Mentors need to be proactive in helping the newer teacher to anticipate the critical episodes that inevitably face any teacher. These episodes include the challenge to manage a daunting workload while following habits necessary to stay healthy; to recover from disappointments, errors, and disrespect; to form positive relationships with students,…

There is a need to establish and nurture a relationship between urban and suburban students and the natural world. This relationship needs to be personal and immediate. They need to see the wilder life that survives and sometimes flourishes in "their" world--not miles away in the hills and mountains or hidden beneath the sea, but outside…

Novice teachers often find themselves isolated; they are often assigned students with the most difficult challenges, with no mentor, and without professional learning to further develop the skills they began to acquire as student teachers. It is important to disrupt the institutionalized isolation of the novice teacher (Darling-Hammond and Sclan;…

In this article, the authors share what kinds of collaboration they engage in for the benefit of their students. The first author introduces the Bread Loaf Teacher Network which connects classes across the world--urban and rural, East Coast and West Coast, American, African, Indian, and European. The second author encourages teachers to consider…

The four authors of this article have each at different times over a ten-year period helped develop versions of the Online Writing Partnership between future English teachers learning to teach writing and high school students learning to write better. The authors have been striving to help future English teachers learn how to help high school…

There is an alternative to conventional teacher mentorship. The authors describe and analyze a promising model of mentorship where multiple mentees and mentors, each with varying levels of experience, engage collaboratively in the study of teaching practice. They have found that well-designed contexts in which beginning and experienced teachers…

Teachers live to inspire and be inspired. Sadly, most high school teachers work alone in the confines of their teaching assignments and tight, chaotic schedules, while many college professors teach and conduct research within the confines of their institutions, seldom reaching out to fellow instructors at different institutions that serve…

In 2006, the author returned to school after completing the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger Library inspired with new performance-based ideas for teaching the plays. The author began to wonder about using Shakespeare as a vehicle for investigating "rich and strange" language with English Language Learners (ELLs). The author began by…

Each year, seventh graders at Woodlawn School in Davidson, North Carolina, learn about Japan through a compilation of literature, history, and art. They are introduced to a wide range of ideas and materials: they study the Heian and Tokugawa Periods as well as modern Japan, the code of the samurai warriors, haiku and its components, and Japanese…

In 2002, when the authors began their three-year study of the problems new teachers face ("Supporting Beginning English Teachers"), No Child Left Behind (NCLB) had yet to have a significant impact on the lives of most classroom teachers. When they were interviewing beginning teachers, they had no idea that Jonathan Kozol was also in the…

The impact of seminars on lessons in the English classroom as well as their importance in helping to build community within the profession is described. An English teacher has described how he found collaborative professional development through participating in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and also its impact on…

The teacher-researchers have made digital portfolios and blogging the centerpieces of their group as ways to share their research and get input from their peers. The effect of this collaborative project, the digital portfolio, on their teaching is discussed.

Teachers make conscious decisions to form professional learning communities where they gather to work, think, and problematize, and celebrate together. Community members understand how varied connotations and needs derive from different life experiences. It is essential to remember that individuals can still claim community membership if they…

High school teacher Emily Sims shares her experiences co-teaching inclusive classes as a first-year teacher. She imparts practical advice for successful co-teaching relationships between the content teacher and the special education teacher, from which both students and teachers can thrive. (Contains 1 figure.)

Describes a high school English teacher's first year collaborating with math, science, and history teachers in a connecting-the-curriculum program. Describes how the author's first semester of teaching English within this interdisciplinary framework lacked coherence and was not successful and how his students helped make the second semester more…