Research in the Teaching of English - Volume 55, Issue 3, 2021

This article will explore what I have conceptualized as critical celebration within an afterschool writing club for and with Girls of Color (GOC). Using a feminist of color theoretical framework and building upon existing literature about GOC and their writing practices, critical celebration will be defined as a lens used to view GOC as important, dynamic, and brilliant in the face of an overabundance of deficitizing narratives and erasure, and to also open opportunities for girls to view the experiences and identities of GOC like them and unlike them as important sources of knowledge as they develop critical insights toward solidarity across difference. Using this definition, I will then describe the ways the feminist of color writing pedagogy engaged in this group made space for critical celebration of and by GOC, thereby offering important implications for justice-oriented literacy education, not only for GOC, but for all students.

The prevalence of high-stakes testing, scripted curricula, and accountability measures in schools discourages experimentation with curriculum. This article encourages curriculum design experimentation in teacher education by proposing playful practices, game-like activities for designing curriculum that draws on students’ out-of-school literacies. We explore the benefits and challenges of game-based curriculum design with preservice teachers (PSTs; N = 19) in two public university secondary English education courses and trace one PST’s take-up of the curriculum design moves through incorporation of these playful practices into her classroom. Data collection occurred across one academic year and included field and observation notes, written reflections, interview data, and artifacts. Findings show the potential for game-based curriculum design in literacy teacher education to (1) create an imaginative space between teacher and student, (2) encourage collaborative production, (3) connect PST university coursework to classroom practice, (4) support students’ creative language production, and (5) create playful social contexts for participatory learning. Challenges highlight the importance of attending to power dynamics in game play and design. Implications include how game-based pedagogical invitations in teacher education can help PSTs imagine new ways to organize classroom structures and literacy learning experiences that value an interplay of youth cultures and classroom curriculum.

There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children’s experiences with current events. Drawing from data generated following the 2016 presidential election, this paper focuses on three racially and linguistically diverse children’s persuasive compositions. Within a critical literacies writing unit focused on (im)migrant experiences, children called on legislators to act on the Republican administration’s policies. Building on the understanding that all literacies are political and that teaching and learning are value-laden tasks, the author engaged a cultural rhetorics orientation—grounded in the understanding of texts, bodies, materials, and ideas as interconnected aspects of communication—for data generation and analysis. The findings highlight how children strategically employed rhetoric to persuade. They used logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as story, a central tool for meaning-making and building practices in the world. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how children, when properly supported, can agentively participate in critical literacies and act on real-world politics. Through the stories of young children, this study emphasizes what children have to tell adults and what a cultural rhetorics orientation, through its emphasis on story, enables literacies researchers and educators to understand about children’s composing.

Writing studies scholars have long examined how race- and class-based hierarchies shape teachers’ and students’ experiences of writing in US universities. But universities are also workplaces that profit from a racialized writing economy in which laborers of color (Marko et al., 2015) underpin writing production. Drawing from a yearlong qualitative case study that examines the writing practices of university custodial workers, this article addresses the following research questions: What kinds of writing do university custodial workers use and practice? What are the conditions for their writing? And what do these practices and conditions tell us about writing in race- and class-stratified workplaces, including educational institutions? Using critical race (Ahmed, 2012; Bell, 2013; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado Bernal, 2003; Delgado & Stefancic, 2013; Patton, 2016; Yosso et al., 2009) approaches to literacy sponsorship (Brandt, 2001), and observations and interviews with university custodians, this article discusses two main findings: (1) labor conditions restrict participants’ writing as a part of race and class hierarchies; and (2) the participants employ writing practices that run under the radar of institutional restrictions to serve their own purposes. This study’s findings have implications for workplace writing scholarship and higher education policy, because they expand definitions of and purposes for workplace writing in institutions of education.