English Journal - Volume 96, Issue 6, 2007

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.

Using the overarching concept of the role of an outcast in society, high school teacher Sandra Whitaker persuades urban students to explore the relevance among their lives, the district-required reading, and research on historical and contemporary outcasts. From the unit, students gain an appreciation for Hawthorne and, importantly, ascertain the relationship between their actions and responsibilities as contributors within a society.

To teach reading to a transient population of incarcerated young men on Rikers Island, Dave Iasevoli utilized the students’ desire for knowledge and their talent for storytelling, humor, and acting to engage them. Students embodied the characters by reading aloud from the novel The Planet of Junior Brown, from which discussions about obesity, civil rights, and compassion emerged.

Kristien Marquez-Zenkov and James A. Harmon encouraged urban students to take photographs that illustrate the purposes of school, factors that support success in school, and barriers to success. The authors analyzed students’ photos and written reflections on the photos to form recommendations regarding teaching approaches that encourage students’ engagement and achievement in English classes.

Although some educators commonly assume that the way to improve the writing of urban students is to provide “more structure,” Nancy G. Patterson and Renee Speed argue that this approach can instead be detrimental. In too many cases, structure characterizes control and colonization rather than the freedom for teachers to structure their curricula around self-selected relevant and challenging materials that “maximize student potential.”

Andrea J. Stairs advocates culturally responsive teaching, a practice that explicitly highlights “issues of race, ethnicity, and culture as central to teaching, learning, and schooling,” and emphasizes the necessity of interrogating the themes of race, power, and privilege in the urban classroom. Stairs observes two student teachers as they actively integrate rap lyrics, jazz and blues music, the poetry of Langston Hughes, discussion of figurative language, and analysis and imitation activities to examine elements of racism and prejudice during the Harlem Renaissance.

Drawing connections between Chaucer, Eminem, and social issues, New York City high school teacher Tom Liam Lynch helped students become familiar with The Canterbury Tales. Students wrote poems of rhymed couplets about today’s social and political issues, created illuminated manuscripts, and recorded a rap CD. A book and album were published for wider distribution.

Drawing on the expertise of colleagues in technology and filmmaking, high school teacher Joe Bucolo helps students demonstrate the critical comprehension, mastery, and creative insight that transpire from close study of Shakespeare’s plays. Production Teams examine the context and language of Shakespeare’s scenes, interview an expert, and address setting and costume choices as they compose and edit their short films for a three-day arts festival.

Applying his experiences teaching photography to teaching English, high school teacher J. Scott Shields cultivates students’ original writing by promoting imitation. Students learn to develop their literary voices by crafting verse-narratives that mimic the character, plot, and stylistic devices of Dante and Chaucer.

Kathleen Dudden Rowlands recommends using checklists to support student learning and performance. Well-designed checklists identify steps students can take to complete complex tasks, which scaffolds students’ metacognitive development and fosters the confidence and independence needed for internalizing these steps for future tasks.

The question of how “teachers and students [can] connect their learning to the broader society” drives Jeraldine R. Kraver’s search for ways to use critical pedagogy in secondary school and university classrooms. Focusing on the topic of gender equity, she shows how teachers can use literature to create critical classrooms. In addition, she offers sample assignments and discussion prompts related to classic and contemporary literature.

“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.

“Tools for Teaching” helps you find the best print and electronic resources for teaching English language arts.

“Personal Reading” contains reviews of fiction and nonfiction books, with a special interest in multicultural works.

“Bold Books for Teenagers” provides dynamic, informative viewpoints on important issues in publishing and teaching contemporary literature, especially literature for adolescents. Reviews of young adult literature also appear in this column.