Margins
  Donovan A. Landers

THE TOLL BRIDGE

About south of Pap Doc's headlust of secrets,
Freighters Caribbean-fondled diesel
Between manicured gables and pastel storefronts
Of Amsterdam in Willemstad--in
Curacao of giant cactuses, divi-divi trees,
But not giant ones,
And wonderful oil refineries
And desalting-mongery.

*

      One week after the fire: Senior administration and the board had met, and they had decided to "take the bull by the horns," to quote Geronimo. "The Ministry of Education has been telling districts for years to set up programs that work for at-risk kids. So let's do Don's program justice." That was Geronimo's theme for the meeting.     full text >>>

Lived School Experiences That Encouraged One Person to Become a Creative Writer:
   Study III of VI   /   Part III
     Dan Lukiv

Once I have completed Study VI, I will research all six phenomenological studies through a methodology I call Theory from Phenomenology (Lukiv, 2004a). I have formulated this methodology by drawing on grounded theory principles (2004a), although what I call covering theory is not true grounded theory (Baker, Wuest, & Stern, 1995; and Stern, 1995). The purpose: to see if I can synthesize, through an inductive process, the themes into a covering theory that could direct teachers interested in creating classroom settings that may encourage some students to take up creative writing as a vocation.

Naturally, I want my studies to help teachers encourage some students to become creative writers, thereby contradicting the "widespread perception that knowledge created by [researchers] is not used in practice" (Boland et al., 2000). I witnessed this perception repeatedly as many students in my recent M.Ed. cohort expressed concern over "ivory tower" researchers whose work lies cocoon-like, educationally dormant, without influence in everyday classroom activity. Transformational knowledge, on the other hand, "moves" from the researcher to the classroom teacher who actually uses that knowledge to help him or her instruct students.     full text >>>

Teaching Dante Soul to Soul
  Alice Mills

In my undergraduate literature units, I sometimes ask students which books, if any, have radically changed their lives. Most of the students look puzzled. Perhaps those of 18 and 19, straight from high school, are too young to have had this experience as yet; perhaps film, television, and video have taken the place of reading for many; perhaps school has not opened the way to reading books that deeply challenge students' beliefs and values. I respond to the students' puzzled silence by speaking of authors whose books changed me--Proust, Blake, Dante--and each time I hope that these names will entice one or two to read the book and find out if what mattered so much to their teacher might mean something to them.

Eventually, it was my turn among the lecturing staff to organize and teach an elective unit called Selected Authors, where the lecturer in charge chose two or three authors to study in depth. I chose Dante and Blake with trepidation and hope: trepidation, because I knew how poorly many students' cultural knowledge equipped them to read these poets; hope, that I could guide my students through the poems' belief systems and tease out how they might be relevant to us now as callers to the soul to awake.     full text >>>

The Impact of a Culture-sensitive Curriculum on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics in an Aboriginal Classroom
  Anthony N. Ezeife

Considering the contributions of mathematics, science, and technology to today's world, one would have expected mounting interest in these disciplines, but the reverse seems to be the case. Indeed, there is declining enrolment in mathematics and science subjects among the youth, and poor performance in examinations, such as those taken in high school math and science courses (especially physics) by the brave few who enrol (Ezeife, 1999). It is ironical that in our pro-science and technologically oriented world, the youth who would take charge of global affairs in the future - the running of industries and the means of production, research laboratories, space technology, and international politics - are shying away from the very subjects that should adequately prepare them for such roles. Among the world's aboriginal students, the flight from mathematics and science is alarming (MacIvor, 1995; Binda, 2001), and their educational attainment levels are "historically lower than those of non-indigenous students" (O'Reilly-Scanlon, Crowe, & Weenie, 2004).     full text >>>

The Edge of the Grass
  Diane Wood

      For the majority of her college years Carrie Ogden lived in a cozy one-bedroom apartment set back within a quiet, peaceful cul-de-sac overlooking a small neighborhood lake in Lexington, Kentucky. Sometimes, to take a break from studying or to simply go outdoors, she would amble over to the lakeshore to feed the ducks whatever leftover bread she had. Sometimes just a few stale pieces, she would rip them up into smaller chunks, wad them up in her hand for better distance, and hurl them as far out onto the lake as she could. The grateful ducks would chase after the doughy lumps as if she had just thrown the missing pieces to an unsolved riddle, and having emptied her bag, Carrie would sit by the slapping shore content to have made their day and smugly contemplate the pieces of her unfolding life.     full text >>>