This article describes a teacher's willingness to perform an autobiographical spoken word poem in his classroom, which provided an important model for students as they composed and shared their own slam-style poems.

The personal essay remains pervasive in high school classrooms, but many curriculum leaders have shifted to stressing the importance of evidence-based, argumentative writing. Some teachers have rightfully lamented this shift, noting that the evidence-based turn in writing instruction comes at the expense of student voice and expression. Students…

This article describes the implementation of blogging in ninth-grade pre-advanced placement language arts classes to support strong writing practices. In particular, the writing workshop's elements of student choice, continuing revision, discussion of craft, publication, and process orientation meshed well with digital composition. Blogging in the…

An incident of bullying via Twitter in a Midwestern US high school problematizes traditional stereotypes about adolescents and social media, as witnessed by two English teachers at the school who write about their own experiences and implications for English curriculum and instruction.

In a nation and political climate where models of communication and respect for another's ideas are difficult to find, the authors take seriously their charge to support educational practices that prepare students to critically engage in a free and democratic society. As part of a summer high school outreach program, they sought to develop a…

Article stresses giving students the opportunity to express themselves in a supervised situation which is accepting and non-punitive in order to meet their emotional needs. (GB)

Description of the techniques used to create relaxed environment in a high school acting class. (SP)

Fictional reconstruction of the anguish a simple assignment can cause a student. (JH)

Explains how a teacher asks her students to write on topics close to their hearts and how she, in turn, writes her own heartfelt essays and shares them with her students. Contains one such essay, in which the author describes how she narrowly escaped serious injury when, as a teenager, she jumped on a moving vehicle. (TB)

Claims students should be allowed to rank, rerank, and reshuffle thinking and then share their views with class members regarding poetry and poets before formal criticism is thrust upon them, and suggests teachers should be careful not to over-analyze and tell students about a poem's significance. (NH)

Describes how having students draw both their own and a literary character's reality not only introduces students, quite painlessly and concretely, to a large number of literary terms, but also suggests that literature appreciation demands an imaginative extension into the life of another. (MM)

Explains how the artistic design of t-shirts with positive images, some having grown out of the study of particular literary works, do much for student attitudes, self-awareness, pride, and interest in school, especially in a "rainbow classroom." (TB)

Describes the experience of a teacher and his students on Writers in Electronic Residence (WIER), a computer network available to schools in which students post their creative writings which are then discussed by professional writers, students, and teachers. Makes a case for using computer technology in language arts classes. Discusses some of the…

Describes the wide variety of personal statements and "mini-poems" on personalized license plates. Suggests that having students collect such statements might be a way of teaching them about the creative potential of language. (EL)

Describes a program of creative writing and describes student objectives and teacher objectives that allow the experience to aid students in producing critical essays. (CRH)