saturday was devoted to group
    meetings with free time Saturday evening. On Sunday morning there was a summary of
    group sessions and recommendations for future conferences.
        I am happy to hear reports on the Asilomar conference, and that the original purpose of
    sharing and inspiration has prevailed. (Hawaii, April 6, 1992)

    This historic exploratory conference attracted 130 teachers to Asilomar, all paying their own way, in October 1949. The conference structure was determined on Friday night after dinner as groups of 15-20 people met to identify problems for consideration. On Saturday, participants again divided into groups, this time according to the particular problem that interested them. The groups met four times, and the conference ended on Sunday with a general assembly at which a representative from each group gave a report of its work. Margaret Heaton and Henry Meckel (San Jose State College) co-chaired this first meeting and Asilomar 2 as well. The ideals of both meetings were set forth in the Conference Report for 1950:

        The Asilomar Language Arts Conferences of 1949 and 1950 were built around one central 
    idea: that language arts teachers have within themselves as a group the capacity to solve
    their own classroom and curricular problems.Consequently, neither conference was a meeting
    at which teachers sat and listened to speeches by “experts” on How to Teach English. The
    basic method employed at both conferences was workshop discussion. It was the conviction of
    the members of the Curriculum Study Commission that by (1) exchanging ideas that had
    worked, (2) exchanging materials, (3) sharing approaches to common problems, and (4)
    thinking together in group discussions, teachers could formulate many practical ideas and
    techniques.

The Origins of Asilomar Traditions

     The conference planners believed that the development of good discussion skills was essential not only to the success of this weekend workshop approach but also to a student-centered classroom. This approach to conferences and classrooms was a particularly radical idea at mid-century when teachers usually sat at the feet of lecturers and there was no dialogue between them. It was an era when the classroom was teacher-centered and recitation a dominant practice. Thus, from Asilomar 2 to 7, the Commission engaged Hilda Taba (University of Chicago/SF State), a nationally prominent authority on human relations and group process, to observe meetings and assist in the refinement of conference procedures. After each Asilomar weekend, the Curriculum Study Commission examined and evaluated various aspects of the conference in order to understand better how the dynamics of meetings and conferences could affect the whole process of curriculum improvement. The most important organizational practices forged in the experience of the early conferences include the following:

I. Composition of Groups
A. Chairs In the early days, when the conferences were smaller, the chairs met together early Friday afternoon for a briefing on recommended practices in group processes. Today the Commission seeks chairs who have already developed skills in group discussion and other leadership techniques. Nowadays, such skilled teacher-leaders are more readily available, having used key elements of the Asilomar model to conduct inservice programs under the auspices of the Bay Area Writing Project, the State Department of Education’s English Teacher Specialist Program, and many local district offices where teacher leadership is fostered.

B. Resource Persons Evaluations from early conferences reported occasions when resource people, despite good intentions, often “over-dominated” a group. Sometimes discussion was even halted because participants, deferring to these resource persons, were reluctant to express good ideas of their own. In subsequent conferences, resource people have been encouraged to be less obtrusive. Additionally, to focus attention on workshop topics and descriptions, the names of resource persons are never listed in announcements and programs.

II. Participant Responsibility: Staying with the Same Group
One essential stipulation has governed all conferences: No “shopping around” -- or movement from group to group -- is permitted. Connection and flow are important to the dynamics of discussion from the point of view of human relations, the thinking processes, and the results achieved. Fruitful results from such discussion depend on continuity.

III. Conference Structure
A. The Five-Group Sequence The fourth Asilomar Conference was given a more definite structure with the addition of a theme, Thinking and the Language Arts. By this time the Commission had concluded from the evaluations of previous conferences that a sequence of five discussion sessions -- one on Friday evening, three on Saturday, one on Sunday morning -- would allow enough time for the development of a community sense among group members, for a statement of a problem or a description of practices, for adequate analysis and raising of issues, and for reaching productive conclusions.

B. General Sessions When Asilomar began, there were no main speakers, and only one general session, comprised of group reports on Sunday. Then, at Asilomar 4, Lou LaBrant, President of NCTE, offered a Sunday morning address, and so the speaker tradition began. Current Asilomar conferences usually include three general sessions: Friday evening, Saturday morning or evening, and Sunday morning

C. Around the Hearth Sessions Because Asilomar was originally a YWCA property and no liquor was allowed, Saturday evening was left open for participants to attend an off-grounds reception and then disperse for dinner. When Asilomar entered the State Park System, the rules changed, and the Commission was able to sponsor the Saturday reception on-grounds, followed by dinner, and an evening program consisting of two one-hour sequences of four or five optional “Around the Hearth” sessions each.

D. Bookstore on Site At Asilomar 7 in 1957, the Commission presented a “Display and Sale of Teaching Aids” which offered specially selected conference leaflets and books. Commission members continued to select, order, and manage the sale of teaching materials at the conference until the task became so overwhelming that in 1966 they requested help from Books Unlimited, an independent bookseller affiliated with the Berkeley Co-op, to organize and conduct the on-site bookstore. Books Unlimited served the conference for more than a decade, but the Commission continued to monitor book selection to make sure the stock fulfilled the needs of the groups and of each year’s conference theme. Books Unlimited was succeeded by Bookplace (SF), Books Plus (SF), Cover to Cover (SF) A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books (Larkspur), Artist’s Proof Bookstore (Larkspur), and Bookworks (Pacific Grove). Commission policy has always prohibited the exhibition of commercial textbooks and selling by individuals.

E. Scholarships The practice of offering conference scholarships (registration, lodging, and meals) began in 1960 with the Margaret Heaton Award. The scholarship program aims to honor the special contributions of deceased Commission members and to support the attendance by new teachers and student teachers. At Asilomar 50 there are ten such scholarship recipients. In addition, in years when the Commission enjoyed a surplus from the conference, it was able to fund several one-year scholarships for teachers in training at various Bay Area colleges and universities.