Describes how the author's eighth-grade students went on a yearlong search to find the literature of the twenty-first century. Describes how the students read widely, chose their own books, evaluated them according to topic questions loosely based on the theme of breaking stereotypes, kept and shared journals, and carried out projects of their…

June Jordan, a prolific and most-published African American essayist and poet and a professor in the African American Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, ventured to challenge the institutionalized Ivory Tower traditions and subsequently established a university program called Poetry for the People (P4P) in 1991. Such…

It is time for high school and college educators alike to come to grips with the fact that high school and college are not nearly as well aligned as they need to be. As a result, many high school students who have set attending college as a goal never get there, and many who do make it struggle to succeed once they arrive. Merely taking…

Laptop computers offer a unique way to package a course so that students will learn academic communication skills using the latest technological tools. Laptops can be programmed to be compatible with a school's computer system, eliminating many potential problems students might face in adapting their home computers. Additionally, a level playing…

Yale's Cooke Teaching Program is designed to diminish the sense of imperviousness and immobility that the university often conveys to its surrounding community. During the academic year, one Yale graduate student attended a high school senior honors English class twice weekly. It was an advanced class (mostly minorities), many were college-bound,…

This portrait of a high school literature classroom is one of a series of several such portraits which depict diverse classroom settings of high school literature, and which result from the second year of a teacher-research project in the greater Albany, New York area. This article portrays teacher Mr. McCabe and his eighth grade class in their…

A description of the role and status of English language use and instruction in Australia looks at English within the education systems of the seven states and the Australian Capital Territory at all levels, both for native speakers and students of English as a second language. The following areas are also examined (1) the use of English by…

The School Program Addressing Non-attendance (SPAN) is an alternative program in Morton, Illinois, East High School addressing the needs of students removed from their regular classes for excessive absenteeism. Materials and activities used in the SPAN English program are both highly motivating and general enough to benefit students when they…

Designed primarily for English faculty at two-year colleges in California, "Inside English" includes articles on major instructional, curricular, administrative, and employment issues of concern to teachers in the field as well as information on the activities of the English Council of the California Two-Year Colleges (ECCTYC). The Fall 1977, and…

The Michigan State University (MSU) English Education in London program gave a group of American teachers direct contact with the developers of British educational theory, provided an opportunity for them to observe practice in actual classroom settings, and helped them reexamine their own attitudes and teaching. The program's consultant sessions…

In order to minimize the dread which students and teachers alike often feel toward freshman composition courses, it is important to involve students in reading and writing assignments which are of interest and importance to them. Autobiography, as a subject for study and a focus for writing, can be a great motivator and an expediter of the…

Because many urban youth have grown up in communities where only nonstandard English is spoken, and because schools lack programming to teach standard English, these youth frequently graduate from high school without acquiring communication skills necessary for professional careers. Prospective employers tend to associate certain dialects with…

"Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition" is a program that successfully teaches reading, writing, and language arts in heterogeneous intermediate classes containing mainstreamed special education and remedial reading students, by combining mixed-ability cooperative learning teams and same-ability reading groups. (Author/JDD)

Describes action research through which systematic improvement in both practice and understanding occurs through planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Then, applies this research to the Kewdale project, focusing particularly upon the kinds of knowledge that were generated by the participants and the sorts of actions that took place in their…

Describes how the College Board, under the auspices of the Equality Project, is collaborating with school and college educators to bring about school reform, with special attention given to the writing component of the curriculum. (HOD)