American adolescents are experiencing an epidemic of anxiety and depression. In this article, Eric Piotrowski explores how regular writing practice and conscious conversations help students struggling with loss, grief, trauma, and myriad associated difficulties including anxiety and self-harm. Students in his classroom use fictionalized…

Through creative nonfiction, Tom Romano reveals his relationship over the past four decades with Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." He has been teaching 40 years, 17 of them in high school, 23 in college. Not a year has gone by that he did not recite to students "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." In his…

Across the country, adolescents are writing and performing spoken word poetry. In this article, the author works with members of a spoken word poetry group to develop ways to integrate spoken word into classroom and school communities.

A veteran teacher with over 35 years experience, the author reflects on the events of September 11, 2001, and how the events of that day demonstrated that teachers fulfill many shifting roles in their students' lives. Here, he shares his own feelings of profound sadness for all the victims on that day, and discusses how the roles of teachers often…