Council Chronicle - Volume 27, Issue 2, 2017

Angie Thomas’s debut novel The Hate U Give (HarperCollins, 2017) is a #1 New York Times bestseller. Thomas talks with The Council Chronicle about what she’d like to see happen as a result of her book and the conversations it’s sparking.

An NCTE member and veteran middle and high school English teacher reflects on the value of writing, through four interviews that illustrate its many benefits in diverse walks of life.

NCTE President Jocelyn A. Chadwick on Writing’s Importance

“The beauty of coaching and mentoring is in knowing that we don’t have to work alone.” NCTE Lead Ambassador Stella Villalba and colleagues from Dublin City Schools, Ohio, share thoughts on their work together.

Curtis Acosta Reflects on the Fight for Mexican American Studies

A Queer Endeavor Aims to Expand Conversation around Gender and LGBTQ Youth

Heighten Your Level of Awareness with These Tips from Roberta Price Gardner

“In order to make good use of equity-based and critical race pedagogies, educators must understand that these pedagogies require a deep look within.”

This memoir by teenager Liliana Velásquez is also the story of over 210,000 children who traveled alone to the US and were arrested by immigration. The Dreams and Nightmares/Sueños y Pesadillas project includes a website and resources for teachers.

Jonna Perillo is NCTE Historian and associate professor of English Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. This is an excerpt from a commentary which appeared in Education Week (9/25/17) and on NCTE’s Literacy & NCTE blog at bit.ly/PERILLO-3.

“Hope is a journey with all the obstacles and all the successes andeverything in between; it is a process oriented in action, just like writing.”

Beyond the issue of keeping committed teachers in the field and thriving, self-care matters because you matter. Here are a few tips to get you started.

English teachers are experts at helping students examine relevant, complex, and connected stories and look for meaning and truths in and behind the words. This is the view of the authors of a new book from NCTE and Routledge, and is one of the reasons the authors believe the climate change story is one that deserves a place in the English classroom.