This article raises the reality of English as a naturally variant and fluid language inseparable from culture. The author addresses the tensions teachers face in the classroom when they make decisions about how African American students should use their language.

The author explores the racial and cultural ideologies that inform what it means to be Black in the United States and how this mainstream framing of Blackness intersects with teacher preparedness to engage Black textual expressions in the classroom.

The author argues that, by revolutionizing the literary canon, we are revolutionizing the English classroom, and urges us to shift from focusing exclusively on required texts to equally acknowledging the urgent need for consciousness and activism from our students.

Multicultural education and a multicultural curriculum are vital components of contemporary education. While most educators recognize the value of multicultural education in attempting to create a more just world, some lament that they do not have time to incorporate multiculturalism into their classrooms in light of all the content that must be…

For David E. Kirkland, the New English Education locates English language arts in the realities of youth, where texts emerge from students' lives, and the notions of reading and writing in English classrooms are open to revision. Kirkland reflects on how "postmodern Black experience, especially as seen in hip-hop, gives English teachers one way of…