A Symphony of Possibilities explores arts-based pedagogies for secondary teachers of English language arts. Drama music poetry public art and visual art are explored in detail by experts in their fields sharing proven methods of instruction with secondary students and teachers.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/><br/>In an educational environment that privileges scripted curricula and intensive preparation for high-stakes tests the arts offer a more hands-on approach to learning and problem solving challenging students to approach course material in personal and interactive ways. In A Symphony of Possibilities experts in their fields explore in detail arts-based pedagogies for secondary teachers of English language arts focusing on drama music poetry public art and visual art and sharing proven methods of instruction. Through the arts we see teachers and researchers who explore and expand on comprehension memory issues of identity and culturally relevant pedagogies and we see students excited by their active learning. Editors Katherine J. Macro and Michelle Zoss and their contributors provide creative approaches that help teachers accommodate the diversity of their students and their needs as well as move their students into innovative and thoughtful learning spaces. This book goes a long way toward answering the question What is the role of the arts for English teachers?

Grounded in NCTE’s position statements “The Students’ Right to Read” and “NCTE Beliefs about the Students’ Right to Write” this book focuses on high school English language arts classes drawing from the work of seven teachers from across the country to illustrate how advocating for students’ rights to read and write can be revolutionary work.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/><br/>Drawing from the work of high school teachers across the country Adventurous Thinking illustrates how advocating for students’ rights to read and write can be revolutionary work. Ours is a conflicted time: the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements for instance run parallel with increasingly hostile attitudes toward immigrants and prescriptive K–12 curricula including calls to censor texts. Teachers who fight to give their students the tools and opportunities to read about and write on topics of their choice and express ideas that may be controversial are in editor Mollie V. Blackburn’s words “revolutionary artists and their teaching is revolutionary art.” The teacher chapters focus on high school English language arts classes that engaged with topics such as immigration linguistic diversity religious diversity the #BlackLivesMatter movement interrogating privilege LGBTQ people and people with physical disabilities and mental illness. Following these accounts is an interview with Angie Thomas author of The Hate U Give and an essay by Millie Davis former director of NCTE’s Intellectual Freedom Center. The closing essay reflects on provocative curriculum and pedagogy criticality community and connections as they get taken up in the book and might get taken up in the classrooms of readers. The book is grounded in foundational principles from NCTE’s position statements The Students’ Right to Read and NCTE Beliefs about the Students’ Right to Write that underlie these contributors’ practices principles that add up to one committed declaration: Literacy is every student’s right.

Already Readers and Writers: Honoring Students' Rights to Read and Write in the Middle Grade Classroom is meant to help all middle school educators encourage their students to build literate lives both within the classroom and well beyond it.

Veteran middle school teacher Jennifer Ochoa has brought together middle school teachers and teacher leaders children’s author and We Need Diverse Books cofounder Ellen Oh children’s literature scholar Kristin McIlhagga reading and writing workshop teacher-author Linda Rief and censorship expert Millie Davis to examine current middle school literacy practices that support students’ rights to read and write.

By showcasing their experiences and activities and positioning NCTE policy statements—The Students' Right to Read and NCTE Beliefs about the Students’ Right to Write—as foundational guiding documents Ochoa and her colleagues prove that even in today’s standards-driven environment authentic reading and writing practices can create literacy-rich middle school classrooms.

As a bonus teachers who don’t have strong support in their schools to implement these practices will find a myriad of suggestions for developing a virtual personal learning network—a grassroots professional development tailored to their needs and interests—that will support them in their efforts to help kids as readers and writers.

About Principles in Practice

Books in the Principles in Practice imprint offer teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.

Each book discusses the research on a specific topic links the research to an NCTE brief or policy statement and then demonstrates how those principles come alive in practice: by showcasing actual classroom practices that demonstrate the policies in action; by talking about research in practical teacher-friendly language; and by offering teachers possibilities for rethinking their own practices in light of the ideas presented in the books.

Beyond Standardized Truth included in the Principles in Practice imprint is the result of the author’s own efforts to bridge the gap between valuing reading and being able to respond with appropriate instruction or evaluate growth in reading. 

Scott Filkins brings us into his classroom and the classrooms of his colleagues to demonstrate how high school teachers across the disciplines can engage in inquiry-based reading assessment to support student learning. Based in the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing Revised Edition the classroom portraits highlight the importance of incorporating genuinely formative assessment into our instruction. 

Filkins unpacks his own history with assessment through engaging “confessions” of his early practices and eventual growth toward a framework that situates reading assessment in an inquiry model. Throughout the book he showcases his colleagues’ attempts to use an inquiry framework including the various tools and documentation methods that help them inquire into their students’ habits and thoughts as readers use formative assessment to fuel the gradual release of responsibility framework and use reading assessment as a means of professional reflection. 

Finally Filkins challenges us to broaden the conversation about assessment to a wider range of stakeholders and offers a vision of assessment as an expression of care for the students in our charge.

A deep dive into the rich resources available for teaching Shakespeare’s plays Bring on the Bard is for every high school teacher—early career to veteran—looking for new hands-on activities to draw students of all ability levels into the work and world of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for readers; he wrote individual “cue scripts” for actors who hadn’t read the entire play but had to perform on the fly with almost no rehearsal. Those cue scripts have become the written form of his dramas compiled originally in the First Folio of 1623. And the actors’ cues for meaning emotion and emphasis are still embedded in Shakespeare’s language ripe for discovery by today’s students. 

Shakespeare’s plays rightly remain a staple of the ELA curriculum but evolving standards and youth culture itself challenge teachers to put students—not a text—at the center of a reading experience in order to support diverse readers and learners.

How can we do this? 

Experienced educators Kevin Long and Mary T. Christel introduce us to the Folio technique which builds on active drama approaches that position students to engage with a rich text through low-risk speaking and improvisation activities. Without requiring students to become actors the Folio technique helps them to discover the clues the Bard built into his works that allow actors to efficiently understand their characters’ text context and subtext. Teachers can use excerpts from the First Folio along with a mass market paperback or digital edition of a play to help students get closer to Shakespeare’s intentions; understand the language action and emotions of the characters; and perhaps even explore the challenges the Bard’s modern editors face.

The book offers suggestions for using parallel text graphic and abridged editions of Shakespeare’s works as well as activities using cue scripts and a variety of viewing experiences. 

As a high school teacher Ricki Ginsberg realized that a truly student-centered classroom requires student input. To foster a more ethical community-based approach to curriculum design and instruction she worked with her students to reimagine and co-design existing grade-level courses and in doing so they integrated young adult literature as central to the curriculum and course design. In this book Ginsberg along with more than a dozen teacher contributors shares course design possibilities for teachers seeking to disrupt and reimagine traditional structures with the inclusion of YA literature. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/><br/>With communities of practice as a guiding framework Challenging Traditional Classroom Spaces with YA Literature explores how teachers might work with students to build a community that defines their purposes together how they might investigate new possibilities for existing or traditional courses by harnessing the potential of YA literature how they might use critical freedom to co-develop YA electives and how they can lead literate lives together as a community of practice that is engaged with their local and global communities.<br/><br/>Grounded in NCTE’s Preparing Teachers with Knowledge of Children’s and Young Adult Literature position statement this book offers both big ideas such as overarching structural decisions and pedagogical positioning as well as a wealth of flexible and adaptable practical strategies and ideas that can be implemented directly in secondary classrooms with varied contexts and purposes.

Collaborative learning is not only a standard part of writing pedagogy but it is also a part of contemporary culture. Collaborative Learning as Democratic Practice: A History examines the rich historical and political contexts of collaborative learning starting with John Dewey’s impact on progressive education in the early twentieth century. 

In the 1930s for instance collaborative practices flourished. In the 1950s they operated in stealth within an ideology suspicious of collaboration. Collaborative pedagogies blossomed in the protests of the 1960s and continued into the 1980s with the social turn in composition theory. Twenty-first-century collaborative practices influenced by pragmatism are found in writing centers feminist pedagogies and computer-mediated instruction. Mara Holt argues that as composition changes with the influence of ecological and posthuman theories there is evidence of a significant pragmatist commitment to evaluating theory by its consequences.

Ken Lindblom and Leila Christenbury return with the second volume in the Continuing the Journey series this time focusing on authentic writing instruction for middle and high school classrooms.

The authors draw on what research has taught them about writing—concepts deeply rooted in personal identity and real-world experience—and why we must teach writing accurately effectively and fearlessly. As in the previous volume the book includes visits to an ideal Teachers’ Lounge featuring highly experienced colleagues and well-known researchers in English teaching. 

Topics covered include: 

• Responding to student writing 
• Handling the paper load
• Teaching grammar and usage in the context of writing
• Seeking real-world feedback

Although once again focusing on a veteran English teacher audience Lindblom and Christenbury provide a wealth of information advice and resources that will help teachers at any stage of their careers better support their students’ writing both in and out of school.

About Continuing the Journey 

Continuing the Journey is a five-book series on advanced approaches to teaching English language arts. Written for veteran teachers by Leila Christenbury and Ken Lindblom the books include “From the Teachers’ Lounge” an innovative feature that honors the expertise of both colleagues from the field and highly regarded scholars. Topics addressed in the series include literature and informational texts; language and writing; listening speaking and presenting; digital literacies; and living the professional life of a veteran teacher.

The CoreEmpathy approach and accompanying lessons are designed to cultivate student empathy while simultaneously developing and deepening student literacy skills. 

Why should you cultivate empathy in the classroom? Because it not only encourages mutual understanding and caring but also deepens literacy learning. When students walk in the shoes of story characters the practice extends thoughtfulness to the real people in their lives. 

The CoreEmpathy approach developed by literacy specialist Christie McLean Kesler and children’s author Mary Knight turns an empathy lens on the reading and writing essential to all K–6 classrooms optimizing the connection between them. And rather than being one more thing you need to do CoreEmpathy interweaves with classroom practices already in play applicable to the stories the authors highlight as well as to student favorites. 

Transform your literacy classroom with:

• A simple step-by-step approach to choosing and using already loved books from your current literacy curriculum
• The why what and how of teaching literacy through an empathy lens
• Plentiful examples from real-world classrooms including the voices of teachers and students as they engage with story the CoreEmpathy way
• Practical tips for using the approach with established classroom practices
• Easy-to-use K-6 integrated reading and writing lessons
• Vast resources for extending your empathy-rich knowledge and practice
• Inspiration for you to live teaching’s greater purpose now

With its heart in the joy that stories bring to readers of all ages CoreEmpathy reinvigorates teaching and learning with effects that last long past the elementary years.

Sharon Mitchler argues for a reconfiguration of critical pedagogy to empower and engage American literature students in rural community colleges. She constructs a pedagogy that addresses the multiple positions of power and marginalization rural students occupy often concurrently. 

Drawing on feminist pedagogy critical pedagogy and conceptualizations of rural places she develops a theory of critical rural pedagogy that builds on the work of Kim Donehower Charlotte Hogg and Eileen Schell. Critical rural pedagogy actively seeks to engage rural students to bring their lived experiences to the college classes not only to individual classrooms but to other forms of higher education as community college students transfer on to university settings. The book includes activities and examples to model classroom practice.