Margins
  Donovan A. Landers

A dandelion,
Yellow in the wind,
Shivers.

      During the cross-town ride to Morgenstern High, in Geronimo's 4-by-4 pick up Chevrolet, he told me about a young lady he'd interviewed.
      "I felt like wind was going to take off what hair I have left--she talked so fast," he said as we passed the near-endless drive-through line at the downtown McDonald's restaurant. "For thirty minutes she told me her life story, non-stop. She certainly had experienced a lot of woe and pain, but then she said she was going to go home and slit her wrists. She said she couldn't stand her life any longer."
      I turned down the sun visor to remove the glare. "And?"
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And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors ...
  Regina M. Buccola

Toward the end of each semester, I hold individual conferences with my composition students after they have received feedback on drafts of their final projects from their peer reader. In one such conference, held at the end of a course focused on the media, a student lamented: "I can't even read the back of my cereal box in peace anymore!" I smiled: success. In the course in question, Introduction to the Research Paper at the University of Illinois at Chicago, students had been asked to examine the family trees of the various corporate media outlets to which they are daily exposed. In tandem with learning how to gather and present information in their own projects, they studied how media outlets gather and filter information within the framework of the multi-national corporations who serve as their "parents," issuing both permission slips and allowances. The students were shocked at the widespread incest in corporate print, web-based and broadcast journalism.

I have taught two freshman-level college composition courses that used media analysis as the starting point for developing semester-long research projects: the course mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay, "Politics, Politics," which tracked the 1996 presidential campaign, and a second that explored the challenges posed for the First Amendment by the development of the worldwide web and legislation proposed to govern its use, "First Things First." ... Like Thomas Fox (1990), my ultimate goal in all such courses is "for students to develop the habit of posing problems, the habit of critically questioning their experience" (45). Even if that means that they are rendered unable to look at the back of their boxes of Wheaties without critical eyes.     full text >>>

Dethroning Bullying: Why We Must Take Back Our Schools
  Lynda L. Hinkle

In an after school hours meeting to discuss strategies for incorporating the new anti-bullying policy into the school community one teacher raises a hand and puts to the group a question that had been boiling slowly throughout the discussion in the back of many of our minds: "Just what IS bullying? It isn't enough to say we'll know it when we see it, is it?" Dan Olweus ... defined bullying as, "A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed repeatedly and over time to negative actions on the part of one or more other students" (Olweus, 1993, p. 9). Such negative actions also occur when there is an "imbalance in strength" and the victim is "somewhat helpless against the student or students who harass" (p.10). Olweus's definition is useful in developing a general conceptualization of bullying. However, in order to comply with the New Jersey school anti-bullying legislation enacted in 2002, teachers and administrators must look closely at the expansive language of the bill itself.

The problem of bullying in the public schools has far reaching effects for students, teachers, and the community. In this article, I will outline some of the effects and suggested treatments that grew out of my research for a solution at a Southern New Jersey public school district who entrusted me with making some recommendations. The result of my research was to discover that the problem is more far reaching than even I, who had been a victim of bullying growing up, could have anticipated but that it can be solved.     full text >>>