It's lunchtime, and the author is sitting with Abigail, who is the English department chair, and several other teachers in her department during a heated discussion about the latest school mandate: a planning calendar audit. At East High School, a diverse high school on the outskirts of a large metropolitan city in the southeastern United States,…

As districts continue to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), English language arts (ELA) teachers and content-area teachers may find themselves collaborating in surprising and welcome new ways. The CCSS's emphasis on reading and writing across all content areas provides an opportunity for ELA teachers to emerge as literacy experts in…

As student teachers and new teachers enter the rich, historied culture of their English departments, they are listening and looking intently for cues about how they fit in. Sadly, recent scholarship indicates that many teachers never actually find a satisfactory fit. According to Richard Ingersoll, almost 50% of new teachers quit before they reach…

In this article, the author describes her induction years in high school teaching, reporting the frustration in lacking a suitably matched mentor, and her determination to attend to her own professional growth. Her story reveals characteristics common among "stayers," those who continue beyond their induction years and thrive for a long time as…

Examines the formal and informal (noninstitutionalized) leadership roles of teachers, new and veteran, in a successful high school English department. Provides sketches of teachers in the department and then discusses some leadership issues. (TB)

Discusses the many contributions of Rewey Belle Inglis, a secondary English teacher, university English educator, and textbook publisher, as well as first woman president of the National Council of Teachers of English (1929). Discusses her professional credentials, her place in history, her writings (about teaching grammar and literature, teacher…

Argues that the IRA/NCTE (International Reading Association/National Council of Teachers of English) standards should provide a starting point for both local and national discussions of what it means to have standards, what effects standards can have, and how to go about developing them. Offers a set of questions that teachers might consider…

Teachers and administrators can help make sustainable educational improvements in high schools. By being systematically reflective about teaching and learning and seeing themselves collectively as agents of change in the interest of academic quality and excellence. The English teachers at Trenton Public School District, New Jersey, have created…

The comprehensive approach to balanced literacy mandate relies on teachers understanding of the skills and strategies that reading and writing demands. State and city departments of education must look for ways to learn from the voices of English language art teachers.