Teachers sharing music in their classrooms is all about establishing a sense of mutual trust and respect for their students. Shekema S. Dunlap invites her students into the innermost sanctums of her world and humbly ask that they allow her into theirs. The sharing of music becomes an exchange among equals, forcing their learning space. In this…

This piece explores historic trends in the standardization of English education. Beginning with the advent of NCTE in 1912 and continuing through the subsequent century, the article traces how "English Journal" has documented educators' approaches and attitudes concerning standardization.

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…

English departments are roundly praised for their emphasis on skills rather than content. In the authors' classes, students read (skill), write (skill), think (skill), speak (skill), and listen (skill). Theoretically, the books being taught are interchangeable and simply a means to skill acquisition. But that's not always what happens in the…

Today, "Night" is probably the most commonly taught work of Holocaust literature in the United States, read by middle school and high school students alike, even though US adolescents were not the author's intended audience. This article offers suggestions for teaching "Night" in ways that engage students, challenge them to…

Currently, more than 50 of the top 100 YouTube channels feature gameplay, a popularity largely fueled by young audiences. Let's Play videos (often known simply as LPs) typically include gameplay footage accompanied by simultaneous commentary recorded by the player. This article explores three ways English educators might use Let's Play videos and…

In this article, the authors describe how integrating music with reading and writing practices stimulated transmediation to (1) honor musical students' identities, (2) deepen readers' meaning making with literature, and (3) invite writers' memories to generate emotional grist for composing poetry. The authors share examples to inspire teachers to…

In this article, the author describes three strategies they have used to bolster interest and make use of popular culture to enhance readers' interactions with texts: pop culture pairings, musical connections, and multimodal projects. The author addresses the cultivation of pop culture awareness, the importance of multimodal pedagogy, the…

Throughout a unit of study about survival, students and their teacher engaged in individualized learning. Discussions of teacher-dictated curriculum versus student-driven learning, design of the unit, and students' and teacher's experiences and takeaways from the unit are included.

By exploring the uses of plain, middle, and grand styles, the author examines how theories of classical rhetoricians can be applied to Atticus Finch's speeches in "To Kill a Mockingbird." In the high school English classrooms the author has encountered, "rhetoric" has not been a focus or even a passing discussion. It forms the…

In this article, the authors argue that the racial violence that unfolds against Black youth in various communities seeps into English language arts (ELA) classrooms. They offer a theoretical framework that centers on Black literacies that secondary ELA teachers can use to disrupt the violence and curricula and pedagogical inequities against Black…

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.

The nonfiction letter offers students an opportunity to study a dying art while also gaining insights about people, places, and eras. Teaching students the value of letters teaches community, caring, and connection. Whereas reading great works of literature can and does provide insight into life's purpose and meaning, the nonfiction text of a…

In this article Deidre Faughey shares an experimental classroom project that she developed with a diverse group of students in three ninth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) classes. Podcasts provide a unique opportunity for students to embrace experimentation and to take risks with their own voices, explore the school building and community, and…

At a time when some high school English classrooms erase and distort experiences and identities, it is vital for educators to explore pedagogies that provide radically reimagined forms of liberatory thought. This article explores ways the work of Coates can serve as "blueprint liberation" in the English classroom. The line of broken,…