Discusses how a unit using a Russian novel helped students experience a sense of glasnost in their classrooms and allows teacher/researchers to examine how middle school students respond to literature. Finds that using literature from other countries forces students to examine their own values in contrast with those of the characters. (MG)

Shares how a 12-week course for second-semester seniors called "Cultures in Conflict: Post-Colonial Literature from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific" offers students on a Navajo reservation important insights into how other peoples have dealt with racial misunderstandings, inequities of power, and shifts in traditional values and beliefs.…

Shares how one ninth grade teacher led her students to expand their knowledge of geography through the use of literature studies in an untracked English class. Discusses how placing emphasis on negotiating meaning with everyone participating contributed to the breaking down of barriers erected by years of ability grouping. (MG)

Offers two views supporting the concept of tracking and another telling how one middle school teacher works around tracking. (MG)

Shares the thoughts of two teachers on what they consider to be losses to the English curriculum in recent years: phase-elective English and the thematic unit. (MG)

Reviews 10 young adult books which have been the most popular with critics and list makers for 1989. (MG)

Recommends eight plays from the 1980s which will challenge the thinking of students with issues such as evolving independence of young people, growing up in the context of racism and discrimination, insights into the world of the deaf, and the suffering of humanity during the French Revolution. (MG)

Reviews "How Porcupines Make Love II," the sequel on teaching a response-centered literature curriculum. Finds it to be a lively, engaging, provocative text, one that includes workable hints for classroom practice. (MG)

Shares how posing realistic problems with students provides them with an opportunity to value their own opinion and develop effective arguments on their position. (MG)

Discusses the architectonics of four essays: John McPhee's "Travels in Georgia," Richard Rhodes'"Death All Day," and two by student writers. Diagrams each essay, showing how these writers built bridges of words over experiences. (SR)

Describes the approach used with high school advanced placement English classes to a nature-writing project based on the work of Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard. (SR)

Describes using published journals and books written by adolescents to spark seventh graders' journal writing. (SR)

Presents six descriptions of classrooms, projects, or students labeled "special." Discusses how English teachers and learning-disabled specialists work together in a single classroom; problems of gifted and talented programs; programs that bring gifted and handicapped students into close working relations; and one very special student. (SR)

Presents two essays on teaching so-called average students: "The Forgotten Half," by Sharon Thomas; and "The Generals: Engaging Uncommitted Students in a Study of 'Huck Finn,'" by Lou Haga. (SR)

Argues that the key to success with at-risk students is to expand the scope and the extent of actual, active student participation in planning, implementing, and evaluating courses of study. Describes how one teacher does so in her literature classes at an innercity school for high-risk students. (SR)