Describes the classrooms of two middle-school science teachers, reporting what they have noted regarding gender issues in the classroom, and describing strategies they find to be effective in helping girls--and boys--resist the negative effects of gender-binding in the middle school years. Discusses gender issues in language arts and what can be…

Examines the pressures girls in classrooms face as they reach adolescence and experience cultural norms that encourage the silencing of a young woman's voice as she grows into adulthood. Looks that the journal's potential to save that voice. Explores how classroom journals can be structured to help girls nurture and grow their voices. (SR)

Presents an appreciation in honor and praise of language arts educator Donald H. Graves. Describes the rewards, now compounding through the generations, of his gentle encouragement and his continual modeling as a learner himself, teaching students and classroom teachers to value all they know and all they can do through writing compassionately and…

Relates how one middle school teacher's small, private step against gang violence inspired her students to organize their own anti-violence activity (painting over gang graffiti), which in turn caused ripples into the community, the school district, and city hall. (SR)

Talks about the "writing from the heart" practiced in one sixth-grade classroom by students and teacher, for many different purposes. Describes instructional approaches that encourage such writing. (SR)

Describes how an elementary school literacy specialist worked with and saw the dilemmas, frustrations, and heartaches of a new student from Puerto Rico. Notes that the literacy specialist learned valuable lessons and gained an appreciation for the need to honor and celebrate, engage and instruct all students from all over the globe. (SR)

Describes an action research project which began by asking how English teachers could improve the writing of their African American students, and gradually came to ask how the teachers' own cultural assumptions might be blocking their teaching relationships. Identifies and discusses eight principles of their approach, and discusses changes in…

Describes a master's level course for teachers called "Foundations of Reading Instruction," which was built around students choosing their own goal of what they wanted to learn about the teaching of reading. Discusses the structure of their in-class workshops, goals, midway self-evaluations, the last weeks of their work on their goals, final…

Outlines the limitations of letter grades and the problems with giving percentage points. Discusses authentic evaluation and the author's daily process of evaluation with her low-reading students as they engage daily in reflecting, rethinking, selecting, and deciding. (SR)

Describes the challenges and rewards of working with Amy (an eighth-grade girl considered autistic) in a team-taught language arts class that functions in the workshop format and that includes learners with special needs. Describes Amy's progress and setbacks, and notes the importance of the workshop format for her progress and for her teacher's…

Presents excerpts from a student's year-end self-evaluation, including a few excerpts from her portfolio. Includes her teacher's comments, intended to confirm what the student knows, and to consider how the teacher's classroom practices may have influenced or contributed to Sarah's learning. Appends an evaluation form to help students evaluate…

Describes why and what happened when a teacher changed from viewing English teaching as a value-neutral act to teaching what matters to her. Relates what she expects from the reading and writing workshop and how raising her own voice in terms of her passions and what she values has strengthened students' voices. (SR)

Discusses one Sudanese student's frustration with learning English his second year in the United States. Describes writing assignments used in the seventh grade class. Notes that Simon, the Sudanese student, found poetry to be an easier way to express himself using the English language. (SG)

Suggests that kids need to see the concrete, work-a-day manner in which poetry is and can be woven into their existence. Presents a summary of the steps that are used by the teacher and student when learning something new through the expert-apprentice relationship. Outlines how to move students through the steps. (SG)

Examines ideas about the literate and the illiterate, the tutored and the untutored in the poem "Answer," by Mary Oliver. Suggests that if educators want students to read carefully and analyze conscientiously, then the works they study have to matter to them. Discusses universal literacies, literacy in school and out, classroom discourse and real…