Back when videotaping meant bringing in a large, reel-to-reel, black and white machine, an era before VCRs in half the homes in the United States, I had my teaching videotaped. My hands flapped about my face like wet sheets as I lectured to 350 undergraduates on why Jim's telling Huck about his daughter's deafness is the emotional key to Huckleberry Finn. But I was more proud than ashamed of the performance, and when my father made his one trip to Madison before he died, I wanted him to see it. I'm unclear on whether or not he finished the eighth grade, and for most of my life we lived uneasily with our differences, education and attitudes toward it being a major one. Things can change for the better, and as we both got older, they did between us. He was willing to watch the tape even though by then it was hard for him to walk and watching it meant going to a media lab on campus and sitting in an uncomfortable chair for an hour. He never took his eyes from the screen, and when it was over, he said what he'd always said about anything I'd done well: "That's good, Jim."

It meant the world to me that he would go and watch it. I think it meant a lot to him that I wanted him to. In bridging differences, we understood our common footing, that all-important bedrock beneath the river of time.

This issue of the Forum begins and ends with pieces on bridging differences and reaching bedrock. It ends with a report on Renford Reese's Colorful Flags program which shows how a little knowledge--just a few phrases in a "foreign" language--can make a world of difference. It begins with a discussion of social class. Lee Warren of Harvard and Ester Kingston-Mann of UMass-Boston share ideas about the implications of class differences for more effective teaching. No one wants to talk about class; few can agree on how to define it. In the relationship of teaching and learning--as in any intimate relationship--it may be that the things we don't want to talk about end up mattering most.

The articles in between have something to do with bridging differences as well. Megan Sullivan's piece on modelling collaboration rather than just prescribing it shows the importance of practicing what we preach. Mara Donaldson's article on using popular culture to illustrate powerful, abstract concepts about cosmology reminds us just how many worlds we all inhabit simultaneously, and how much richer each becomes when we feel their interconnection. Tom Hart's piece on John Dewey proves the rule by recalling one of teaching's most revered exceptions. Dewey may have kept to the podium rather than the practicum, but his passion and the power of his ideas continue to influence thinking in and about American higher education.

Ever practical and ever in the vanguard, technology editor Tom Creed offers another rich example of using the Web and other, lower-tech technology to improve teaching effectiveness. This time, he focuses on ways to extend and enhance the classroom assessment techniques (CATs) popularized by Cross and Angelo. As usual, Tom has also assembled a Virtual Companion on the NTLF Web site that pulls together examples and additional information. Further, this time Tom invites you to contribute reports on what you're doing and help demonstrate one of the very useful feedback loops he's talking about.

A new school year begins, another chance to make a difference, perhaps a chance to bridge one.