You can keep your Liz Taylor screaming in her white sundresses, and your bellowing Marlon Brando in an undershirt bellowing outside Stella's window: I think Tennessee William's finest work isn't A Streetcar Named Desire or Suddenly Last Summer, or even Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Genius as they all are, I think his most magical, lyrical play is The Glass Menagerie. Continue reading...

Writing teacher Margaret Hundley Parker has a simple lesson for her students: Don't learn grammar from rock stars. Here Margaret explains how rock and roll lyrics with non-standard English constructions can often lead students of grammar astray. Continue reading...

Teachers from across the country write us about how the Visual Thesaurus helps their students increase reading comprehension. Now a federally funded study is taking a closer look at the connection between the Visual Thesaurus and reading. Developed by researchers at the prestigious Education Development Center, Inc. in Boston, the study is following eighth grade students with learning disabilities who've been introduced to the Visual Thesaurus. Their findings show that the Visual Thesaurus can significantly help students struggling with reading comprehension. Continue reading...

Recently, one of my teachers sent me a link to an interview of Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove, given to Fritz Lanham of the Houston Chronicle. The interview contained Mr. McMurtry's very pessimistic viewpoint that the end of book culture is near. Continue reading...

Hey, have you guys heard about this crazy new thing lots of teachers are doing? It's a little nuts, so you may want to sit down. I was floored myself when I heard, but lots of language arts teachers are using recently-written literature in their classrooms! Like, literature not written by Hawthorne, Williams or Dickinson. Nuts! Continue reading...

David Hollander is a critically acclaimed novelist and essayist who teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. We asked him to share some of the more peculiar recurring errors of spelling and usage that he's come across in his students' work.

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I feel like I ought to begin this column with some kind of public service announcement. Maybe a shaky close-up of the cover of the script of Death of a Salesman (preferably the one of Dustin Hoffman in old-age makeup), followed by a slow pan out as we hear Morgan Freeman's voice saying, "Teachers of America, before you teach Arthur Miller's classic, you should know... your students will not understand this play. If you have any choice in the matter — any choice at all — you should choose The Crucible." Continue reading...