Understanding the social determinants of health, health equity, and social justice from a social ecological perspective is vital for public health students. This paper provides an example of a creative method for teaching health disparities, using the HBO television series "The Wire." Methods: The pedagogical strength of "The…

The Family Backpack Project provided 249 low-income, prekindergarten children and their families with opportunities to read and listen to audio recordings of 3 sets of books in their homes. Families received English or dual-language texts (English plus Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, or Somali) matched to their home languages. Children and their…

The article presents the circumstances of a recent Salvadoran immigrant high school student who puts forth great effort to learn despite difficult circumstances caused by her immigration status, economic realities, and the educational system itself. The author issues a call to action for literacy educators to revolutionize their relationships with…

When evaluating the effectiveness of their program, members of the Brooklyn College SEEK Department, a higher education opportunity program, decided to make their pedagogy more student-centered. They created a method of reading instruction, which they named critical inquiry. Its goals are to build community through teaching students to annotate,…

Ensuring science for all in the classroom requires that all students are afforded ways to grasp key science and engineering practices; however, we know that the practice of "obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information" can be a challenging task for children with high incidence disabilities (NGSS Lead States 2013, p. 15).…

A successful middle school team of teachers employed effective middle level philosophy to structure a curriculum around themes that were relevant, challenging, integrative, and engaging for their particular students and community. Realizing that their young adolescents were involved in tough, delicate issues in their out-of-school lives, the…

If students are not in the classroom, they can't learn. The author serves a dual role of teacher and administrator for middle school and high school students who are at high risk for academic failure. Their academic difficulties are mainly due to their negative behavioral patterns, which lead to frequent absences from class. Negative in-class…

"Invisible Girls" is an examination of twenty-four at-risk adolescent girls' writing practices in a Third Space setting located within a school but outside of the confines of a regular classroom. Through a description of the girls' writing over a three-and-a-half-year period in this setting, Mellinee Lesley details phenomena that both support and…

In this article, the author provides an intimate glimpse into the writing work that Joe Cytrynbaum did with students from Manley Career Academy High School in Chicago. The author's discussion of Joe's "tactics of hope" is layered and brought to life by Joe's poetry and the poetry of his students. The author presents Joe's poems and the…

This newsletter of best practices in implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW), Making Middle Grades Work (MMGW) and Technology Centers That Work (TCTW) school improvement models is based on presentations at the 27th Annual HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the summer of 2013. The newsletter is divided up into…

Students in an eighth-grade, urban, low-achieving reading class were introduced to critical literacy through engagement in Image Theatre. Developed by liberatory dramatist Augusto Boal, Image Theatre gives participants the opportunity to examine texts in the triple role of interpreter, artist, and sculptor (i.e., image creator). The researchers…

Writing expressive essays is especially difficult for many students with learning and behavior difficulties. They struggle not only with basic writing skills such as spelling, sentence formation, capitalization, and handwriting, but also with the cognitive processes of writing such as planning, organizing, and writing (Schumaker & Deshler, 2003).…

One challenge faced by many writing teachers is meeting the needs of students with varying skill and confidence levels. This article describes strategies used in a Composition and Rhetoric I course to meet the needs of basic and college-level writers. Sample assignments focusing on the theme of literacy and learning are provided, including an…