An Innovative Teacher Turns Kids into Writers ; Nancy Barile's Flair for Teaching Has Captured Her Students' Attention - and Just Earned Her an Award from the College Board

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Most of the hallways in Revere High School are lined with skinny, sherbet-orange lockers. But outside Nancy Barile's classroom, her sophomore lit students have placed a stately row of poster-board gravestones, complete with epitaphs, for the characters who died in "Hamlet."

Ms. Barile knows how to hook the CSI generation. But it's her flair for teaching them to write that earned her a recent award from the College Board.

On this particular morning, the teens in her "Mysteries" elective class focus intensely as they draft their own suspense stories. Barile has already led them through the criteria she'll be looking for, and the priority today is imagery - part of …