To engage all learners, schools must offer career-pathway courses that combine academics and deeper learning. Gene Bottoms, until recently head of the Southern Regional Education Board, describes a transformation he believes must happen in US high schools--adopting curriculums that include intellectual rigor in career and technical education (CTE)…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

In many parts of the less developed world it is women and girls who are expected to provide water for their family. Frequently, young girls are unable to complete school or get jobs because water scarcity means they are forced to walk miles daily to obtain this most basic need. Since the creation of the United Nations Millennium Goals, progress…

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird". Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the…

The author is always looking for material to use in her campaign to end the educational "back-atcha" cycle. It is a multi-generational process, wherein unsophisticated fact-centered high school instruction turns out students resilient against understanding historical discipline despite their college courses; these students then go on to…

This article challenges the predominance of modularization across the UK university system, arguing that the fragmentation of the learning experience which results from this model undermines the possibility of a disciplinary understanding. It proposes instead a practice of imaginative writing which, by engaging students' experience, interest and…

Rooted in graffiti culture and its attitude toward the world, street art is regarded as a postgraffiti movement. Street art encompasses a wide array of media and techniques, such as traditional spray-painted tags, stickers, stencils, posters, photocopies, murals, paper cutouts, mosaics, street installations, performances, and video projections…

Describes a Web site called Nifty Assignments that offers assignments for computer science education. Topics include programming assignments; student appeal; appropriateness for high school classes; and links to other related Web sites. (LRW)

Claims that capturing an adolescent novel in shaped, found, or structured poetry gives students ways to tell others what the novel meant to them. Discusses five poetic forms (riddle poem, found poem, character poem, poem for two voices, and repeat poster poem) and presents student poems. (RS)

Discusses the absence of adolescent literature in Advanced Placement (AP) English classes. Describes how a class of AP students and their teacher benefited from reading Robert Cormier's "The Chocolate War." (PRA)

Describes a writing assignment based on a teacher-created scenario in which students discover a box (when visiting their grandmother's sister) containing a number of strange items including a written proposal for marriage. (TB)

Argues that, after students are familiar with the characteristics of the five paragraph essay and the expectations of that genre, they can learn to play with those expectations to create lively writing that reveals more individual voice by mixing in other genres. Argues that such a strategy can teach students to engage in academic writing more…

Describes a 9th grade required course, Social Issues, and a related writing assignment. Students investigated an issue of personal interest to them and produced a paper with reflective and analytical writing. Six girls sparked a critical comprehension of reality. Data from interviews, focus groups, and papers indicated that the project enhanced…

Discusses a writing assignment in which students write biographies comprised of literary genres such as dialogues, poems, newspaper articles, obituaries, songs, and letters. (RS)

Describes methods for planning vocational assignments that will meet the special needs of all students. Presents a systematic way to teach students to check their own work before turning it in. (SK)