In this piece, a practicing teacher discusses an institutional and collegial experience as she attempts to implement an innovative, research-based curricular model for literacy education.

Larissa Pahomov teaches students English and Journalism at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school opened its doors to students just seven years ago and was designed to encourage both inquiry and critical pedagogy. To those ends, there is a thematic curriculum for each grade level--for sophomores, it's…

Like parents, educators should prepare their students to do without them. To achieve this they must understand two concepts they hear about in the world of education: multiple intelligences and media literacy. Research on ways people learn and demonstrate knowledge shows that both are as diverse as the physiques of the students. Some of them learn…

"Teaching Young Adult Literature" describes innovative methods for engaging students in reading, writing, and discussing contemporary and classic literary texts written for adolescents. Centered around the concept of change, the authors present YA novels that span across various disciplines. Each book presented will help students…

There is an educational disconnect between students' individual backgrounds and the instruction that they traditionally receive in school (Darling-Hammond 3). This division is even more severe for black, Latino/Latina, and economically underprivileged students, who often lack the support, experience, or resources to fully engage in…

A series of studies in a mature multimodal composing project demonstrates that through digital video (DV) composing about literature, diverse students, including many who struggled in school, learned new ways of engaging literature, performing meaning, and thinking symbolically through multimodal translations of the text. Students' focus in these…

In 2006, the author entered the crucible of trying to use graphic novels in her classroom to promote her students' artistic sensibilities. In this article, she discusses benefits and some problems--including access, content, and expense--of teaching graphic novels.

During an observation of a novice teacher in a high school English classroom, one of the authors (Amy Vetter) was reminded that all students are capable of resistance. After attempting to engage students in what she considered to be a thought-provoking anticipation guide and discussion-starter for "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers, several…

A few weeks into the marking period, the author's eighth-grade students took an all-essay literature test. While grading the tests, she noticed that students made many grammatical errors. It seemed clear that a new approach to grammar instruction was necessary. Staring at this stack of essay tests draws the author in to the concept of…

This article discusses how reading for their own purposes affected struggling teens. It shares the authors' story, which demonstrates the importance and power of focusing on students' purposes, as highlighted in Standard 12, a standard not often addressed or assessed, but one that matters to students and teachers alike. The authors describe how a…

In this article the authors illustrate an instructional unit based on a Common Core grades 9-10 illustrative text--Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" from "The Joy Luck Club." They demonstrate how teachers can meet the new standards "and" respond to students' 21st-century needs by using this modern classic along with other traditional and new media resources.…

After teaching in rural North Carolina for about six years, the author was on the verge of giving up on teaching Shakespeare to her students. Although they seemed to enjoy the action and the drama of Shakespeare's plays, the lack of connection between the students and the language and culture of the plays interfered with her ability to generate a…

This article describes an instructional lesson the author developed to help students use parody to read and write original poetry. The author begins this article with an introduction to parody and a rationale for using it as an instructional strategy. Then, he describes materials and procedures he used and he shares samples of student writing. He…

The more the author delved into forming her poetry unit, the more poetry opened up to her. She began to appreciate it for its creative ability to help readers and writers understand texts, experiences, and ideas. It was the length of time involved that concerned her most. She was mainly trying to work out the pace needed to cover as much as…

Based on the various metaphors we use to describe the work of teaching, high school teacher Jeremiah Hill articulates a new model--the teacher as creative professional. Hill urges educators to transform the "culture of teaching" by moving away from traditional expectations for classes and embracing connections that we discover among disciplines.