"Playing With Dragons: Using Role-playing Games to Support Academic Objectives" explores how table role-playing games might positively impact the attainment of classroom learning objectives. This paper begins with an exploration of what a table role-playing game is, and compares it to educational theatre techniques, primarily process…

This paper discusses the impact of instructional coaching on teachers of striving learners in the secondary English classroom. Conducted with eight teachers in a large urban high school, this study took place over four weeks and explored how implementation of Jim Knight's instructional coaching model affected teachers' comfort levels in working…

This article describes a writing assignment called Conversations with Myself (CWM) in which students "talk back" to subtractive dominant narratives through a two-part process of text analysis and autobiographical, dialogic writing. The author presents a case study of Stephen (all names are pseudonyms) to illustrate how literacy supported…

In this article, we examine one teacher's enactment of critical literacy pedagogy in a 7th-grade English language arts classroom in a New York City public school. By conceptualizing critical global literacies in relation to preservice and in-service teaching practices that reflect neoliberal interests, we attend to pedagogy inclusive of…

An analysis of praxis can inform how teachers treat lumpen masculinities performed by young Black men, who are some of the most socially defiant and alienated from US schooling and upward mobility, specifically, and other cisgender boys of color, generally. To make sense of heteropatriarchy, toxic masculinity, and urban misogyny in the classroom,…

Drawing from theories of identity, language, and race, we conceptualize gateway moments to literate identities in high school English language arts classrooms enrolling language-minoritized youth. Gateways were interactions that afforded particular kinds of literate identities for youth. Deficit literate identities often invoked racialized…

Imagine a thriving English classroom. One that's active, experiential, collaborative, and rigorous. "Authentic Literacy Instruction" will help you not just imagine this classroom, but also create it. Through a hands-on approach to student-centered literacy, the authors share how to reinvigorate your love for what you do and refine your…

This study examined the effects of extracurricular absences on final grades and State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) End-of-Course (EOC) scores. A multiple regression test was run to determine whether there was a significant relationship between the grades of students with extracurricular absences and their STAAR EOC scores.…

This case study explored how secondary English language arts teachers advanced the social justice goals of a critical multicultural literature class within a dialogic classroom environment encouraging the free exchange of multiple perspectives. The study examined two teachers' experiences and tensions in negotiating two simultaneously held…

English teaching that satisfies curricula standards has often been siloed from instruction that advances the goals of social justice. Exasperated teachers may feel they can either meet the day-to-day demands of their profession or teach to dismantle social inequities, but not achieve the aims of both approaches. In this reflective practitioner…

The author describes how the production and reception of popular culture can be studied in secondary classrooms using Wendy Griswold's cultural diamond to better understand the homogenizing of content and the limiting of alternative viewpoints.

This phenomenological study explored best practices to increase preservice teacher self-efficacy before the student teaching semester. The research was guided by this central inquiry and three sub-questions. Using a pre- and post-phenomenon survey instrument as well as an initial questionnaire and a final reflection, preservice teachers who were…

An educational debt exists for Black and Latinx students with and without IEPs. This debt extends to underrepresentation in curricula and overrepresentation in special education. Identity representation in English Language Arts curricula offers promise to counter this existing educational debt as well as overrepresentation. This qualitative study…

Building on youth literacies in formal learning spaces is a promising direction for asset-based literacy learning designs. However, in response to ways that academic spaces can deaden passionate literacy study, it is important to attend to the resulting affective flows of such practices. This study traces how affect was sustained and dampened in a…

Can traditional live theatre affect the identity formation of teenagers? Drawing upon a six-year, qualitative study of Canadian, independent school live theatre audiences and a review of identity formation and audience studies, this paper offers three findings of interest to high school English teachers. These speak to the need for English…