Each student is capable of achieving excellence, but it requires a nurturing, vigorous classroom environment. To help current and future high school English teachers create and maintain this kind of environment, this book offers concrete ways to reconceive what it means to foster excellent performance in the classroom and vivid examples of student work that was motivated by the pursuit of excellence rather than by test scores. Filled with detailed classroom anecdotes, the book explores the many ways teachers can select books, design lessons, and inspire discussions that can lead all their students to extraordinary achievements, both in the study of literature and in their writing assignments. Included in the book are practical tips on everything from helping students self edit their writing to "tricking" them into reading a lot more poetry. The book may be seen as a set of stories--or "ethnographic studies"--on how to make the work of the high school English class important to students so that they may engage in literate activity with the same kind of attention and effort as "real" writers. It contends that under such conditions students will learn more and produce more useful and impressive products than any standards document could possibly anticipate. After a foreword by Sheridan Blau, the book is divided into the following chapters: Introduction: Standards versus Excellence; (1) Engaging Reluctant Scholars; (2) Creating the Culture of Excellence; (3) Beyond Reading Standards; (4) Beyond Writing Standards; (5) Beyond Research Standards; (6) Beyond Literature Standards; (7) Beyond Assessment Standards; and (8) Beyond Teaching Standards. (Cites 34 works.) (NKA)