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…

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.

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…

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…

Visible teaching invites educators to bring activist and change-agent identities directly into their teaching, working collaboratively with a community to enact sustainable, albeit constantly transforming, societal change. This article uses data from a year-long ethnographic study to paint a portrait of one Chicana veteran teacher who enacts an…

For teachers seeking to create a culture of reading, the author believes that the joys of reading can come alive in the classroom in several simple, easy steps. This article will bring together what to do in one straightforward and coherent manner. The author argues passionately about the benefits of providing an authentic and rich reading…

One of the more difficult 19th-century American texts for high school students to read is undoubtedly Henry David Thoreau's "Walden." His erudite allusions, often page-long sentences, and sophisticated sense of the ironic initially leave many students cold. Still, the author encourages them to read amid the din of a cultural cacophony that shouts…

The nation's leaders say that a 21st-century education must restore the competitive edge and prepare students for success in the marketplace; they affirm that the material wealth of a 21st-century nation is built upon the intellectual capital of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But teachers need to remember this: A 21st-century…

To provide insight into the issue of multimodal literacy instruction, the authors explore presentation techniques and instructional activities employed in their secondary language arts classes. They collaborate on assignments that focus students on "anchored media instruction" and engage them in producing multimodal, technology-infused projects,…

Those who are involved in the current Common Core Standards should buckle up for a rocky ride. Some of the same issues that churned within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) during the standards movement of the 1990s (1989-1997) are here once again. The author's buckle is pulled tight, having already had his standards report…

This article explores various ways of teaching literary theory to high school and middle school students. The authors argue that incorporating a critical literacy approach in English education is important but challenging. Although the authors work to implement a critical literacy practice within their university classes, they don't always know…