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"In this Text to Text, we pair Dr. King's pivotal "I Have a Dream" speech with a reflection by the Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani, who explores why this singular speech has such lasting power."

"How lawmakers and school officials police social media can have serious implications for youth free expression. We have seen students punished for online speech that was discovered by faculty, reported by other students or with the aid of surveillance companies like SnapTrends, CompuGuardian, Gaggle, and Social Sentinel Inc. Punishment for speech often comes under the veneer of keeping schools "safe," whether from physical violence or emotional distress. But how far can that authority legally extend? When do schools go too far in policing student speech online? As we'll explain, the lines are not as clear as one might think."

"Great oratory magnifies the lessons of great writing. Written for the ear, memorable speeches tend to use certain rhetorical devices - such as parallelism or emphatic word order - in greater measure than less dramatic forms of communication. The language strategies rise to the surface, so you may not even need a pair of X-ray reading glasses to see them."

A column that analyzes the rhetorical strategies that Bill Clinton used in his speech at the DNC

"In this Text to Text, we pair President Johnson's "Great Society" speech with an article by Trip Gabriel describing the new face of poverty in rural West Virginia."

"Roosevelt's brevity exposes the rhetorical devices leaders often use in times of crisis. Take the five-step structure so popular with speechwriters it now has a name: Monroe's Motivated Sequence. In "Infamy," Roosevelt uses all five. First, win attention. Second, present a problem. Third, offer a solution. Fourth, envision the future Fifth, utter a call to action"

"Like so many of the people he writes about, McPhee is a consummate craftsman. There are many aspects of his craft that a fellow writer can envy, from his keen, loving ear for the quirks and rhythms of American speech, to his arsenal of tools - including shifts of tense you only notice on the second reading - for nimbly hopping about in time."

"Two years ago, at the suggestion of a fellow actor, Kelly decided to take a different tack: Incorporate music, specifically hip-hop, into a typical workshop. He pulled apart one of his traditional presentations featuring Shakespearean speeches from different plays, and revamped it with hip-hop beats and music. They focused on the rhythm and poetry of both art forms, and even designed a rap version of the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet, comparing it with the themes of some present-day hip-hop songs. "We will say [to the students], 'Oh, isn't that interesting? 400 years ago this guy was talking about this [suicide, indecision], so really, nothing has changed, has it?" When they brought it to high schools, "Shakespeare Meets Hip-Hop" was an instant success. "The presentation itself, they loved," Kelly said. "They'd go bananas when we would do it, and they loved all the musical stuff we put in there.""

""There are expectations on our kids to ... be a charismatic extrovert," says Kasevich. Even if it's unconsciously, she says, teachers tend to give more attention to the louder students. Kasevich admits she did it too: calling on the kids who raised their hands first. The two-day course started with reimagining class participation, which in some schools can count for a big portion of students' grades. Kasevich would prefer it be called classroom engagement. "Being present and connecting doesn't have to take place through lots of speech," she says. Why not try drawing, writing or working in pairs? Or, Kasevich suggests, have students walk around the room, writing ideas on tacked-up pieces of paper. They can respond to each other's ideas - like a sort of silent dialogue."

"List plays alphabetically by number of words by number of speeches by date"

A great speech that sums up the corporate threats facing education

"From the "I have a dream" speech to Steve Jobs' iPhone launch, many great talks have a common structure that helps their message resonate with listeners. In this talk, presentation expert Nancy Duarte shares practical lessons on how to make a powerful call-to-action."

"I've used the story of Rudolph as a "mentor text" ever since. At 88 words, Rudolph is shorter than the Jesus parables and the Lincoln speeches, works often praised for their brevity and high purpose. In the digital age, writers need reminders that memorable stories can be told in short forms. I now believe that there may be no more efficient example for teaching the elements of story than Rudolph. I use it to discuss the naming of characters, the telling detail, the inciting incident, the narrative arc, the story engine, the mythic archetype and the big payoff."

VIDEO: "Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is often interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity, seemingly encouraging readers to take the road less traveled. This interpretation has long been propagated through countless song lyrics, newspaper columns, and graduation speeches. But as Frost liked to warn his listeners, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem-very tricky." In actuality, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood are "really about the same," according to Frost, and are equally traveled and quite interchangeable. In fact, the critic David Orr deemed Frost's work "the most misread poem in America," writing in The Paris Review: "This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices… The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism. It's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.""

"In the second half of the year, my writing course shifts to a more focused study of argument. We read and analyze several mentor texts together as a class, starting with speeches and letters, including an in-depth analysis of the classic  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. (this year, I also paired King's text with "The Future Needs Us" by Rebecca Solnit and the introduction from Writings on the Wall by Kareem Abdul Jabbar). But the key to teaching students how to analyze argument-particularly in today's media rich world-is to make the time and space for students to take what they have learned and apply it independently. (In fact, that's true when you teach anything.) So this year, I changed up my argument unit a bit to include a two-week workshop period in which students would: Read several arguments from a variety of media (written, visual, auditory, film); Analyze the arguments for their line of reasoning; Write their own original essay which defends, challenges, or qualifies a claim made by one (or more) of the arguments they studied."

A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons-those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech-don't help and may even hinder students' efforts to become better writers. Yes, they need to learn grammar, but the old-fashioned way does not work.

Ike once warned of the miliatry industrial complex and now Ravith warns of the new edu-entrepreneurial industry. That is the ground we feel shifting under our feet.