English Journal - Volume 88, Issue 1, 1998

Describes a small-scale school/college partnership first from the teacher’s lens and then from the teacher educator’s lens. Discusses 13 critical issues that have emerged from two years of working together.

Describes a collaboration between two high school English teachers that linked sophomore and senior English classes in using literacy for real purposes in the “Magazines for Change” project. Discusses the process of collaboration between the teachers, and describes the project itself. Notes the many benefits that resulted, and describes how students’ work was assessed.

Describes how a high school English teacher and a university instructor of preservice teachers worked together to create cross-age student partnerships, in which the college students responded to the high school students’ writing. Describes the project’s evolution, benefits to the high school students, to the college students, and to both teachers.

Describes a collaboration between an innovative high school English course and a college-level course of literacy theory. Describes the collaboration, its goals and outcomes, and benefits. Discusses briefly resisting institutional hierarchies.

Describes the Portfolio Research Project, a three-year research project ultimately involving 20 teachers of grades 6–12 from a variety of schools, in which teachers acted as primary researchers, developing their own research projects to explore the use of portfolios to assess literature learning. Describes what participants researched, how teachers were supported, and success of project. Notes ways teachers might become involved in a teacher–research group.

Describes an ongoing partnership between a high school English teacher and two elementary school teachers. Discusses dividing the semester into three sections (relationship building, activities, and final projects). Outlines how the partnership started, the activities involved, and benefits to teachers and students. Argues that the partnership reawakened high school students’ passion about language.

Describes how a “tech prep” junior English class at a vocational-technical high school collaborated with a class of third graders, as the juniors wrote short stories based on topics generated by the third graders who then illustrated the stories. Discusses how both classes prepared and got started, and how all participants benefited. Offers tips for teachers.

Describes the trial and error process over a three-year period in which a group of English teachers developed district-level content and performance standards for writing. Describes workshops which led to action research teams. Argues they did three things right: invented their own standards, shared the inventions with colleagues, and learned to live with paradigm shifts.

Describes a collaborative project between a South Carolina History and Geography teacher of grades 7-8 and an American teacher of English-as-a-Second-Language in a Japanese high school. Describes class activities as students exchanged correspondence, sent packages, and finally met each other when the American students traveled to Japan. Notes continuing effects of the project.

States that many English teachers find themselves responsible for an expanded English curriculum that includes the (new) language arts of speaking and listening. Outlines practical ways teachers can incorporate appropriate instruction into a full curriculum. Offers specific information about the processes of informal speaking, formal speaking, speaking in small groups, and listening that teachers can use when planning instruction.

Describes how a high school English teacher uses a Groucho Marx scene to help his students learn to read the subtext in Shakespeare plays of social context, characters’ goals and desires, and obstacles standing in their way. Offers examples of skits students perform which make these subtexts explicit.

Explains the process that the Secondary Section planning group uses to select proposals for sessions that will be presented at NCTE’s national conference. Answers the following questions: What Can You Do to Make Your Proposal Better? Who Is Involved in the Selection Process? How Does the Selection Process Operate? How Can Anyone Participate?

Explains the author’s trip to a conference of English teachers in South Africa, focusing on how her time at the conference and during her travels afterward within South Africa (where teachers in local classrooms are struggling to help students communicate in a country that has 11 official languages) expanded her concept of literacy as a cultural concept.

Describes activities of college students in a “Poets in Schools” program that brings college students together with students in elementary and secondary schools. Describes how the students devised poetry teaching exercises, and describes three of those exercises (a multimedia approach, using photos and postcards, and poems like trees). Shares poems written by students in response to the exercises.

Presents resources for secondary school reading teachers. Looks in depth at two books: “Into Focus: Understanding and Creating Middle School Readers,” and “Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Reading Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop.” Discusses three online resources about teaching reading and selecting materials (READPRO, “Reading Online,” and the Children’s Literature Web Guide).

Outlines some of the many confusions about young adult literature. Sheds some light on what young adult literature is (defining it as all genres of literature published since 1967 that are written for and marketed to young adults). Discusses briefly how it can be used in schools. Offers a list of the author’s 20 favorite books for teenagers.

Available in print version only.