"Teachers of writing should be writers themselves."

Of course. Common sense suggests that teachers ought to do-or be able to do-that which they teach. That teachers of writing should themselves be writers is a familiar idea, one especially associated with process-based approaches to writing instruction. The maxim suggests that many teachers do not write and, more important, that if teachers were writers, the effectiveness of their composition instruction would improvein part because their own writing experiences would draw their conscious attention to those composing processes they need to teach students.