Considers what role professional organizations play in helping educators live their lives as intellectuals. Notes that being an intellectual means engaging the world, acting on it and in it, reflecting on and learning from the events around them and from their interactions with others. Concludes that to experience being an intellectual, a…

Argues that society's capacity to become more powerfully literate depends on its capacity to develop better ways to explain to and to show others what people do when they read and write. Offers ways in which schools and communities can help students go beyond current inadequate but deeply entrenched verbal constructs. (HTH)

Claims that literacy and literature become interrelated in classrooms where there are many opportunities to engage in the narrative mode of thought. Discusses how the potential of literacy/literature experiences is enriched when students draw from the narrative reservoirs of the community and school. (JD)

Traces the author's own literacy development to her girlhood in a village in rural Jamaica. Looks at storytelling, singing, and rhymes in the rhythm of the village; reading from the Bible and stories told at home; rhythms of song and language in church; and the rhythm of poems and stories in school. Looks at implications for literacy instruction.…