English Journal - Volume 94, Issue 3, 2005

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.

As an Asian American growing up in the Midwest during the '60s and '70s, Marie G. Lee just wanted to be “normal.” Now in her writing she uses this background to explore the search for identity in her characters as well as her self.

Julius Lester makes the case that subjectivity is the key to rewarding reading experiences. Rather than pinning down the meaning of symbols or using other methods of literary analysis, his readers should be encouraged to “hear the silences between the words.”

Pat Mora, in this letter of praise to educators, suggests that teachers need to be writers to better teach writing. Helping students “bring themselves to the page” through their writing is one way to get them to know the joy of books.

Walter Dean Myers believes that a primary cause of lack of inspiration in readers is their difficulty decoding meaning because of language and societal differences. He strives to reach uninspired readers, particularly those living in the inner city, by writing using their language and contexts.

Naomi Shihab Nye focuses on connections in her writing, wanting to present “the other” as familiar to her readers, particularly during these times of turmoil in the world. She also wants readers to know how exciting it is for her when readers find in her work what she didn’t realize was there.

Alex Sanchez writes about the importance of having literature with gay-straight themes available to students to help overcome homophobia and provide safer schools for everyone. The responses he’s received to his novels reinforce this idea.

Maureen Crane Wartski believes that race and ancestry are important parts of identity and uses these themes in her writing. Yet it is the similarities, the shared memories, that allow her character—and, she hopes, her readers as well—to move past difference into friendship and trust.

For Laurence Yep, the outsider is a dominant theme in writing and life. Whether writing historical and contemporary fiction, science fiction, or fantasy, he hopes that readers will see the magic and wonder in the world that can be found by shifting perspective and seeing “things instead as outsiders.”

High school teachers often feel challenged when working with texts from unfamiliar cultures. Highlighting the use of a cultural-response approach, Yu Ren Dong presents several activities that can give teachers confidence to explore the cultural differences in diverse texts and provide “ways to help their students discuss these differences and enhance cross-cultural understanding.”

Emphasizing experience and understanding, high school teacher Susan Arpajian Jolley uses the related novels Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre to help her students travel into unfamiliar cultural territory while gaining a fuller understanding of both texts and how they are relevant to the issues of today.

Finding that his rural Idaho students were unable to connect meaningfully with multicultural literature, John A. Poole created a unit supplementing the reading with interviews of community members. He describes the unit’s impact on the sophomores’ appreciation of diversity.

“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.