To encourage creative thinking, high school teacher Kelly Courtney-Smith asked her students for creative responses to Hesse's novel, using a technique she learned from coauthor Michael Angelotti. Students painted or wrote poems interpreting their reading, then responded to the creations of their classmates. The students found that these…

Most high school students grapple with profound questions of loss, love, and letting go; of meaning, purpose, and service; of self-reliance and community; of choice and surrender. The classroom community can profoundly influence how students respond to these questions--with love, denial, apathy, or even violence. When students work together, they…

Patricia Zumhagen, a high school English teacher, highlights the gender inequalities present in older literature by attempting to develop a film update of Sherwood Anderson's story. The students have learned to see how stereotypes operated in literature and in their lives by various discussions and improvisations.

With the growth of standardized assessment benchmarks in both the public and private paradigms, testing performance matters to institutions more than ever. In an attempt to take as many hindering variables out of this process, such as test anxiety, socioeconomic influences, and latency in cognition, Improvisation: A Complement to Curriculum seeks…

The teaching of drama in Scottish secondary schools focuses on: (1) Creating; (2) Presenting; and (3) Evaluating. In engaging with these elements, students at "all" stages are encouraged to develop their own dramas from ideas which are prompted by a variety of stimuli. From a wide range of starting points, students work through the…