The author asks, "Where can we, as English language arts teachers, create room in our classrooms for curiosity--for students and for ourselves?" She outlines ways to use Genius Hour to help create an equitable, level classroom with access and ownership for all.

AP Literature students participated in a series of real-time online discussions to complement the in-class conversations they were having about "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." Thus, the front channel was comprised of the students who were discussing the class text aloud, and the backchannel was the online conversation the rest of the…

There is discouraging evidence that many beginning teachers quickly abandon the practices advocated and modeled in their teacher education programs at colleges and universities and regress to imitate the kind of instruction that they experienced themselves as students, or conform to the dominant model in schools where they feel great pressures to…

Visible teaching invites educators to bring activist and change-agent identities directly into their teaching, working collaboratively with a community to enact sustainable, albeit constantly transforming, societal change. This article uses data from a year-long ethnographic study to paint a portrait of one Chicana veteran teacher who enacts an…

Pablo, a Spanish-speaking student from the Dominican Republic, had entered the ESL program. During the first few weeks, he could not understand most instruction in English. He was not able to produce full sentences in English. He proved to have relatively advanced skills in terms of reading and writing in his home language, Spanish, and in turn,…

When given the opportunity to work with mentor programs in schools, this author has recommended a global prescription for mentors to help new teachers make the transition into the world of teaching: encourage them to follow the practices that are most like those of good, experienced teachers. Experienced teachers are different from new teachers;…

Today, teachers and administrators are continuing to recognize that learning is a social function, and that students do indeed learn better when working with others. The author agrees with this concept, but she wants to sigh deeply when she hears of one more person or company who has marketed the best approach to collaboration in the classroom. In…

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…

Student motivation is difficult to measure, manage, initiate, and control. Teachers control many aspects of classroom environments, including student interaction and cooperation, by the rules and procedures they establish and maintain. But, there is often little classroom teachers can do to predict what will motivate students to move beyond the…

Revisits a concept put forth in this same column a year ago, namely, that middle school teachers are different from other level teachers in five significant ways. Argues that now is the time for vertical collaboration; that is, collaboration among teachers at different levels of education. (TB)

Erick Gordon, founding director of the Student Press Initiative, illustrates collaborations with teachers and students that have motivated students to invest themselves in the process and product of writing, including research, oral history, revision, and an immersion in and commitment to community.

Describes an activity in which parents and students write together about their childhoods. States that parents and students offered positive comments about the activity. Notes that the parents were supportive of their students' writing for the rest of the school year. (RS)

Encourages modification of teaching strategies to facilitate academic achievement among students from diverse groups. Describes how the author collaborated with professionals from the Folger Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institute to develop a better way to teach Shakespeare to her predominantly African-American students. Describes how her…

Discusses the most satisfying part of teaching writing--helping students discover what they have to say and showing them how to say it. Notes that the basic skills of writing (audience awareness, organizing thoughts, and revising) are bigger than the rules of grammar and spelling and do not change from grade to grade. (RS)