For the last several years, teacher-researchers Jessica Jasper, Laura Dvorak, Steven Athanases, and Sergio Sanchez have partnered with a program called Globe Education, Shakespeare's Globe London. Practitioners in the program use teaching practices that engage learners with Shakespeare's works and other complex texts through drama practices. Jess…

After several years of tweaking the protocols for a student- led poetry project, the call for this issue prompted the author to share what she and her students have learned and are still learning about reading poetry. This includes a now- eighth- grade student, Grace. Grace considers herself a "good" student, eager to learn, but she also…

Located in the suburbs of a large midwestern city, Trail Middle School serves a predominantly middle-class population. The data the authors feature in this article include group discussions and interviews with students, as well as recordings of in-class lessons, student work, and fieldnotes. The authors focus on the theme of gender as it emerged…

Spoken word is a performative poetry that combines "words, sounds, and movements that privilege a Black aesthetic" (Winn 60). It has roots in blues, spiritual, and hip-hop music and has been popularized in particular by the slam performances exemplified in the documentary "Louder Than a Bomb." Due to its performative nature,…

In this article, the authors describe how an embodied arts-based approach to teaching the story of Anne Frank enhanced eighth graders' experiences in three middle school classrooms. The article begins by framing the theories that guide the authors' perspectives on embodiment and drama-infused instruction to promote literacy learning. This is…

Providing students with the opportunity to generate new content and share it with a wide audience invites students to compose texts with the care and conviction that cannot be duplicated when writing solely for the teacher. This piece documents one teacher's effort to engage 99 eighth graders with an authentic writing opportunity: the…

This article, based on a study in a sixth-grade middle school classroom in the rural southern United States, details a writing project that questions the nature of text and how text might positively affect students' perceptions as they become change agents for their communities.

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is based on the premise that: (1) students can learn to use the reading strategies that more skillful readers use automatically; (2) students can engage in high-quality discussions about text with peers in heterogeneous student-led groups; and (3) structures and supports can act as a vehicle for equitable…

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…