For the last several years, teacher-researchers Jessica Jasper, Laura Dvorak, Steven Athanases, and Sergio Sanchez have partnered with a program called Globe Education, Shakespeare's Globe London. Practitioners in the program use teaching practices that engage learners with Shakespeare's works and other complex texts through drama practices. Jess…

Located in the suburbs of a large midwestern city, Trail Middle School serves a predominantly middle-class population. The data the authors feature in this article include group discussions and interviews with students, as well as recordings of in-class lessons, student work, and fieldnotes. The authors focus on the theme of gender as it emerged…

Spoken word is a performative poetry that combines "words, sounds, and movements that privilege a Black aesthetic" (Winn 60). It has roots in blues, spiritual, and hip-hop music and has been popularized in particular by the slam performances exemplified in the documentary "Louder Than a Bomb." Due to its performative nature,…

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is based on the premise that: (1) students can learn to use the reading strategies that more skillful readers use automatically; (2) students can engage in high-quality discussions about text with peers in heterogeneous student-led groups; and (3) structures and supports can act as a vehicle for equitable…

Five middle school teachers are among the few people wandering around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, squinting at labels describing the plants that will bloom soon. The author and her colleagues are on a reconnaissance mission, trying to plan an interdisciplinary field trip for the seventh grade. They represent different departments--science, math,…

With pressures from NCLB intensifying due to low test scores in subgroups including special education, the authors' district, like many others, approached students not as individuals but as rigid categories: "poor," "Hispanic," "African American," "disabled," or "regular"--a category particularly insulting to any student not included in it by…

English teachers share the blame for the lack of imaginative responses from students to the texts they bring to students, given their penchant for focusing on the most technical elements of literature rather than on its emotional resonance. In classrooms, teachers often concentrate too heavily on what Janet Allen calls the "products" of their…

Grammar checkers do not claim to teach grammar; they are tools to bring potential problems to the writer's attention. They also offer only formal and Standard English preferences, limiting the freer expression of some literary forms. Without guidance, students may misuse the checker, become frustrated, and feel discouraged. Users must be…

A middle school teacher describes about his community-building exercise and he also teaches AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) tutorial to seventh and eight graders. He clarifies about his communist propaganda projects in which his students create a poster encapsulating their understanding of an allegorical story that is read in the…