Harvey "Smokey" Daniels
Harvey "Smokey" Daniels has been a city and suburban public school teacher, a university professor, a classroom consultant, writer, and book editor. He is the author or co-author of 20 books (and associated videos) on literacy, language, literature, and school change, published by Heinemann, Stenhouse, Corwin, and NCTE. All of Smokey’s work aims to bring the joy of learning to schools – making classrooms places of curiosity, engagement, collaboration, knowledge-building, caring, and taking action for social justice. In 2012, Smokey was given the Exemplary Leadership award from the National Council of Teachers of English. He also received the President’s Award from the Wisconsin Reading Association in 2011.
Smokey’s newest title is The Curious Classroom: Ten Structures Teaching with Student Directed Inquiry. The book arose from his four-year partnership with a set of schools that had committed to build their instruction around students’ curiosity, interests, and choices. The remarkable lessons developed by teachers in these schools yielded a 10-step model that helps both willing and wary teachers to get started with inquiry.
When he is not researching and writing, Smokey serves as a guest teacher and coach in classrooms around North America. To support schools and teachers, he offers workshops, long-term consultancies, multi-day national institutes, conference sessions, classroom demonstration lessons, webinars, literacy coach training, and administrator events. He has carried on this work in 44 U.S. states and seven provinces of Canada.