English Journal - Subversive English, Nov 2004

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

“Snapshots” offers insights about teaching and learning through teacher stories about a particular classroom event.

“Speaking My Mind” invites readers to speak out about controversial issues relevant to the teaching of English language arts.

Herb Karl, a longtime colleague of Charles Weingartner, traces the lasting influence of the collaboration between Weingartner and Neil Postman.

Throughout his career, Neil Postman challenged educators to think critically and broadly about the roles language plays in human behavior and society. Terence P. Moran, who knew him in various capacities for forty-one years, highlights Postman’s influence on English education

An influential educator himself, Jeffrey N. Golub offers a personal perspective on the impact of Charles Weingartner’s life and work.

Interdisciplinary collaborations are subversive when they help students and teacher see beyond traditional subject boundaries. High school teacher Jeffrey Schwartz describes a collaboration with the school’s dance instructor that helped students see Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams in a new way.

High school teacher Kelly Ann Nugent asked her students to design schools that embodied the principles of learning suggested by writers such as Dickinson, Emerson, Poe, Thoreau, and Whitman. By doing so, students understood better not only the ideas of the writers but also the sometimes-contradictory conditions of their own schooling.

When high school teacher Heather Brown created “space to learn with the students,” she found her classroom transformed. In advocating for inquiry-based learning, she details a research project that fully engaged her Native American students.

Teacher educator Steven L. VanderStaay argues that helping students to read and write is the most direct way to improve society and that teachers must exercise their authority, not relinquish it. While affirming Postman and Weingartner’s advocacy of the inquiry method, VanderStaay challenges their critique of conventional schooling.

George Clendenning uses an exercise that forces students to recognize their unconscious stereotyping. He argues that the instructor’s subversive moves are essential to the effectiveness of the activity.

Employing black feminist theory to analyze works of adolescent literature allows teachers to initiate discussions of race, class, and gender. Using this theory also offers “a culturally specific lens” for “reading and teaching literature about parallel cultures, especially African American,” according to teacher educator KaaVonia Hinton.

University professors Terry L. Norton and Jonatha W. Vare recommend several books that provide positive, hopeful portrayals of contemporary gay and lesbian adolescents, their friends, and their families. They contend that using books such as these that depict the diversity of the population may lead to greater understanding and inclusion.

Four experienced teachers claim that they have “overthrown traditional classroom dynamics and environments mired in tedious micromanaged routines and replaced them with classrooms that support scholars’ choices and voices.” Their conversation reveals the changes they have made, the reasons for them, and the exciting results in different classroom settings.

High school students create and perform interview-based monologues that help them “talk about the critical issues that underlie our daily lives.” Ann Frkovich and Annie Thoms share student samples and advice for teachers who want to give students a powerful speaking and writing tool.

Former high school teachers Diane Zigo and Michael T. Moore argue that science fiction deserves greater respect and a place in high school literature classes. They recommend titles and suggest activities for incorporating science fiction into English language arts instruction.

“Research Matters” provides teachers with review and application of research that illuminates the daily concerns and activities of English language arts teachers and classrooms.

“New Voices” raises questions, offers insights, and provides a forum for novice teachers to engage in the professional conversation surrounding the teaching of English.