One of the first plays that the author assigned in his Spring 2017 Shakespeare for the 21st Century class was "Julius Caesar." In conjunction with the play, he handed out an article written by political commentator Andrew McGill that explained the decision by West Virginian coal miners, a demographic that had historically voted blue 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…

The authors of the new Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy believe that college and career-ready students who meet the standards in that document exhibit a number of "capacities of the literate individual." One of these is the capacity "to understand other perspectives and cultures" through reading classic and…

This author arrived at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1981 kind of by accident, a DC public high school English teacher on hiatus from the classroom due to burying parents and birthing children. She was on her way back to that classroom, but the opportunity to work in the land of all things Shakespeare was too good to pass up, even though there…

High school teacher Sheldon S. Kohn probes the conflicting dynamics that occur for educators who try to provide students with appropriate tools for thinking and living in a postmodernist, intellectual world, yet who must teach in antiquated school systems that support modernist philosophies and hierarchical practices. Kohn imagines students and…

The beauty of American public education is that the potential of every individual is acknowledged with the clear expectation that each person should receive a high-quality, academically focused education. The challenge, then, is how to achieve that goal when students come with a variety of backgrounds, talents, interests, limitations, and…

When people dive into the varied texts of culture, print and non-print, and explore and critique them, they are doing much more than showing various persuasive appeals or advertising gimmicks to sway their audience; they are examining the purposes and values of capitalism, the economic system that produces a consumerocracy. People might even turn…

Imagination is what the U.S. was built on and what it requires to achieve and maintain its status in the future. In this article, the author says that there is a failure of imagination in education in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Scores on tests do not translate into creativity or imagination; nor do such tests and the curriculum that…

Reflects on experiences attending a recent conference for the National Association for the Teaching of English. (EL)

Illustrates how the punchline finds the flaw in the system, but the system remains operable. (EL)

A defense of the study of the humanities in light of the back-to-basics movement. (DD)

Suggests that Chris Crutcher, therapist and author of novels for young adults, views the world as a place where God, if He exists, does not prevent or cause good or bad things to happen to people. Suggests that Crutcher sees the human spirit as the ultimate determinant along with human relationships. (TB)

A mock interview with the coach of a fictitious football team about the reasons for and effects of using process orientation as a coaching technique. (CRH)

Explores what the phrase "back to basics" means in terms of the English curriculum. (JL)