For students in biology, chemistry, or environmental science, diatoms offer excellent insight into watershed health and human impact on the environment. Diatoms are found globally in virtually every habitat that has sunlight and moisture, including polar seas, tropical streams, and on moist soils and mosses. Studying diatoms as biological…

Despite high levels of disengagement in urban literacy classrooms, few teachers have seen fit to explore spoken word--the performance of poetry--as a tool to engage students in literacy. Spoken word poetry serves as a powerful means of self-representation for youth that are traditionally portrayed as threatening, menaces to society that do not…

This paper explores six phases of a research project designed specifically to engage high school students as co-researchers in a multisite qualitative study exploring perceptions of tobacco use among high school students in four schools. It describes how university researchers collaborated with the high school students and summarizes seven major…

This article describes a novel, hands-on method to qualitatively determine the extent of microbial activity in topsoil using ordinary blank paper. Appropriate and scalable for the high school and college level, these experiments expose students to some of the challenges facing environmental researchers and also contribute to curriculum development…

This book describes a new approach to teaching and learning cultural studies. Borrowing the idea of ethnography from anthropologists, it argues that language students can be taught methods for investigating the cultural and social patterns of interaction and the values and beliefs that account for them. Doing an ethnographic study while living…