Through law-related education, students learn how society faces the need for legal structure. The law-related curricula of many schools share certain aims: to provide knowledge and a positive attitude toward the law, to improve analytical thinking, and to examine the fundamental values of our society. (Author/MLF)

Student volunteerism can include direct service, research and community education, and advocacy service. Alert observation and informed questioning are at the heart of learning from nonclassroom experience. (Author/MLF)

Defines the role of a department head and suggests some ways to help schools use department chairmen more effectively. (MLF)

The major cause of stress in private schools is ambiguity, according to this administrator, including ambiguity about teachers' status, roles, and commitment as well as about alumni attitudes, academic curricula, educational change, standardized tests, the purposes of a private education, and tuition tax credits. (RW)

Sources of teacher stress in private boarding schools include the expectations placed on teachers, poor administrative leadership, the physical environment, time pressures, and age differences or similarities with colleagues and students. Coping with stress may involve lowered expectations, better personal health care, consistent supervision,…

Because boarding schools resemble "total institutions," offering no escape from failure or low self-esteem, private school students feel great stress. Both good and bad students feel stress, as do new, minority, or emotionally troubled students, especially from lack of privacy, lack of control over life, and demanding schedules. (RW)

Trustees evaluating their private school should know the school and its staff. They can use objective evaluation methods, such as standardized test results or college placement of graduates, but they should also incorporate the opinions of recent graduates and the community and utilize staff presentations to the board. (RW)

Popular culture now considers marijuana harmless, but research shows it has definite physiological and neurological effects, effacing memory and attention and producing cell damage and learning deficits. Young people turn to pot to escape the emotional pressures of adolescence. Parents and schools can help adolescents by setting firm prohibitions.…

The director of Woodberry Forest Summer School outlines the implementation and operation of his program as a model for similar endeavors. (SJL)

A basic premise of the writing for real approach is that, to teach students to write, one must reverse the traditional literature-writing sequence, by which writing experiences are derived from reading selections. It is crucial to allow students to first write about their own experiences and environment. (Author/SJL)

Presents a rationale, based on Judeo-Christian principles, for involving boarding school students in social service work. (SJL)

Drawing on his own experiences as a student and as an English teacher, the author considers the learning value of the marks and comments teachers make on students' compositions. (SJL)

The small percentage of private schools with flourishing senior project programs share common characteristics of program philosophy and design. These programs help students take advantage of available programs such as the annual two-week long Chesapeake cruise of the 60-foot schooner "Dawn Treader." (SB)

The article describes the experiences and personal growth of Gregory Witcher, a Black high school student from Washington, D.C., as he confronted the largely White world at Phillip Exeter Academy and later at Williams College. (SB)

Three studies indicate that because Black students can enter college with substantially lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores than their White peers yet still expect to achieve on a par with the majority population, other factors should be considered when predicting the academic success of Black students. (SB)