English Journal - Volume 95, Issue 3, 2006

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

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

“Teacher to Teacher” provides a forum for teachers to share ideas, materials, and activities.

The authors describe a literature unit using texts by and about Muslim women. Studying women’s roles through a variety of genres—short story, essays, graphic novel, film—helped students broaden their understanding of women in the Islamic world.

As an introduction to intertextuality, Jeffrey Fischer presents three similar texts about war to students and discusses the relationships between texts and experiences.

Focusing on lighting, camera angles, and framing in a film version of Moby-Dick, high school teacher Valerie Muller discusses Dark Romanticism, archetypal theory, and deconstruction. Since multimedia texts are so prevalent in students’ lives, learning to read film as a distinct art form may help students better understand complicated literary theories.

William David Ross, Alyce Hunter, and Leon Chazanow describe a unique high school literary event: an all-day read-aloud of Moby-Dick, organized and run by the students. The authors discuss the challenges and benefits of undertaking such a project.

The Outsiders continues to be relevant to adolescents, opening discussions on acceptance, rejection, and stereotyping. Middle school teacher Joanne S. Gillespie describes her unit on the novel, which includes art projects, blogging, and student-generated questions.

David Ward addresses the interactive role that the writer plays in developing readers’ literacy. Students’ letters to authors reveal their engagement with the texts on a variety of levels, and authors’ responses show their concern with developing young readers and writers.

Through a unit on voice, Lane W. Clarke helped students recognize how people are marginalized through texts. By studying novels that used multiple narrative viewpoints, she was able to give students a “context for self-understanding and improved interpersonal relations.”

The authors describe a unit for seventh-grade students on desegregation of public schools. Showcasing different perspectives through multiple texts and text types, such as film and photographs, added credibility to the lessons and allowed students to understand events that were distant from their experience.

Using texts by Janet Tashjian and Ursula K. Le Guin, Jean Boreen and Sandra Raymond show how high school students can be brought into discussions that promote social and political activism and help students understand the steps in these processes.

A group of teachers tested the literary lenses framework proposed by Pamela Sissi Carroll. Finding it to be an effective tool, they offer a number of lesson ideas to use with middle school and high school students.

These two authors report survey results about the importance secondary and postsecondary educators place on specific writing and reading skills. While differences in the value of grammar instruction between the two groups are noted, the most significant issue raised may be the different types of instruction in high school classrooms of college-bound and non-college-bound students.

“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.

“Teaching English in the World” examines the teaching of English in a global context.