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Each of the papers in this collection offers a much-needed antidote to the forces that disconnect educators from the places in which they teach, learn, and live. Together, they provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of place in education. This issue offers an opportunity--an invitation--to embrace all that the places both in and outside the classroom have to offer. Individual essays in this paper include: (1) Reclaiming the Promise of Place: An Interview with David Greenwood (Roberta Altman); (2) Playing in Literary Landscapes: Considering Children's Need for Fantasy Literature in the Place-Based Classroom (Sarah Fisher); (3) Guggenheim for All: Museum Education for Students on the Spectrum (Chiara Di Lello); (4) Curtain Up: Place-based Teaching & Learning in the New York City Theater District (Peggy McNamara and Bryan Andes); (5) Place-Based Education: (Re)Integrating Ecology & Economy (Mark T. Kissling and Angela Calabrese Barton); (6) Discovering Place-based Education in the Foothills of the Himalayas (Monimalika Day with Doug Hernandez); (7) Learning Naturally: An Inquiry Study of Streams in Hawaii (Becca Kesler); (8) Nature Preschools: Putting Nature at the Heart of Early Childhood Education (Ken Finch and Patti Ensel Bailie); and (9) Preparing Teachers for Place-based Teaching (Amy Vinlove). Individual essays contain references and figures.

This paper tells the remarkable and compelling story of Leonard Covello, a ground breaking progressive educator who worked tirelessly to shape public education in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. Covello was the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) in East Harlem in the 1930s. The author invites everyone to explore a little known part of the past and frames a critical discussion about what the future might be. The major objective of this study is to examine Covello's work within the twin frameworks of educational leadership and progressivism. It begins by providing a biographical sketch of Covello and then explores his professional and personal philosophy and the way that these played out in his roles as educational and community leader, sociopolitical activist, and community ethnographer. It then examines BFHS as a new paradigm for educational institutions, with an emphasis on its pioneering work in developing student leaders, engaging in community activism, and promoting intercultural education. Finally, it looks at the larger implications of Covello's work in an era of increased emphasis on testing and standardization. By looking back to Covello's work, the author locates the problems of our present situation in schools' retreat from a core progressive goal--the development of social capital within students and community members. (Contains 3 footnotes. Introduction written by Patrick Shannon.)

Teacher leadership is "hard." Many of the reasons are obvious: Teaching is a highly labor-intensive profession to begin with, leaving little downtime for work with other adults. School schedules are notoriously stingy with space for adult collaboration. Teachers are rarely paid to exercise leadership; when they are, they are never paid enough. This volume is a modest attempt to restore the issue of teacher leadership to the prominence it deserves and requires. Although there is considerable overlap among the essays, they have been organized loosely into three categories: "mentoring," to address the essential question of teacher helping teacher; "transforming school culture," to reflect some of the many ways teachers make a difference in the environment immediately beyond their classrooms; and "advocating" for change, to spotlight the voices teacher leaders find ways to project in the interest of creating broader and more enduring change. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Becoming a Teacher Leader within Your Classroom: A Dialogue (Nayantara Mhatre and Jill Stacy); (2) Walking a Hall of Mirrors (Kami Patrizio); (3) Ask Not What FHS Can Do for You, But What You Can Do for FHS (Jessica Endlich Winkler); (4) Empowering Teachers: Developing Meaningful Leadership (Jennifer Groves); (5) Making Sense of Distributed Leadership: A Conversation Among Teacher Leaders (Kathleen Dickinson Rockwood); (6) Leadership and Agency as a Novice Teacher (Clare E. Tin); (7) BETLA Teacher Leaders: An Unselfish Sense of Purpose (Lillian Hernandez and Cristian Solorza); and (8) Leading Without Permission (Robin E. Hummel). Introduction by Gil Schmerler is also included. [This issue of Occasional Papers was supported, in part, by Bank Street's Adelaide Weismann Center for Innovative Leadership in Education.]

The days following September 11, 2001, were characterized for many by a startling clarity, as if someone had applied a magnified lens to life's everyday routines and every moment, every gesture, every word exchanged with friends, colleagues and family was more nuanced and precious than before. The decision to publish this volume of essays was fueled by a desire to provide a vehicle through which educators could share their experiences of those events. Contributors wanted to know how teachers were addressing the questions raised by the tragedy: What kinds of conversations had been sparked among children, teachers and parents? How had curriculum shifted in response to a heretofore unimaginable event? These manuscripts examine the tension between an educator's professional obligations and his/her personal needs or commitments. Rose asks the question directly: When can I stop being a caregiver and be given care? For Lent, the tension is captured in a series of vignettes that explore the vulnerability that she felt on September 11 and for many days afterward. For Rothschild and Edstrom, the tension provides a springboard from which classroom practices are launched: Rothschild allowed a new level of questioning to enter her high school classroom; Edstrom created space and time for young children to re-imagine the reality of September 11 through block play. Administrator Delacorte explores the tensions between the needs of parents to protect their children from distressing information, maintaining an atmosphere of feeling safe and those of educators to help children make sense of complex social realities in the face of crisis. Extrapolating from the work of Lent and Delacorte, Vascellaro draws up a list of principles to assist adults respond to children living through a crisis. A year after the events that prompted this collection, Weisman's students attempt to envision an appropriate memorial and to reconstruct the World Trade Towers site. The poems of Stuart-Hunt and Abell act as photographic snapshots, bringing to the reader the immediacy of the moment. The poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote that poetry is valuable in difficult times, even while he recognizes that in our time "serious combat, where life is at stake/ is fought in prose." McKersie concludes that these words feel eerily applicable to the September 11 tragedy because, in the end, it is the power of ideas and the ability to express them that is the most effective tools in managing the trials and crises of life. Following introduction (Alison McKersie), the essays include: (1) "Safe" (Patricia Lent); (2) "A Story to Tell" (Megan Rose); (3) "Monday, September 17" (Rella Stuart-Hunt); (4) "Urn" (Rella Stuart-Hunt); (5) "Building Up: Block Play after September 11" (Lisa Edstrom); (6) "Living in Question" (Cynthia R. Rothschild); (7) "Re-Visioning the World Trade Center" (Alexandra Weisman); (8) "The Children Keep Reminding Us: One School's Experience after 9/11" (Kate Delacorte); (9) "Principles for Responding to Children in a Traumatic Time" (Sal Vascellaro); (10) "The NYC Board of Education Mandates Pledging Allegiance" (Kate Abell); and (11) "Forever Undone" (Kate Abell). [Visuals for Edstrom's "Building Up" and Delacorte's "The Children Keep Reminding Us" are available on CD-ROM. CD-ROM is not available from ERIC.]

From the Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) work examining the efforts to close schools over the past 10 years, in cities of all sizes, two glaring facts stand out: Most city and district leaders are surprised at how difficult it is to close schools. And many of these leaders make mistakes that others before them have learned to avoid. Yes, each city is different. Yet each city's school closure experience shares problems common to the others. CRPE has identified these common problems and distilled these experiences to ferret out solutions to this difficult challenge confronting reform efforts to better the public schools. This working paper series examines the politics of portfolio school district reform, with a primary focus on the issues surrounding high school closures. This publication takes an in-depth look at how school closure policies have played out in four urban districts--New York City, Chicago, Denver, and Oakland--and offers a political assessment of what worked or failed and why. The political analyses, case studies, cross-district comparisons, and analysis frameworks may help education leaders anticipate and better address the challenges of closing schools within their own communities. This publication contains the following articles: (1) Better Schools through Better Politics: The Human Side of Portfolio School District Reform (Sam Sperry); (2) Portfolio Reform in New York City: "Tough Love" Brings Better Schools (Sam Sperry); (3) Portfolio Reform in Chicago: There's Trouble in River City (Sam Sperry); (4) Portfolio Reform in Denver: A Mile High and Climbing (Sam Sperry); (5) The Triage Model: What Is It and Why Was It Constructed (Kirsten Vital); and (6) School Closure Processes in Portfolio Districts (Cristina Sepe). Individual articles contain figures and footnotes. [This paper was written with Kirsten Vital and Cristina Sepe. Introduction by Paul Hill.]

As part of the broader policy debate on how to reform K-12 education, particularly high schools, basic questions about career and technical education are on the table. "Remaking Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century" begins with a summary of what researchers know--and do not know--about the value of high school career-focused education, which includes career and technical education (CTE) as traditionally conceived and also more recent innovations, including school-to-work, work-based learning, career academies, High Schools That Work, and other models of schools, programs, and instructional practices that put careers and occupation-oriented knowledge at the center of school life. Seven short essays that follow the research review look forward to where CTE will go rather than back to what past research has found. Taken together, the authors outline a reform agenda for CTE consistent with that of high school reform nationally: rigor, relevance, and relationships--with academic rigor as the primary goal and accountability, choices, and teacher quality as key levers for improvement. These essays are: (1) Change or Die: The Challenge Facing Career and Technical Education Today (Elliott A. Medrich); (2) What a 21st Century Career and Technical Education System Could Look Like (Betsy Brand); (3) A Governor's Approach to Improving Secondary Career Education (Mark Warner); (4) How the Federal Government Could Promote Academically Rigorous Career and Technical Education (Ross Wiener); (5) The SREB Model: Academic Rigor, Technical Relevance, and a Head Start on a Career (Gene Bottoms); (6) Reform in Maryland: Achievement Matters Most (Katharine M. Oliver); and (7) Toward Better Outcomes: Lessons from New York and National Research (Katherine L. Hughes). ["Remaking Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century" is part of Jobs for the Future's "Double the Numbers" initiative.]

This monograph, developed to enrich the literature on multiculturalism, includes 25 articles on the subject. The articles are: (1) "Multiculturalism and an Assessment of Its Critics: Key to an Understanding and Acceptance" (A. J. Williams-Myers); (2) "The New Demographics" (Charles G. Treadwell); (3) "'Multiple Perspectives' or Courting Ethnic Strife?" (Albert Shanker); (4) "Fieldwork and Folklife Studies: Them, Us, and If" (Beverly J. Robinson); (5) "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (Peggy McIntosh); (6) "Multiculturalism in Mathematics, Science, and Technology" (Gerry Madrazo, et al); (7) "Strategies for Implementing Multicultural Education" (Irene M. Lober; Kathryn Dunlop); (8) "Color Me" (James Hillestad); (9) "The Sociological, Psychological, and Pedagogical Implications of Multicultural Education" (Dolores M. Fernandez); (10) "Librarian-Teacher Partnerships: Serving the English as a Second Language Students" (Anne H. Filson); (11) "The Importance of the Teacher to Multiculturalism" (Maryann Fallek); (12) "Usage is Never Good or Bad but Thinking Makes It So" (Frances E. Blake); (13) "Creating Thematic Units with a Multicultural Focus" (Patricia Baker); (14) The New York State Social Studies Supervisory Association's "Regents' Letter"; (15) "Ways to Implement Multiculturalism: Twenty-One Lessons for American History with a Multicultural Focus" (Anna May Filor); (16) The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) "Background Paper: Multicultural Science Education" and "NSTA Position Statement: Multicultural Science Education"; (17) "Multicultural Classrooms, Monocultural Teachers" (Terry Dean); (18) "Multicultural Education Mathematics Is a Great Place to Start" (Bill Collins); (19) "Let's Teach Our Common Heritage" (Anthony Cortese); (20) "1492-1992 The Columbian Quincentenary: An Educational Opportunity" (National Council for the Social Studies); (21) "Multicultural Assessment" (Jose S. Sanchez; Ed Yanson); (22) "Bilingual Education: Educating the Global Villager" (Carmen A. Vazqueztell; Ximena E. Zate); (23) "Experiencing Other Cultures through Fiction" and "Multicultural Fiction: List of Books for Secondary Students" (Judity Gray); (24) "Foreign Language Instruction: Keystone to Multiculutral Education" (Sophie Jeffries); and (25) "Multicultural Art Education: Many Views, One Reality" (Patricia Barbanell). (LBG)