Pam Childers

In this interview, Pamela Childers, former Director of the Caldwell Writing Center at the McCallie Schools, is interviewed by Michael Pemberton, Emeritus Professor of English and past Director of the Writing Center at Georgia Southern University. The interview was conducted June 20, 2025.

About Pam Childers

Pam Childers has dedicated four decades to helping other secondary educators develop WAC programs, gaining international prominence in doing so, and often partnering with postsecondary programs. Her national involvement in WAC began in the early 1980s with her co-leadership of a two-day workshop at the annual NCTE conference. In that workshop, she introduced secondary teachers to WAC. At that point she had already started and directed a WAC-based writing center at a public school in New Jersey, where she taught English, launched an innovative history-English four-year team-teaching program for at-risk students, and founded the creative writing curriculum for a state-designated performing arts program. While starting a second WAC and writing center program at the McCallie School in Tennessee , she initiated a team-taught senior science seminar and writing fellows program. She also began consulting internationally with secondary schools and served as president of the National Writing Centers Association (now IWCA).

Childers has presented workshops and keynotes at the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, the annual meerting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, IWCA, the annual conference of the European Association for Teaching Academic Writing, and other international conferences. Her scholarly works include her dissertation, Creating a Model WAC Program for Secondary School Teachers, as wll as four books (all available on the WAC Clearinghouse), WAC articles and columns, chapters in edited collection, and editorship of a special issue of Across the Disciplines. Her work has often been co-authored with students, cross-disciplinary scholars, and colleagues at all academic levels. Her WAC service includes the IWAC and AWAC Board of Consultants and the WAC Clearinghouse Editorial Board. Through her work on WAC in secondary schools, WAC-based writing centers, and WAC partnerships, Dr. Childers continues to influence educators internationally.

Credits

Video Production: Mike Palmquist and Zakery R. Muñoz

Closed Caption Editing: Camaryn Wheeler

Additional credits are provided at the end of the video.