The author believes that imagination is alive in the high school classroom, but it is pale and sickly, suffering from a long decline in which teachers have confined it to its most decorous forms of expression--inference and interpretation--and become ambiguous about whether or not it is truly welcome. To rouse imagination in the high school…

Using examples from college and high school students, the author describes how asking students to respond to literature using a variety of graphic media can enhance their interpretive skills. Some students who don't like to write essays or who seemingly aren't good at writing essays enjoy making graphic response to literature and are good at it.…

Considering ways to assess digital compositions and their results (i.e., media products) is an important part of the author's pedagogical practice as a teacher educator. Discovering ways to evaluate the quality, effectiveness, and efficacy of these compositions and products presents an important aspect of responsive, critical instruction. Yet this…

How a person teaches grammar depends on what he or she believes it does. Some see grammar as a set of rules, inherited from wise forefathers. For them, teaching grammar means making students aware of, and then holding them to, these rules. Others see grammar as an expression of style, an invitation to the writer to explore how to create a…

Three English teachers share their ideas on how their work as a writer helped them as a teacher. One teacher has found that the desire for meaningful response to her own writing has led her to evaluate her students similarly. A second teacher discusses how personal experience translates into teaching how to convey rejection in a useful and tactful…

Maja Wilson and Michael Niemczyk advocate turning away from mandated writing toward learning environments that honor the messy, inner life of the writer. They explain the importance of disorientation in that it unsettles but nurtures the emerging intention of student writers, and they stress the need to return our attention to the heart and center…

During summertime, before school ends and the hard physical labor begins, it is best to reflect on the touchups and renovations that need to be done to a teacher's classroom instruction. This article presents two innovative lesson ideas that will inspire teachers to rethink, retool, and recharge as they decide what some of their summer renovations…

Born with a rare form of ocular carcinoma that left her with no vision in her left eye and severely limited vision in her right, this author has lived her life precariously balanced between two worlds--too blind for the sighted community and too sighted for the blind community. From this vantage point--first as a student, then as a teacher, and…

The first day of school used to be exhausting for the author. To change this, the author needed to capitalize on the enthusiasm of the first day, so now she shortens the time devoted to rules so she can begin to build on real learning right away. In this article, the author shares three of her favorite opening activities. Using popular culture and…

There is a seductive "commonsense" logic to two opinion pieces that have appeared over the last two years in the "Speaking My Mind" section of "English Journal": (1) Byung-In Seo's "Defending the Five-Paragraph Essay," which appeared in the November 2007 issue; and (2) Kerri Smith's "In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay," which appeared in March…

When Don Imus made his infamous comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team in 2007, he provoked widespread (yet short-lived) attention to the circulation of language practices demeaning to women of color. In an elective autobiographical writing course that the author designed with and for urban high school girls, the students…

High school teacher C. Lynn Jacobs noted that the long-term English language learners in her class had improved in reading comprehension but still lacked writing skills. Inspired by a state humanities project, she worked with the students to publish a collection of stories and poems. Writing about their lives provided the motivation, and writing…

In a montage of genres, Helen Collins Sitler illuminates the subtle yet powerful, often detrimental messages we send to girls that silence their public and private voices and diminish their opportunities to question and learn.

Getting anyone's attention is a prerequisite for being able to hold a good conversation with him or her, as anyone who parents or works with preteens or teenagers knows. It is absolutely necessary with individuals on the autistic spectrum because the achievement of what is called "joint attention" (the ability of children to respond to another…

In this article, the author discusses how students create their arts projects by responding to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In creating their arts projects, students incorporate film, painting, performance, and other arts in their imaginative and innovative responses to Coleridge's classic work. The author discusses…