When teachers work to create empathy that transfers or translates the experience of the other into an experience an individual has had, they promote a kind of egotism that dismisses the other or that reduces the other to the category of the self. The key problem with empathy of this sort is that the focus is not on the other, but on the self. The…

"Online Writing Tutorial" (OWI) was designed and piloted in the summer of 2000 as a one to two credit writing course intended for Rensselaer Polytechnic students on co-op assignment in New York and across the country. Similar to its ancestor course, "Writing Workshop" (WW), which was a one-credit course designed to fit the…

Students sometimes respond to writing assignments automatically, almost as if they were a generic form, rather than by investigating the idiosyncrasies and unexpected possibilities of each assignment. Writing assignments can be structured to help students transcend such habits, shifting the focus from accumulating information to creating meaning…

Intended to take the fear out of what looks like a daunting task--writing a life story--this guide helps individuals record the events of their lives for family and friends and adds to a collective history. The guide outlines a method of autobiographical writing that can be used by a class but also by an individual writing alone at home. It…

This paper describes an assignment originally designed for a course in family communication now being taught at the upper undergraduate level at a state university in the southwestern United States. The shrine, the project/assignment described in the paper, combines locally relevant cultural traditions which are broadly applicable with course…

This report describes 4 years of research by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) on developing indicators of classroom practice that have the potential to be used in large-scale settings and that draw attention to important aspects of standards-based learning and instruction. CRESSTs method was…

Suggesting that students can be independent thinkers and writers, this book helps teachers implement an effective factual thinking and writing program into elementary, middle, and high schools. It demonstrates six different models of factual writing: narratives, procedures, descriptions, reports, explanations, and arguments. An introduction is…

Generally speaking, a portfolio is a systematic collection of a variety of student projects or artifacts, collected over time, that reflect a student's developmental progress made in one or more areas. For the class, "Portfolio Development in Reading and Language Arts Courses" (EDUC 508 at Saint Joseph College), the portfolio will…

Analyzes the success of a unit system, devised and implemented in the department of History at Princeton University, that recognizes the full complex of functions in allocating faculty time. (Editor)

Arguments for releasing supervisors from all teaching duties. (SP)

As an experiment, an English teacher assigned each student to teach a class allowing them assign homework and evaluate the other students. Student reaction to the experiment was not favorable. (AP)

Discusses how teachers can use literature to teach students to gather basic materials for writing better compositions. (SW)