This article interrogates some metaphors that Common Core State Standards (CCSS) proponents have used as arguments to characterize CCSS, and then checks the facts that others have amassed around the issue. The authors offer up considerations of metaphor as a rhetorical resistance strategy: Name, Frame, Fact (Check), and then Speak Up. Teachers…

As student teachers and new teachers enter the rich, historied culture of their English departments, they are listening and looking intently for cues about how they fit in. Sadly, recent scholarship indicates that many teachers never actually find a satisfactory fit. According to Richard Ingersoll, almost 50% of new teachers quit before they reach…

The author has always had an appreciation of language--its rhythms, sounds, wordplay, dialects, usage variations, and powers to manipulate. Reflecting on how she came to this appreciation, she remembers her father reciting poems to her when she was a little girl. She was enthralled by the rhythm, the rhyme, and the sounds of the words--both…

This article explores problems with the trend of business language making its way into schools and provides strategies for how to address this issue.

Many English teachers feel underprepared to teach students with disabilities. While teachers may want to do whatever they can to make all their students successful, some may feel that they don't have as much time as they would like to prepare high-quality differentiated instruction, to fully accommodate every student, or even to know what…

Discusses attitude a well-informed, liberal minded teacher should take toward the use of slang by students in oral and written communication in the classroom. (Author)

Seven teachers voice their opinions (mostly negative) about contemporary, self-appointed language critics. (RL)

Presents the comments of six English teachers concerning grammar instruction. Finds that teachers seldom think of grammar as a description of the structure of the language but rather as mechanics and usage, subject-verb agreement, and spelling. Suggests that researchers do not always clearly distinguish between the formal study of descriptive…

Provides evidence of students' varying cognitive styles. Notes the implications of these differences for English teachers, especially those teaching students from various cultural backgrounds. (JT)

Investigates the grammatical and formal writing preferences of college professors, for the purpose of informing high school instructors about the students' future audience. Surveys professors' attitudes regarding disapproval of forms and stylistic preferences, and compare results with those of two other usage surveys. (PRA)

Two high school English teachers disagree on the efficacy of making jokes about racial and cultural stereotypes. (RL)

Describes the difficulties that students have in language use in the areas of math, social studies, science, and English as reported by high school teachers in Saskatoon and rural Saskatchewan. (CRH)

Focuses on questions of language use in the classroom and how a teacher's attitudes about language will affect students' learning. (RL)

Describes how the author, teaching at a South Florida high school with many children of Mexican-American migrant workers, shaped his English instruction in scenarios that reflected students' lives and cultures. Shows how class discussions and assignments probed the worthiness of the language used and the reason why it was successful. Argues that…