Considers what high school activities helped prepare students to write papers in college. Discusses how students' responses help teachers to see what students found useful (or not) in their high school preparation. Concludes that students addressed four aspects of their high school writing experience that affected their level of preparation:…

This article describes a workshop designed to give teachers an awareness of current music and the values expressed in its lyrics. (SJL)

Project SCATE (Students Concerned About Tomorrow's Environment) is an action-oriented, interdisciplinary program for secondary students in environmental stewardship. Students participate in both scientific investigations of environmental issues and political processes necessary to implement solutions. (Author/SJL)

Counselors should collect personal, familial, and attitudinal information on minority students through individual interviews, to supplement or substitute for achievement data from standardized tests. (SJL)

The inner-city school needs to be blitzed with high voltage talent and motivated professionals. A sprinkling here and there cannot possibly do the job. Tokenism, public relations, and educational fads have all been tried and all have failed. (Author/SJL)

Competency testing is only one component of competency-based education (CBE); the others are: educational objectives, instructional process, remedial instruction, and program evaluation/reconceptualization. To implement only competency testing may result in disillusionment with the entire concept of CBE, which seeks to improve programs, not fail…

A rationale is presented for using science fiction in the English classroom, emphasizing that students like the genre and that it teaches them to analyze and interpret social and technological change. (SJL)

There are not enough incompetent teachers around to warrant building evaluation systems solely to get rid of them. To be effective in terms of increasing student learning, teacher evaluation programs should focus on helping competent teachers become better. The individualized performance objective or job target approach can do this. (SJL)

The authors review some of the shortcomings in schools trying to translate mainstreaming theory into practice: lack of a full range of special placement options, over-reliance on consultation and resource teacher programs, and failure to furnish adequate special instruction in regular classrooms. (Author/SJL)

This article considers a rationale for a unit approach to teaching social studies, describes the structure of thematic units, identifies four sources of unit themes, outlines the process of developing a thematic unit, and suggests some resources. (Author/SJL)

Fourteen education students from Southeast Asia evaluated seven unspecified tenth grade social studies texts from five Pennsylvania schools, and made comments on the accuracy of presentations of Southeast Asian culture, customs, history, and topography. (Author/SJL)

Contemporary communication research suggests that students are non-communicative in the classroom because they perceive communication response/initiative channels to be blocked and many students lack basic speech skills that enhance effective, satisfying verbal response. Demonstrates how to circumvent these barriers and encourage instructors in…

The author is an associate professor in a school of education and was a college supervisor of student teachers when this experience took place. He recounts his fears upon revisiting the classroom as a regular teacher and reevaluates the role of the professor of education. He also proposes the initiation of a faculty exchange program between…

Describes a strategy of successfully teaching about sexually transmitted diseases that steers away from the lecture format of teaching and focuses more upon the behavior aspects of learning, i.e., problem solving and decision making. The basic premise of the method, the processes involved, and the five stages of the process are briefly outlined.…