Purpose: This paper aims to explore how sounds and attunements to particular organizations of sound collide across an English language community learning space. The activities in the paper come from a six-week summer initiative that connected middle school youth with community artists for writing songs and rap lyrics, making beats and hip-hop…

Purpose: From book challenges to anti-critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of far-right conservative pushback. This study aims to explore the effects of conservative pushback on individual English teachers…

This article presents a "telling case" of an interdisciplinary, team-teaching experience that explores how participants eschewed "ethnocentricism" of their fields of study in order to learn from each other, while providing instruction to students and analysing data collected from the class (a graduate course on literature and…

In order to improve problem-solving dispositions, a section of an inquiry-based math sequence for first-year business students was linked with a section of our general education English sequence. We describe how the linked classes worked and compare some preliminary results from linked and unlinked sections of the math sequence.

A specially designed English course at Model High School in suburban Detroit teaches high school students about disabilities in order to increase their knowledge and understanding. It also fosters opportunities for actual interaction with special needs students by training students to be peer mentors.

Widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in the United States has resulted in an unprecedented set of national secondary school writing standards that shift responsibility for writing instruction across content areas. As secondary school teachers grapple with these new demands, this article proposes that WAC can serve as a key…

In this article, we argue that preservice teachers have limited experience reading and writing poetry, and that if they are to teach poetry in meaningful ways to their future students, they need to have compelling experiences with poetry in teacher education--ones that take into account their former experiences and incoming dispositions and that…

This essay is about the process of discovering and trying to help an exceptional student who was grappling with issues of real-life violence and incarceration and the desire to articulate their meaning to his life through writing. It describes how this student empowered himself to reflect on and deconstruct the meaning of his incarceration and how…

There is an alternative to conventional teacher mentorship. The authors describe and analyze a promising model of mentorship where multiple mentees and mentors, each with varying levels of experience, engage collaboratively in the study of teaching practice. They have found that well-designed contexts in which beginning and experienced teachers…

To pay attention--to observe, to see the richness and detail that is right before everyone--is the essence of mindfulness. It is also, the author argues, the essence of good writing--the kind of writing for which there is a long American tradition of writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, E. B. White, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, John…

The use of reflection and analysis in preparation of elementary and secondary preservice teachers has become a standard practice aimed at helping them develop the capacity to engage in intentional and systematic investigation of their practice. Editing video may be a more powerful tool than writing reflections based on memory to help preservice…

This article considers the benefits and challenges of using English teacher candidates' videotaped discussions of literature as tools to facilitate authentic and engaging discussions of literature. More specifically, this article examines the use of teacher candidates' videotaped discussions in a secondary English methods course to expand…

Speaking involves "linearizing" a message into a string of words. This process leaves us vulnerable to being interrupted in such a way that the aborted turn is a misrepresentation of the intended message. Further, because we linearize our messages in standard ways, we are recurrently vulnerable to interruptions at particular…

Presents two assignments that are designed to help students (at the high school and college levels) to develop a sense of place while building skills to improve their narrative writing. Includes the assignment sheet. Describes how students create a Michigan Travel Guide from their final drafts. (SR)

Based on the author's experience with a Rust Belt high school literacy-development project, this article discusses how teachers use process-centered innovations in language arts classrooms, the pedagogical impulses behind the innovations, and their contributions to student learning. Rather than diminishing students' learning, inquiry-based…