A movement is taking place in school districts and classrooms as teachers are embracing engaged learning environments in which they are listening to the often-silenced voices of their students. This article chronicles moments from the journeys of four learners who represent a range of experiences and perspectives on re-envisioning the work done in…

"Transcendentalism" refers to philosophical, religious, and literary beliefs held by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and other writers in New England during the 1830s and 1840s. Emerson believed in the significance of one's intuition and individuality. He expresses these beliefs in his…

Textbooks and grammar worksheets do not adequately convey to students how readers or listeners are shaped by the language of the writer. The best way to help students understand the emphasis of a dash or another device is to see one used during a suspenseful moment in a dramatic selection. It is up to the teacher to select dramatic works that…

Keeping literature classrooms vibrant, energized, and current can require supreme pedagogical effort, especially in light of students' sometimes pointed disinterest in traditional and/or canonical texts. Integrating local authors into a standard curriculum can be an effective strategy for invigorating students' interest in literature and helping…

In teaching a research-writing unit, the author has asked her students to research and write a persuasive speech, a multigenre paper, an I-Search, a historical and comparative connection to literature, a country brochure, and a social criticism essay. While she found benefits and disadvantages in all of these assignments, the author was…

Drawing on published scholarship and her own high school teaching, the author describes how works by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman can be used to integrate GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) issues into English classes. The author can't imagine a single high school that doesn't include Whitman and Dickinson at some point in its…

Three English teachers share their ideas on how their work as a writer helped them as a teacher. One teacher has found that the desire for meaningful response to her own writing has led her to evaluate her students similarly. A second teacher discusses how personal experience translates into teaching how to convey rejection in a useful and tactful…

Folklorist Andrew Lang, in his Preface to his 1910 edited collection "The Lilac Fairy Book", celebrates the ongoing repetition and retelling of fairy tales, including both the cozy retelling by the family fireplace. In the century since Lang wrote these words, many authors have joined the ranks of Shakespeare and Homer in putting fairy tale…

Urges teachers to write for publication, with their class's help, in order to demonstrate the writing process to students. (DD)

Explains that multicultural literature should be taught because it reflects genuine family, socioeconomic, philosophical, and geographical circumstances. Proposes that students should read to not only include but to affirm multicultural voices. Describes an encounter with two writers and their works in the author's charter school classroom. (PM)

Teachers can increase students' involvement in literature and improve their skills in research and literary analysis by assigning each student to report on an author born the same day the student was. (DD)

States that reading Scott O'Dell's popular juvenile book, "The Island of the Blue Dolphins," can increase high school students' comprehension and appreciation of Herman Melville's "The Encantadas," as both works are fictional treatments of the same historic event. (MM)

Describes a rationale and strategy for using the diaries of women authors in a course on women writers. Notes that this unit on women's diaries introduces students to women writers with whom they are unfamiliar, and also encourages students to read other works by these writers. (MM)

A student-produced slide-tape show on a local author was a valuable exercise in both historical research and creativity. (JH)

Teachers should demonstrate to students that serious American poetry has always been in touch with social realities.