This article serves as an invitation to see the way the teaching of biography-driven writing has been increasingly pushed out of the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum in favor of highly structured, formulaic, and impersonal writing, and how this is a setback for students in their preparation for college and career writing. The…

Storytelling can help youth, families, and communities make sense of their experiences, allowing them to process the past and plan their futures (Bruner; Flores; Jones). The authors argue that the practice of storytelling in biographical learning can be especially powerful when working with youth of color and Indigenous youth--children whose…

Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen assert that language-based pedagogy is not sufficient reading in the technology-driven society. Educators need to incorporate ways for students to read other signs and symbols and redefine what it means to be literate in a digital age. Still, there are many ways in which print-based texts can be used effectively…

In contemporary contexts, young people are accustomed to life story; indeed, their lives are saturated with constructions of their stories and those of others, whether created by themselves or their "friends" on social networks. Multimedia outlets convey often detailed stories of more-famous others, whether celebrities or those experiencing…