Argues that reflecting on important "marker" stories in people's lives by using counting ropes (based on the children's book "Knots on a Counting Rope" by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault) helps students and teachers make sense of their complex worlds. Describes how they are used in the author's language arts methods course. Describes a…

Notes the problem of Net-based plagiarism in student papers. Describes a solution that turns the tables by using the Internet: TurnItIn.com, an Internet scanner that annotates/marks unattributed material in student papers and compiles a report for the teacher overnight. (SR)

Describes how the author developed her own program for teaching grammar in the context of writing. Shows how, after laying some groundwork, she lets students' needs direct her teaching to specific usage areas. Shows how she gives specific instruction, supports it with examples, and then has students apply this to their writing. (SR)

Discusses five recent books about language that address issues that arise in classrooms with an increasing number of diverse dialects and varied home languages. Discusses the complexities of language, misunderstandings in the Ebonics controversy, socioeducational issues, and classroom ideas for teachers. Describes two web sites. (SR)

Discusses three books that can take readers all over the world in geographies both personal and global, visiting grandfather's and grandmother's spaces, literally and figuratively, helping readers know themselves as they remember their "belonging." (SR)

Argues against using literature with high school students that is relentlessly dark, depressing, and self absorbed, which English instructors often find Deeply Significant, and which many students find repulsive. Argues that what many young readers want now is a literature of hope. Recommends 20 such books. Offers brief descriptions of 10 new or…

Offers recommendations from six different English teachers of novels, short stories, or poems that they recommend or have used successfully in the classroom to discuss issues and dilemmas of peace. (SR)

Argues that many students are alone and afraid in high schools. Looks at two basic premises underlying the traditional way of doing school: competition and conformity, and their inherent violence. Describes how the author works with prospective English teachers in her methods class, showing them how teachers can teach a curriculum of respect and…

Argues that any curriculum of peace must have at its core the teaching (not preaching) of empathy. Recommends ecphrastic poetry (poetic response to works of art) as a teaching tool for empathy, and discusses how the author uses one particular poem written in response to a World War II photograph to stimulate student writing response and…

Argues that teachers of writing can readily become forces for peace in our schools and, by extension, in society at large. Argues that returning to personal story at the center of the writing curriculum, accompanied by deep listening, will promote peace and well-being, voice and sense of self, and respect and caring as well as powerful literacy in…

Describes how and why a high school English teacher changed her classroom to allot more time for creative writing, to teach a research paper from a personal perspective, and to extend student appreciation of voice and conflict beyond the literature studied in class. Describes how this fostered opportunities for individual growth and transformed…

Describes a number of class activities and student projects that the authors have used to teach the language and literature of peace in seventh- and eighth-grade reading and language arts classes, via theme-based units, interdisciplinary projects, and original theatrical student productions that celebrate language and literacy through the arts.…

Discusses the merits of implementing a character education curriculum through teaching literature according to themes. Argues that a reflective approach, emphasizing students' engagement with the issues and the resolutions they come up with for considering moral dilemmas, will be more effective than a didactic approach. Describes a unit on…

Describes the author's experience writing a novel which she believed was a love story, but came to realize was a story about domestic violence. Argues for a strong role for young adult literature in examining the realities of abusive, confining relationships. Notes that young people have been helped in dealing with their own dilemmas by seeing…

Describes how one high school English teacher developed and taught a unit that would give students the opportunity to see how violence and nonviolence affects their lives. Notes the unit involves discussing the lives and careers of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., viewing film clips and film, reading, writing in journals, and writing a…