Two hundred student writers, from more than 100 New England high schools, will gather at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf campus this month for the first New England Young Writers’ Conference.
The two-day meeting, modeled on the nationally known Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for professional writers, now in its 60th year, is being co-sponsored by Middlebury College and Middlebury Union High School in Middlebury, Vt., and Otter Valley High School in Brandon, Vt.
The students participating in the program will be selected by the English departments at their schools.
On the students’ agenda are workshops, readings and lectures by professionals, “think tanks” to promote the exchange of ideas, and reading sessions at which they will present some of their own work. At the conference’s conclusion, an anthology will be compiled including one piece of writing from each student attending.
Students must be in the 10th or 11th grade to participate, but exceptions will be made this year for particularly talented seniors.
“The response to the idea has been overwhelming,” said Barbara Ganley of the English department at Middlebury Union High School. “We received positive responses from almost twice the number of schools we could accommodate.”
A new audiovisual series,"Tax Whys: Understanding Taxes,” will help high-school students learn about the topic that vexes their parents every spring.
The six-part series was underwritten by the Internal Revenue Service and developed, with the help of a team of economics educators, by the Agencies for Instructional Technology and the Joint Council on Economic Education.
The program examines such issues as why there are taxes, how taxes influence behavior, how taxes affect different income groups, and how tax burdens can be distributed among different groups in society.
The program is designed for use in courses in social studies, business education, consumer education, career education, and economics. It will be distributed to schools nationally through state and local education agencies, public broadcasting organizations, and state councils and university centers for economic education.
The Joint Council on Economic Studies is also developing a training program for teachers who are interested in using the materials.
When the public-television series “The Brain” is rebroadcast next fall, high-school students throughout the country will be able to follow along in their science classes.
The ciba-geigy Corporation, a chemical and pharmaceutical company, has announced plans to make available to all 26,000 of the nation’s high schools a special study guide to be used in conjunction with the television series.
The free guides, containing materials for students and teachers, will be distributed in September to the chairmen of high-school science departments.--lo
