The authors are faculty in history and English, respectively, at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. What their students want and need, and what the institution's role in the community should be, remain open questions, with policy implications at the departmental, college, city, and even national level. Indeed, President Obama…

This essay is about the process of discovering and trying to help an exceptional student who was grappling with issues of real-life violence and incarceration and the desire to articulate their meaning to his life through writing. It describes how this student empowered himself to reflect on and deconstruct the meaning of his incarceration and how…

Describes a writing assignment in which students write an essay employing lexical, etymological, and connotative definitions. (SR)

Argues that composition teachers should assign essay topics on writing because, by writing about writing, students can synthesize and master the material covered in class. (SR)

Maintains that cliches can improve students' writing style. Describes six techniques for polishing cliches into something original. (SR)

Describes successful teaching tips for writing instruction from six teachers. (SR)

Describes two writing assignments for basic writers (synthesizing influences from Mike Rose and David Bartholomae) in which students perform complex thinking and writing tasks while writing about their own experiences and those of fictional characters similar to themselves. (SR)

Describes a writing assignment (designed as an alternative to a traditional literary analysis paper) for a sophomore-level introduction to short story course, in which students assemble their own thematic anthology of short stories with introduction, headnotes, and annotated bibliography. (SR)

Suggests that the five-paragraph theme does in fact have value, and explains why assumptions about its ills are wrong-minded. (SR)

Reviews the arguments for and against teaching the traditional five-paragraph essay model. Describes a teaching approach in which students critically examine these arguments while learning the principle features of the five-paragraph essay. (SR)

Discusses two intriguing ways of explaining error in student writing--the work of Michel Foucault and the work of Roland Barthes. Describes in-class activities and essay assignments that use these perspectives to help students to reach improved understanding of error in writing. (SR)

Claims personal narrative essays, although controversial, touch a unique chord in listeners and in readers. Suggest incorporating critical thinking and modeling by the instructor into personal narrative essay assignments. (NH)

Argues that college writing instructors have an ethical obligation to help students to critically examine the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of writing in school so that the students understand how they have come to view writing and revision as punishment. (TB)

Asserts that using cartoons to generate explanations in writing can be an effective assignment. (PRA)

Describes a first-day assignment for writing courses called a "writing autobiography" in which the student is asked to identify and assess their own strengths and weaknesses as writers. Argues for the value of having students consider their processes as writers. (HB)