In this teaching tip, I describe how students in my second grade classroom and I developed a curricular structure called Monday Music that involved reading, singing, the study of grammar conventions in the English language, and critical conversations about popular music. Drawing on Dyson's conceptualization of the permeable curriculum, I offer…

Black experiences and discourse concerning citizenship are unique. Moreover, Black access to full citizenship is often a matter of life and death. The civic purposes driving this pursuit are often negated in conventional curriculum and pedagogy, especially in early childhood settings. Still, it is essential for educators and policymakers to…

In this essay, I detail the entanglements of three young Black boys -- Million Dollar Man, DJ, and Francisco -- and their interests in and experiences with WWE wrestling. Drawing on posthumanist philosophies that attend to the productive relationships between the human and more-than-human objects, I consider ethnographic data composed during a…

When Michael Bonner's 2nd grade students were failing their reading tests, he didn't give up on them. He made a music video. In January 2017, Ellen DeGeneres broadcast nationally what Michael Bonner's South Greenville Elementary students already knew--that Bonner was a life-transforming teacher. DeGeneres had been moved by Bonner's efforts to…

Even the youngest readers and writers in today's classrooms can benefit enormously from engagement with a wide range of traditional and nontraditional texts. This teacher-friendly handbook is packed with creative strategies for introducing K-3 students to fiction, poetry, and plays; informational texts; graphic novels; digital storytelling;…