This journal serves the profession by providing a medium for the sharing of information, ideas, and concerns among teachers, administrators, researchers, and others interested in the early learning of languages. Articles in this volume include the following: "Foreign Language Teaching: What We Can Learn from Other Countries" (Ingrid U.…

How kids spend summer vacation has a direct and powerful impact on their success in school. This document presents 8 brief (600-word) newspaper columns that offer parents simple tips on how to promote learning through everyday activities. Each column ends with a referral for free resources to keep children learning outside the classroom. The…

With creative ideas contributed from Wisconsin youth services librarians, this manual is a practical guide for planning and implementing the state's 1999 summer library program. Dealing with the theme, "Go Global: Read!," this manual contains a broad spectrum of ideas--from solid information about varied cultures to playful fantasy tales…

To aid beginning New Mexico vocational agriculture teachers, the New Mexico State Department of Vocational Education initiated two activities: developing a first-year handbook to provide direction and guidance and making a visit to beginning teachers before the start of school. Beginning teachers indicated that both activities have been helpful.…

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Alliance Summer Geography Institute's model in promoting teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher surveys and evaluations of subsequent inservices indicated the institute enhanced both types of knowledge. Resulting inservices allowed teachers to pass knowledge along to a…

Students in a summer leadership training course responded to questions about aspects of leadership in the year 2000, including leader characteristics, leadership training, preparation for leadership, leadership roles, effects of technological advancement, environmental changes, lifestyles, parent roles, international relations and communications,…

Describes a three-week workshop involving 20 teachers and 40 female students, grades 3 through 8, who worked in small groups to use the LEGO TC logo program, an approach that integrates mathematics and science instruction. Discussion includes the impact of single-sex, small group work on student attitudes toward mathematics and science. (six…

Presents a summary of the findings of an 18-month longitudinal study which examined how foreign language teachers' conceptions of their classroom practice developed as they participated in an inservice teacher education program. Discusses how shared professional discourse helped increase the complexity of their thinking. (SM)

Describes the Teach for America teacher corps which places recent graduates of selective colleges in teaching positions at inner-city and rural schools plagued by shortages. The program, funded by high-profile benefactors, has participants make a two-year commitment. It has raised great controversy, particularly among educators who value rigorous…

A remedial biology course that employed six planned strategies to guide program activity is described. Team planning and team teaching, mastery learning, process skill emphasis, technology emphasis, positive reinforcement grading, attendance incentives, student achievement, student attitudes, parent attitudes, and implications are topics of…

At the Bridge School (Hillsborough, California), children with severe speech and physical disabilities are trained in the use of augmentative and alternative communication technologies, transitioned back to their home school districts, and given continuing support. Outreach and research endeavors keep the broader community informed and educated…

This article describes and assesses the effectiveness of a 3-yr, laboratory-based summer science program to improve the academic performance of inner-city high school students. The program was designed to gradually introduce such students to increasingly more rigorous laboratory experiences in an attempt to interest them in and model what…

Students get excited about science when they investigate real scientific problems in the classroom, especially when the investigation extends over several weeks. This article describes a health-science problem-based learning (PBL) investigation that a group of teachers and teacher educators devised together for a group of fourth- to sixth-grade…

These 12 issues of "Exceptional Parent" present a variety of articles and other information relevant to parents of children with disabilities. The January issue provides an annual directory of national organizations, associations, products, and services. Other monthly issues each have several articles relating to a particular theme,…

This publication, the outcome of a series of graduate dean discussion meetings, explores the role and activities of college and university graduate deans, faculty, and administrators in enhancing minority participation in higher education. Also discussed are results of the winter 1990-91 meetings of the Council of Graduate Schools on the subject…