Recommends the use of Charlotte K. Brooks' book "Tapping Potential" by English teachers who deal with minority students. Discusses how the book treats everything from language development to reading and writing to literary criticism from the Black aesthetic point of view. (NKA)

Includes annotated bibliographies of young adult books written in the 1980s by Black authors. Selections intended to interest Black teenagers represent both historical and contemporary realistic fiction. (NKA)

Recounts the experience of participating in a two-week workshop for writing instructors during the summer of 1986 that was supported by state funds. Urges other teachers to ask their state leaders to consider funding similar summer programs. (NKA)

Evaluates a summer writing workshop and thanks the director and the state governor for initiating it. (NKA)

Criticizes humanists who consider computers confining, difficult to learn, and dehumanizing. (NKA)

Presents an interpretation of Katherine Anne Porter's short story "An Approach to Granny Weatherall" with explanatory material to help students and teachers appreciate and understand it. Notes that this interpretation is contrary to the Roman Catholic theology of sin and punishment on which the story is based. (NKA)

Describes a day spent by an American teacher visiting a Thai school with 200 students in one class. (NKA)

Describes a writing assignment that uses the song "America the Beautiful" to point the following six reasons why America is beautiful: skies, mountains, grain, Pilgrims, heroes, and dreams. (NKA)

Recounts the diverse reactions elicited by a college writing teacher when he asked his students to compose using his copy of Keats' life-mask as a resource. Discusses how the life-mask acted as a stimulus, turning in-class writing into an exciting and useful composition experience. (NKA)

Approaches a writing assignment in an all-girls classroom by differentiating between what men think is funny ("guyfun") and what women think is funny ("galfun"). (NKA)

Outlines a method for preparing student-generated television shows for the local cable television channel. (NKA)

Contrasts the complaints of a class of gifted students about Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two Cities" with their teacher's discomfort at sitting through the long and tedious movie "Brazil." (NKA)

Notes the lack of fiction geared toward young adolescent males and humorously suggests that what little is available is far too serious in tone and moral viewpoint. (NKA)

Recounts a teacher's successful search for a game that would reinforce her students' grasp of English grammar. (NKA)

Advocates the use of two frameworks, "gathering" and "sharing," for junior high school homework assignments that connect the classroom to the outside world and make students responsible for some of their own learning. (NKA)