English Education - Volume 52, Issue 4, 2020

Sex (sexual acts) and sexuality (sexual orientation and gender identity) have become common topics in the news and public discourse. Although sex and sexuality influence adolescents’ experiences with school and schooling conversely shapes youth sexualities, research shows that schools do little to help adolescents make sense of their developing sexual identities. We believe that ELA classrooms are a natural fit for addressing this shortfall. Using the journey of one ELA teacher, we illustrate the ways that issues of sex and sexuality influenced and shaped students’ and their teacher’s classroom experiences. We seek to encourage ELA teachers to rethink the implications of sidestepping issues of sex and sexuality in their classrooms.

This study explores a practice-based approach to learning to facilitate dialogically oriented textbased discussions. Through an exploration of rehearsals of discussion facilitation in a summer professional development program, we identify two types of framing for coaching moments: ones that attend to generalities of discussion and ones that attend to novelty in discussion. We find that attention to generalities helps develop teachers’ efficiency in facilitation, while attention to novelty helps develop an ability to innovate in response to students’ contributions. We consider how English teacher educators might balance a focus on efficiency with a focus on innovation in light of the value of adaptive expertise supporting teachers’ implementation of dialogic discussions.

An increased emphasis on writing standards has led many U.S. states to incorporate on-demand writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. We argue this creates political and pedagogical tensions for teachers to navigate. We discuss how rubric conceptualization (1) is a process wherein a teacher iteratively (co-)constructs meaning from a rubric’s design via classroom instruction; (2) is informed by implicit theories of learning; and (3) often requires a teacher to negotiate the competing pedagogical and political meanings of a rubric. While test-based accountability frameworks promote rubric use that equates learning with student achievement, rubric conceptualization is a process where teachers have some agency to resist behaviorist approaches to instruction.

Menstrual equity emphasizes the importance of girls’ and women’s rights in (1) access to free sanitary products in schools, (2) awareness of how poverty affects access to menstrual supplies, (3) freedom from shaming and silencing for a natural bodily function, and (4) tax exemption for tampons and pads. It also seeks to influence school boards to create more inclusive and sensitive policies. The authors argue that these issues are central to NCTE’s mission; all students can benefit from critical thinking, reading, and writing skills implicit in learning about menstrual equity. Here, we offer a curriculum and reflections about how we approached—and how students responded to—this controversial topic in the classroom.

This essay begins with my memory of a provocation from a former student about my presence in Detroit as a white English teacher—a provocation invoking the intersections of race and space. The incident inspired the creation of an English education methods syllabus centered in racial literacy frameworks, analyses of space, and prioritizing youth voice for English teacher educators and preservice teachers. It is my hope that this essay offers space for English educators to respond meaningfully to student analyses of power and oppression through English curricula.