This book contains school-related jokes.

Packed with practical and inspiring advice from acclaimed educator, author, and speaker Harry K. Wong, this classic video presentation outlines how to become an effective leader and professional educator. Dr. Wong emphasizes that each and every teacher has the ability to be effective. The key is perseverance and the belief that every student has the ability to learn. Effective teachers employ many strategies to be successful, such as positive expectations,...

Poetry's ability to bridge gaps and cross boundaries is emphasized in this program through the works of Robert Hass, Claribel Alegria, and Carolyn Forche. Distinctly different in terms of background and style, these three artists are identical in their ability to transport audiences to new places, new feelings, and new hopes. Filmed at the Biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

As children begin school and other new experiences, what happens to the values, behavior, and expectations they have learned at home? Why do so many young people follow the crowd? And when does conformity become a bad thing? This program explores those questions, visiting a group of 25 seven-year-olds who are learning to cope with peer groups and situations. Children and parents are given tasks to see who conforms and who is comfortable standing out,...

Characterized by expressions of individuality, popularismo, criticism, stoicism, humor, piety, and dignity, the literature of Spain spans ten centuries, includes some of history's most significant writers, and contains landmark works of every major literary genre. This program provides an overview of Iberian history as it relates to Spanish literature. The formation of regional tongues and their importance in the cultural life of Spain are discussed,...

Ranging from the everyday to the esoteric, this program rounds out the study of punctuation by investigating the many functions of hyphens, apostrophes, slashes, and ellipses. Topics presented include the following: using hyphens to create compound nouns and adjectives, spell out numbers, and break lines of text; using apostrophes to form contractions, possessives, and plurals; using slashes to separate lines of poetry, offer a choice between words,...

What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that have been in this country since its inception. But they share something else, too: Both had ancestors who were early opponents of slavery. Bacon's Quaker ancestors repudiated slavery long before the rest of the country, in 1780. And Sedgwick's ancestor Theodore Sedgwick argued the freedom case of Elizabeth Freeman,...

Vincent van Gogh is perhaps the most mythologized artist in the history of art and his tragic life is ingrained in the popular imagination. Active as an artist for only ten years he completed 1250 paintings, before succumbing to mental illness and taking his own life in July of 1890. Van Gogh was a deeply spiritual man and began painting after witnessing the desperate poverty of the agricultural communities of Holland and Belgium. He developed a highly...

The effect of Jane Hirshfield's reading is almost transcendental, like the sound of distant echoes in a canyon. "I know that many of my poems don't evoke clapping," she says, "and I want to assure you that I take silence as a high compliment. In this program, Bill Moyers and Ms. Hirshfield discuss topics including her experience as a practitioner of Zen and the relative merits of sound and silence in poetry. Readings by Ms. Hirshfield feature "Three...