English Journal - Volume 103, Issue 5, 2014

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

The article uses autobiographical reflection to argue for mental health as an area of cultural difference that merits inclusion in multicultural education.

Through creative nonfiction, the author reveals his relationship over the past four decades with Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

The authors of this article advocate for the inclusion of YA queer literature and seek to provide educational professionals with a set of criteria for selecting appropriate YA queer literature and incorporating it into the curriculum.

This article suggests that incorporating historical, nonfiction texts into the English classroom can assist teachers in illuminating historical struggles for justice and democracy, while empowering students to begin to see themselves as agents of social change.

The author of this article conveys how teaching Gene Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese from a critical visual literacy approach enables students to gain a deeper understanding of Yang’s commentary on historic and modern stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans.

This article explores some of the ways that hip-hop-based education can be introduced into the English classroom through allowing students to creatively and proactively develop counternarratives that challenge stereotypes about black youth and assist them in developing their own voices.

The authors of this article discuss how they used a culturally relevant pedagogical framework, digital media, and an emphasis on collaboration to push their students to consider how they might positively transform themselves and their neighborhoods.

In this article, a veteran teacher expresses the importance of drawing on the life-texts of students and recognizing the ways that personal experience influences a student’s perception of the world.

This article presents the responses of some young adult authors to questions about morality, the writing process, and the obligation of the writer to his or her readers.

This column seeks to explore the experiences of National Writing Project teachers as writers, teachers of writing, and educational leaders.

This column hopes to serve as a space dedicated to conversation about young adult literature and to celebrate adolescents, their reading, and their experiences by reviewing the texts that engage them.

“Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom” seeks to identify the ways in which our teaching and learning lives are influenced by software.