Since public education must compete for public dollars with a range of other services, teachers must learn to present a good image and to create an environment in which their objectives and procedures are immediately obvious to parents, students, and school board members. A high priority for English department chairpersons, therefore, is to teach, train, and support teachers in their public relations roles. One specific method chairpersons can use to keep others informed is to insist that teachers require students to write the terms of the assignment at the top of each paper to make students' parents aware of the assignments and to remind teachers how they communicated the assignment to their students. Chairpersons can also instruct teachers to involve parents and other citizens in such student work as oral history assignments; discussions of books, articles, movies, or television shows; or analyses of regional or ethnic dialect characteristics. (AEA)