English Journal - Volume 102, Issue 4, 2013

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.

Incarceration rates are increasing at alarming rates, and schools are profoundly affected by the logic and imperatives of mass incarceration. English teachers must take action.

Exposing students to canonical and contemporary slave, political, personal, and non-carceral confinement literatures provides space for discussing important issues of social justice.

Creative writing can unlock creative potential, foster students’ love of language, and offer a powerful outlet for self-expression.

Teachers plan and reflect on practices that can make a difference in the lives and literacy of incarcerated youth.

Pairing Night by Elie Wiesel with Finding Freedom by Jarvis Jay Masters, a death-row inmate, encourages a critical examination of the purposes and effects of imprisonment.

Using a response-based cultural studies approach, the author engages students in contemporary issues of incarceration: single-parent homes, lynching and racial discrimination, the criminal justice system, and poverty.

Contrastive readings of YA novels can help students understand the role of race in culture and contribute to students’ process of identity formation.

Street fiction is risky to teach, but it offers opportunities for meaningful, critical thinking about important voices that resonate with many students and populations that have been historically marginalized.

Unproductive tensions are evident between a young incarcerated woman’s in-class practices and her literary life outside the classroom.

Witness the evolution of a successful, innovative program in which preservice English teachers serve as writing consultants for eleventh-grade English students.

Focusing students on British-to-American cultural translation problems in the Harry Potter series encourages students to understand connotation, denotation, and other important characteristics of English language.

An analysis of Ebony and GQ magazine covers exposes race and class narratives and encourages students to become more aware of the ways in which other images connote cultural information.

“Adventures with Text and Beyond” explores various ways of teaching literary theory to high school and middle school students.

“Mentoring Matters” focuses on effective ways to support new English teachers and student teachers.

“Professional Writing in the English Classroom” publishes articles about teaching students to write effectively in the genres, conventions, and visual designs required for professional contexts and related rhetorical situations.