This article identifies a conceptual paradox between recent educational policy in England and a social-democratic understanding of critical literacy. Recent political events including Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and the Coronavirus Pandemic reiterate the need for pedagogies that equip students to critique information circulated…

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

Listening is a skill to be explicitly taught, practiced, and assessed. It is a political act that, if done well, can foster a sense of agency in students. When they know how to listen well, they can engage more richly in public debate, and it builds a conscious awareness of all they hear and see in our world. Focusing on three essential skill…

Professional learning should be designed in a way that is responsive to the needs of teachers and intentionally planned with adult learning principles in mind. This article outlines one practitioner's professional journey to redefine how professional learning is designed with best practices in adult learning in mind. Strategies utilized during…

Facility with language is critical for students' academic success. In this article, we discuss the 3Ps model for planning for language use and instruction across content areas such as science, mathematics, and social studies in early childhood classrooms. Focusing on the participants, purpose, and place of communication can help teachers plan for…

This book documents an informal system of education that emerged in Ireland between the late 1750s and the end of the century, a system that operated largely without funding or direction by church or state. In a society as divided as eighteenth-century Ireland, it is remarkable that such a system could succeed, paving the way for the more formal…

Teacher-researcher, Katherine Macro spent six weeks observing an eleventh-grade Advanced Placement and Composition class at Sunnybrooke Central High School to examine the teacher's use of creative drama to teach Shakespeare. In this article, Macro describes ways the instructor used theater-based instructional strategies, especially a staged…

The teaching of writing in secondary English subjects in Australia, as in other countries including England and the United States, has become increasingly formulaic. Pedagogies including direct instruction, modelling, scaffolding, and genre-based approaches involve the implementation of formulas for writing sentences, paragraphs, and entire…

Racial literacy is a skill and practice by which individuals can probe the existence of racism and examine the effects of race and institutionalized systems on their experiences and representation in US society. Students who have this skill can discuss the implications of race and American racism in constructive ways. Racially literate teachers…

For generations, classroom English teachers have exploited knowledge of English phonemes to teach hearing children. In this article, the author explains how to exploit the strategy of using American Sign Language (ASL) graphemes to teach deaf and hard of hearing children. The goal is a fully evolved bilingual environment in which the children…

This article shares three main lessons the author learned from her correspondence with Vivian Gussin Paley. Early on, the author wrote Mrs. Paley about how she discovered the meaning of story acting for visually impaired children. The act of sharing her thoughts with Mrs. Paley showed her the power of writing to promote thinking. Equally important…

For years, the vast majority of California's community college students had to take remedial courses that slowed down or halted their academic progress. In 2019, Assembly Bill (AB) 705 removed many of these barriers, making it much easier for students to access and complete gateway transfer-level courses in English and math--a key early milestone…

Today's students are surrounded and inundated with pop culture at almost all times every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exasperated this influx of pop culture saturation as students stayed home, learned online, and for better or worse turned to television, the internet, and other popular applications to deal with isolation and have some form…

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…

Understanding global perspectives and international cultures is important because of increasing global mobility, digital connections, and national chauvinism. As students engage with diverse others in schools and online, they need global, critical, and ethical understandings of language, literacy, and culture. From a critical cosmopolitan lens,…