What if the literacy and social justice work educators are trying to do via literature is being foiled by its often tragic seriousness? What if the emotion work students are being asked to do when engaging with such literature is debilitating for some of them? One might argue that many students' reluctance to read and their lack of success at…

Without the benefit of having experienced many years of teaching, it is hard to emulate the experienced colleagues one admires. In her second year of teaching, the author seems to have captured some of the wisdom that comes with many years of teaching. Her advice reveals many of the practices that distinguish veterans from newcomers. Teachers who…

The essay is the most intimate of reading experiences, in which the reader is invited to eavesdrop as the writer works through a thought or excavates a memory. The writer can be explicit, in the first person, or just implicit, as the person behind the words, but he or she is absolutely, powerfully present. It's as if, for those few thousand words,…

In this time of high-stakes tests and school accountability, English classrooms have been pushed to become increasingly serious places. Combining NCLB pressures with desires to use literature to do important cultural work--such as fighting ethnic, gender, and social-class discrimination--virtually bans humor from the classroom. This is unfortunate…

Presents a humorous review of educational jargon. (RL)

A lighthearted look at popular euphemisms and the reasons behind their creation and use. (RL)

Presents a fictional interview with an ineffective English teacher. (DD)

Spoofs grammar instruction using characters from William Faulkner's novel "As I Lay Dying." (RS)

Presents annotations of 32 works of young adult literature that are not depressing but rather give the reader a good laugh. (TB)

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

A parody of Swift that calls for American parents to once again take the responsibility of education for their children by teaching them by computer at home and abolishing the school system. (CRH)

A tongue-in-cheek version of a school administrator's "memorandum" illustrates how simplistic solutions to the educational problems, such as establishing minimum competencies for writing achievement, are generated and why they may not solve the problems. (RL)

Four doctoral students and their professor contemplate the value of play in their high school and college classrooms. They discuss their experiences teaching children's books, student illustrations, and excerpts from magazines and newspapers that convey the intricacies of the English language through homonyms, homophones, homographs, and polysemy.…

Discusses the relationship between doublespeak and humor in the works of George Orwell, W.H. Auden, Doris Lessing, and others. Suggests that one of the most effective responses to doublespeak is humor, a response which acknowledges doublespeak's incongruities and laughs at them. (ARH)

Demonstrates the impracticality of imposing rigorous definitions on the various stages of the writing process and the ineffectiveness of requiring students to adhere to strict writing strategies. (SRT)