Teachers are responsible for what happens in their classrooms, and promoting civil discourse should be among their top priorities. Not only should they model civil speech and behavior, but they also should establish clear boundaries for students, create a climate that nourishes courteous exchange, and help students build vocabularies that enable…

This conclusion to the volume presents a dialogue from the perspective of educator and clinician. With examples from professional development and practice, the discussion revolves around teacher training and the role of the administrator in creating a bounded and safe environment in which teachers can develop healthy relationships. It discusses…

Judith Rance-Roney calls on teachers to form intentional learning communities within their classrooms. The Culture Share Club, initially conceived to provide scaffolding for ELL students to acquire English and pass the statewide test in English, legitimized student knowledge by benefitting all students as they prepared materials for lessons and…

Sees English as the language of power and status, with a gatekeeper role in the economics and political contexts of many countries. Discusses the English classroom as a site that breaks down the barriers between the school discourse and the world discourses. Discusses specific classrooms where teachers, students, or community members take the…

The common thread that runs through the activities in a literacy course for undergraduate preservice teachers is text. One such activity is a literacy autobiography in which students focus on themselves as learners and teachers. Students are treated as professionals and make their own decisions about how they want to present themselves to their…

Outlines some of the issues and problems inherent in the group dynamics in the English classroom. Considers how English teachers are part of the group in a classroom and, therefore, are subject to the same predictable anxieties and are reliant on similar coping behaviors. (HB)

Oral language is an important component of literacy development, yet is often ignored in research and stifled in the classroom. The varied contexts for literate talk in a first-grade classroom were explored. Oral sharing time, writing workshop, reading workshop, whole-class reading time, and project-centers time provided opportunities for rich…

Based on the premise that portfolios form part of a process to enable the teacher more truly to become a facilitator, this report presents the narratives of an 8th-grade reading workshop teacher and a 12th-grade honors course teacher. The report begins with a brief section explaining the principles of the project. The format of the report is a…

Some learning scientists are beginning to investigate social and cultural aspects of learning by examining the interactions between a learner and the environment as well as with other people in the learning environment. This article proposes conversational analysis (CA) as a tool to analyze interactions between learners and instructors in…

The language of a literate classroom is profoundly impacted by that which is included, excluded, ignorantly condoned, and perpetually presented with distortions. The article analyzes seven comprehensive frameworks: (1) diverse voices; (2) identities of the language users; (3) present and absent curriculum; (4) cognitive structures influencing…