"This country has been the basis of my being. And when it's no longer there, you know, it's unthinkable." Ueantabo Mackenzie's haunting words in the PBS NOW documentary "Paradise Lost" shook the author. He knew he wanted to teach a unit on global warming, especially after participating in the Portland-area Rethinking Schools…

Social studies teachers are tasked with aiding their students' abilities to engage in public debate and make politically sound decisions. One way the authors have found to help facilitate this is to draw connections between content knowledge and current political conversations through the use of clips from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." While…

This article begins by recognizing the increasing use of film in Religion, Theology, and Bible courses. It contends that in many Biblical Studies (and Religious Studies and Theology) courses, students are neither taught how to view films properly, nor how to place films into constructive dialogue with biblical texts. The article argues for a…

This paper discusses an instructional approach designed to help preservice teachers understand how assessments can be influenced by personal biases. In order to achieve this objective, we developed an analogy-based activity called "The Dog Show Analogy." After participating in the activity, we have observed that the participating preservice…

By the time children reach middle school, they already have a well-established relationship with the media. Ignoring the significance of media in the lives of adolescents creates a gap between their in-school and out-of-school worlds. Middle school curricula needs to be relevant to students. Therefore, educators should make time to address the…

Undergraduate students often memorize a keyword or definition for an exam without a deeper understanding or the ability to apply the meaning of the concept. While using examples during a lecture may help, the combination of movies and verbal review has been shown to be a valuable instructional tool, increasing recall (Elischberger & Roebers, 2001)…

Integrating "The West Wing" in public relations courses can effectively dramatize the concrete and abstract dimensions of public relations. In turn, students see public relations in action (albeit fictionally so) and learn much about it through structured lessons. From individual writing assignments about situations in "The West Wing," to the…

This handbook gives guidelines for setting up an elementary level art appreciation program. The program encourages involvement by staff and parent volunteers, resource persons and presenters and utilizes commercially produced art reproductions. Sample art reproduction selections and schedules are given. An art vocabulary and a time line of world…