The author discusses the power of personal narratives to help writers not only improve their writing and understand themselves but also think more critically. Through poetry that grew from her impulse for narrative, the author reveals her growth as a teacher who was simultaneously learning about students' growth and change. (Contains 1 figure.)

By addressing race and class through the stories we tell about service-learning in the classroom and in our scholarship, I argue that we can more effectively negotiate the divide between the university and the community and work toward social change. (Contains 13 notes.)

Though high-stakes testing currently dominates educational policy, few studies examine the consequences of such testing for the teaching and learning of literature in secondary English classrooms. This study takes a multi-layered approach to specify how a high-stakes exam positioned students as readers of literary texts. Drawing on both critical…

Literary texts are cultural artifacts revealing a society's values and attitudes; reading literature about elders and old age can change readers' ageist attitudes. Beginning with these assumptions, I discuss ways of teaching cross-cultural aging in undergraduate literature courses, using Chilean texts paired with American texts. Students learn how…

Drawing from a six-month ethnographic study, this article explores the negotiation of gendered identities through classroom literacy practices in an urban high school, paying particular attention to how gendered identities are interwoven with those of race, class, and other social identities during literary discussions. I draw upon the notion that…

In 1992, the Micronesian Language Institute established the PARADISU program, whose purpose was to strengthen and develop the English literacy and school participation skills of, and the school survival and success of children from, Chamorro, Chuukese, and Palauan families living on Guam through direct instruction and other activities. The program…

Research has found evidence for the validity of remedial and developmental English courses in preparing students to pass freshman-level English courses. To determine whether similar validity could be demonstrated for remedial and developmental English courses at Tennessee's Walters State Community College, the percentage of former remedial and…

The Performance Standards of the Oregon Certificate of Initial Mastery are described and discussed. Performance standards define how well students must perform on classroom and state assessments that lead to Oregon's Certificate of Initial Mastery. Students must complete classroom and state assessments that show what they know and can do in…

The use of computers in English departments, especially in composition classes, has become a primary site of contention between those who find technology liberating and those who find only new configurations of the same old hierarchies. Much of the excitement stems from a perceived connection between new classroom technologies and current theories…

Many high school English teachers rank their priorities according to the expectations of the institution in which they work. The scope of high school English teachers' jobs also differs from that of their college sisters and brothers. The former see themselves as accountable for the growth of the whole child, in addition to the growth of the…

Advantages to using the Internet to deliver instruction include the fact that Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) can be accessed on any computer, broadening the student base to anyone with an Internet browser and a PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) account. In addition, instructions, lectures, and examples can be linked together for use as students need…

This curriculum review presents and comments on state and county trends in the curriculum offerings of Oklahoma secondary schools. For comparison, it provides the secondary level curriculum offered by each secondary school in the state. Vocational education offerings are not included. The state mandates four units of English, two of mathematics,…

Outlining an integrated language perspective on teaching and learning in the elementary school, this book provides both the theory on which the perspective is based and many examples of how it may be translated into practice. The book illustrates and explains eight thematic units (called "prototypes"), and includes webs, examples,…

This personal narrative in book form illustrates the frustrations and successes a particular teacher and her seventh- and eighth-grade students faced every day in their classroom laboratory. It shows how the teacher used nontraditional means such as improvised classroom drama, story telling, performing and writing poetry, play writing, engaging in…

This monograph studies the relationship between parental attitudes and student achievement in inner-city schools, and compares parental and teacher attitudes regarding parental involvement in elementary education. Seventy-one teachers from two inner-city elementary schools in Memphis (Tennessee) and 30 parents of students from one school responded…