Offers reflections by a teacher educator who spent a year teaching a third-grade class. Discusses the realities of a teacher's internal decision-making process and day-to-day interactions with children in the classroom. Notes that uncertainty is what keeps the inquiry process going. (SR)

Argues that, to develop a community of readers of literature, teachers must go beyond an approach to literature that merely treats it as an excuse for a comprehension skills lesson or a social studies exercise. Illustrates the argument with the children's book "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli. (SR)

Examines the roles and relationships involved as a first-grade teacher and her students built a classroom community that supported the children's acquisition of literacy. Shows how the teacher helped the children and how she got out of their way to allow them to take control of their own learning and curriculum. (SR)

Asserts that the teacher's big desk serves as a metaphor for how teacher and students relate in a classroom. Observes that moving the teacher's desk from the center of the room to the periphery produces positive results with respect to children's literacy, language, and attitudes. (PRA)

Presents a critical analysis demonstrating that scripted phonics programs hold student and teachers as curriculum hostages. Begins as an investigation into the uses of predictable texts to teach reading in primary classrooms. Discusses how the mandated program is so oriented to preciseness that the students are less willing to take risks as…

Describes how "critical incidents" that occur in the classroom can help teachers address their preconceived notions about learning and teaching, about knowledge, and about what counts as legitimate reading and writing. (HTH)

Describes a teacher's metamorphosis from a controlling kindergarten teacher to one who recognized that children already have a great deal of language and print awareness and who could assist them in self-directed learning by giving their language instruction a context. (HTH)

This paper identifies some of the resources the author has found and used to help future teachers become fully inclusive teachers, particularly of early elementary students. Through sharing these resources--children's literature, a children's literature textbook, edited books for teacher educators and pre- and inservice teachers, and a video--the…

Presents three teachers' anecdotes concerning relinquishing control of the learning situation to the students: seeing through a child's eyes, letting a child write longer pieces with invented spelling rather than being concerned with neatness, and letting students select and interpret poetry instead of teachers doing it for them. (HTH)

Offers a portrait of an inspiring teacher who created an environment of celebration for a group of students repeating first grade. Shows how these students achieved beyond what they or others thought was possible, relishing and sharing their newly acquired literacy abilities. (SR)

Explores the cooperation and resistance teachers often encounter as they begin to use a whole language approach in their classrooms, and discusses whole language as a teaching attitude--returning the freedom of learning to students, but still with requisite responsibilities for providing students with all the options from which they may choose.…

Discusses how the socioeconomic "caste system" operates to differentiate education, and addresses questions concerning the definition of mainstream competence and the labeling of students as unfit or incompetent. Discusses the shortcomings of the three solutions for language incompetence. (HTH)