NCTE

Already Readers and Writers: Honoring Students' Rights to Read and Write in the Middle Grade Classroom is meant to help all middle school educators encourage their students to build literate lives both within the classroom and well beyond it.

Veteran middle school teacher Jennifer Ochoa has brought together middle school teachers and teacher leaders, children’s author and We Need Diverse Books cofounder Ellen Oh, children’s literature scholar Kristin McIlhagga, reading and writing workshop teacher-author Linda Rief, and censorship expert Millie Davis to examine current middle school literacy practices that support students’ rights to read and write.

By showcasing their experiences and activities, and positioning NCTE policy statements—The Students' Right to Read and NCTE Beliefs about the Students’ Right to Write—as foundational guiding documents, Ochoa and her colleagues prove that even in today’s standards-driven environment, authentic reading and writing practices can create literacy-rich middle school classrooms.

As a bonus, teachers who don’t have strong support in their schools to implement these practices will find a myriad of suggestions for developing a virtual personal learning network—a grassroots professional development tailored to their needs and interests—that will support them in their efforts to help kids as readers and writers.

About Principles in Practice

Books in the Principles in Practice imprint offer teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.

Each book discusses the research on a specific topic, links the research to an NCTE brief or policy statement, and then demonstrates how those principles come alive in practice: by showcasing actual classroom practices that demonstrate the policies in action; by talking about research in practical, teacher-friendly language; and by offering teachers possibilities for rethinking their own practices in light of the ideas presented in the books.

Beyond Standardized Truth, included in the Principles in Practice imprint, is the result of the author’s own efforts to bridge the gap between valuing reading and being able to respond with appropriate instruction or evaluate growth in reading. 

Scott Filkins brings us into his classroom and the classrooms of his colleagues to demonstrate how high school teachers across the disciplines can engage in inquiry-based reading assessment to support student learning. Based in the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, the classroom portraits highlight the importance of incorporating genuinely formative assessment into our instruction. 

Filkins unpacks his own history with assessment through engaging “confessions” of his early practices and eventual growth toward a framework that situates reading assessment in an inquiry model. Throughout the book, he showcases his colleagues’ attempts to use an inquiry framework, including the various tools and documentation methods that help them inquire into their students’ habits and thoughts as readers, use formative assessment to fuel the gradual release of responsibility framework, and use reading assessment as a means of professional reflection. 

Finally, Filkins challenges us to broaden the conversation about assessment to a wider range of stakeholders and offers a vision of assessment as an expression of care for the students in our charge.

A deep dive into the rich resources available for teaching Shakespeare’s plays, Bring on the Bard is for every high school teacher—early career to veteran—looking for new, hands-on activities to draw students of all ability levels into the work and world of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for readers; he wrote individual “cue scripts” for actors who hadn’t read the entire play but had to perform on the fly with almost no rehearsal. Those cue scripts have become the written form of his dramas, compiled originally in the First Folio of 1623. And the actors’ cues for meaning, emotion, and emphasis are still embedded in Shakespeare’s language, ripe for discovery by today’s students. 

Shakespeare’s plays rightly remain a staple of the ELA curriculum, but evolving standards and youth culture itself challenge teachers to put students—not a text—at the center of a reading experience in order to support diverse readers and learners.

How can we do this? 

Experienced educators Kevin Long and Mary T. Christel introduce us to the Folio technique, which builds on active drama approaches that position students to engage with a rich text through low-risk speaking and improvisation activities. Without requiring students to become actors, the Folio technique helps them to discover the clues the Bard built into his works that allow actors to efficiently understand their characters’ text, context, and subtext. Teachers can use excerpts from the First Folio along with a mass market paperback or digital edition of a play to help students get closer to Shakespeare’s intentions; understand the language, action, and emotions of the characters; and perhaps even explore the challenges the Bard’s modern editors face.

The book offers suggestions for using parallel text, graphic, and abridged editions of Shakespeare’s works, as well as activities using cue scripts and a variety of viewing experiences. 

Classrooms should be spaces where every child feels safe to bring their whole self to school. This book shows how to set up preK–grade 6 classrooms that support student agency, independence, and choice. The results of classrooms designed with these goals in mind include: 

• Greater student engagement with curriculum
• Students who know themselves and are empowered as learners
• Students who feel valued and care about their learning as well as the learning of others
• A more cohesive, authentic, and accepting community of learners
• Opportunities for choice and decision-making by all learners

With examples drawn from real classrooms, the authors demonstrate how to make choices in seating, materials used, books read, and more. Special attention is paid to the design of classroom libraries in which a variety of diverse, quality books anchor so much of the work in helping young readers and writers grow and learn.

The book is richly illustrated with photos and samples to provide an inside look at classrooms in which children are centered and the teacher is responsive to creating spaces with student agency in mind.

172 pp. 2023. Grades PreK–6

Aimed at accomplished veteran teachers, Continuing the Journey offers practical advice, encouragement, and cutting-edge ideas for today’s English classroom. 

Coauthors Leila Christenbury and Ken Lindblom, well-known teachers, writers, and former editors of English Journal, are joined in this book by almost two dozen classroom teachers and researchers. Together they present real strategies for real classrooms and offer teachers ideas, insights, and support. Focused on literature and informational texts, this lively book (the first in a series) is a road map to professional renewal and to becoming a better teacher. Topics include: 

• Changes in you, your classroom, and your school
• What it means to be a better teacher
• Teaching literary texts and literary nonfiction
• And incorporating the study of informational texts and of social media in your classroom

In this third book in the Continuing the Journey series, Ken Lindblom and Leila Christenbury explore teaching English language, speaking, and listening. Aimed at veteran teachers yet accessible to highly capable early career teachers, this book offers practical advice, encouragement, and cutting-edge ideas for today’s English classroom.

Drawing on contemporary and foundational research to infuse classrooms with substance and energy, the authors focus on authentic assignments with real-world value. 

Topics in this volume include: 

• Understanding and teaching language change and attention to culture
• Fostering audience-responsive communication
• Addressing today’s challenges for in-person and technology-enabled speaking
• Encouraging and assessing respectful talk and multimedia communication
• Managing heated conversations
• Grasping why deep listening may be a lost art, and how we can recover it. 

Packed with classroom-ready approaches, provocative ideas, encouraging insights, as well as the authors’ anecdotes and asides, this book will entertain, educate, and inspire teachers who take seriously the importance of language, speaking, and listening in today’s dynamic world. 

As an added benefit, teachers and scholars from across the country add their voices and experiences in the ideal Teachers’ Lounge, providing important and diverse perspectives and advice. The Teachers' Lounge contributors: 

• Sydney Bryan
• Kelly Byrne Bull
• Tricia Ebarvia
• Christian Z. Goering
• Sharonica Nelson
• Molly S. Potas
• Kia Jane Richmond
• Jana L. Rieck
• Martha Sandven
• Brian Stzabnik
• Peter S. Willis

About Continuing the Journey 

Continuing the Journey is a five-book series on advanced approaches to teaching English language arts. Written for veteran teachers by Leila Christenbury and Ken Lindblom, the books include “From the Teachers’ Lounge,” an innovative feature that honors the expertise of both colleagues from the field and highly regarded scholars. Topics addressed in the series include literature and informational texts; language and writing; listening, speaking, and presenting; digital literacies; and living the professional life of a veteran teacher.

NCTE's membership magazine covers issues and trends in the English language arts and tips and resources for your classroom.

Sharon Mitchler argues for a reconfiguration of critical pedagogy to empower and engage American literature students in rural community colleges. She constructs a pedagogy that addresses the multiple positions of power and marginalization rural students occupy, often concurrently. 

Drawing on feminist pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and conceptualizations of rural places, she develops a theory of critical rural pedagogy that builds on the work of Kim Donehower, Charlotte Hogg, and Eileen Schell. Critical rural pedagogy actively seeks to engage rural students to bring their lived experiences to the college classes, not only to individual classrooms but to other forms of higher education as community college students transfer on to university settings. The book includes activities and examples to model classroom practice.

This book is written for K–5 educators who are interested in cultivating young writers by designing and facilitating writing instruction that begins with the resources that students bring to the classrooms from their families, homes, and communities. 

This kind of asset-based and individualized instruction is designed to meet the unique writing needs of each young writer. K–5 educators teaching in shifting contexts encounter an array of challenges daily, from restrictive language policies and mandates to heightened accountability measures that often dictate the design of their writing time and instruction.

This book focuses on elementary school teachers working with young writers in varying educational contexts, including dual language, bilingual, and English Only contexts, and in particular students who come from culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Part of the Principles in Practice series.

Part of the Principles in Practice series, this book also includes a robust list of resources for writing teachers, as well as helpful insights for:

• Getting multilingual students writing beyond the classroom walls
• Designing a writing community that works for all your learners
• Using writing conferences as a social practice
• Inviting the use of all linguistic, cultural, and experiential resources

Discussion Pathways to Literacy Learning examines the function of classroom discussion as an essential element in inquiry and literacy learning.

McCann, Kahn, and Walter provide examples of classroom discussion activities that have been part of an ongoing partnership between university professors and high school English teachers. The book draws on their research into the effect of discussion on literacy learning and offers examples of activities and guidelines for activities that teachers can use in their own practice. Beyond demonstrating the strong impact that authentic discussions have on learning, the authors show how participation in discussions can be pleasurable and meaningful experiences for adolescents, especially when then can choose the focus for their shared inquiry.

This fun and practical book gives teachers of grades 3–5 teachers both the research and the day-to-day practical activities to expand and empower their students’ vocabulary. 

Upper elementary students will develop a deeper understanding of how the English language works, enrich their vocabularies, and improve their reading and writing skills through the information and lessons provided by veteran educators Mary Jo Fresch and David L. Harrison. 

Each chapter presents definitions and playful examples (in poetry and prose) to teach: 

• Antonyms, synonyms, acronyms, (and many more “nyms”)
• Similes and metaphors
• Common idioms
• Shades of meaning and word origins 

Practical lessons and activities for each category will engage students in joyful practice. A final chapter offers insights into language choices by eight well-known children’s poets and authors, including two former US Young People’s Poets Laureate—Kenn Nesbitt and Margarita Engle—and world-renowned Jane Yolen.

Teacher, researcher, and consultant Amy Benjamin challenges the idea of “skill and drill” grammar in the second edition of this lively, engaging, and immensely practical guide. 

Does grammar instruction have to elicit moans and groans from students and teachers alike? Only when it’s taught the old-fashioned way: as a series of rules to follow and errors to “fix” that have little or no connection to practical application or real-world writing.

Benjamin’s enlightened view of grammar is grounded in linguistics and teaches us how to make informed decisions about teaching grammar—how to move beyond fixing surface errors to teaching how grammar can be used as the building blocks of sentences to create meaning. By using sentence patterns, mapping, visuals, and manipulatives, Benjamin presents an approach to grammar instruction that is suitable for a variety of student populations.

Although she doesn’t advocate for teaching to the test, Benjamin acknowledges the pressures students face when taking high-stakes tests such as the SAT and ACT. Included is a chapter on how to improve students’ editing skills to help prepare them for the short-answer portion of these tests.

In this sequel to English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s), editor Bruce McComiskey and contributors from a range of disciplines propose seven principles to reimagine English studies for increased relevance in an increasingly diverse and globalized world.

While social values outside of academia are changing from nationalism to globalization, much of English studies remains entrenched in nationalist discourses. 

From literature and theory to linguistics, writing, and rhetoric, English Studies Reimagined argues that English studies must shift from a limited national orientation to a more global and cosmopolitan one in order to remain culturally and academically relevant to students today.

McComiskey introduces seven principles to reimagine English Studies for increased relevance: 

• Conceive the discipline as a process
• Seek difference
• Expand what counts as literature
• Promote adaptive practices
• Value technology
• Embrace collaboration
• Take a public turn

Each chapter explores a different discipline within English studies from the perspective of difference: linguistics by Jacquelyn Rahman, rhetoric and composition by Victor Villanueva, creative writing by Sarah Sandman, literature and literary criticism by Richard C. Taylor, critical theory and cultural studies by Jeffrey J. Williams, and English education by Tonya B. Perry. All play vital and distinct but interrelated roles in this proposed shift toward a globally oriented English studies.

The authors share classroom vignettes, strategies, and resources for “going public” with literacy assessment through teacher collaboration with colleagues, with families, and with the community.

Teachers want assessment tools and strategies that inform instruction, engage students in the process, and invite families and community members to enter into the conversation about student learning and progress. When teachers work collaboratively with one another, they align beliefs and practices to generate new ideas that reflect the questions they are asking about literacy and learning. When students, families, and the community are invited to be active, engaged participants in these discussions, all stakeholders have an opportunity to create a shared vision for literacy learning and to construct assessment tools and strategies that help everyone answer the important questions: “How as teachers are we engaging with one another over our literacy assessment beliefs and practices?” and “How can we better bring families and communities into these conversations?” 

In this volume of the Principles in Practice Literacy Assessment strand of books, veteran educators Kathryn Mitchell Pierce and Rosario Ordoñez-Jasis share classroom vignettes, strategies, and resources for “going public” with literacy assessment through teacher collaboration with colleagues, with families, and with the community. Drawing from the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, and their own extensive experience, the authors have compiled a set of collaborative assessment principles, as well as a model for teacher professional development around assessment, to guide teachers from assessment theory to practical implementation in the classroom. 

Teachers are at the heart of assessment conversations because they have up-close and personal experiences with how assessments impact their students. These experiences provide an invaluable perspective that is essential to all decision making about assessing student learning. But teachers don’t—or shouldn’t—stand alone. Their critical expertise is strengthened by the experiences and expertise of others invested in the success of our students—colleagues, families, communities, and students themselves.

Drawing from ethnographic data collected in Indonesia from 2009 to 2022, this book explores how an English-medium Indonesian PhD program in interreligious studies and three Muslim scholar-activists activate knowledge where languages intersect, a process mediated by material circumstances within Indonesia and voices past, present, and future that both are audience to and transcend the traditional geographic and discursive borders associated with them.

As they negotiate translingually to make meaning at the borderlands where seemingly discrete discourses intersect, they challenge false divides between rationality and spirituality; between the mind and body; between female agency and Islam; and between English and non-Western meaning-making. By exploring how these scholar-activists engage in translingual praxis to move knowledge from the discursive plane to the material plane and back again to effect social justice across multiple and intersecting languages, audiences, and contexts, this book opens up new ways of understanding translingual negotiation where feminist scholarly activism and Islamic belief intersect. CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric

Even from the earliest grades, children have the rights to read and write—not just in dominant American English, but also in their own languages and dialects.

Young children make meaning and make sense from the earliest years. They read facial expressions, engage in interactions, and read symbols across a variety of named languages. Historically narrow definitions of reading and writing, however, often prevent children of color and immigrants from having access to texts that reflect their diverse cultures and backgrounds. Classroom materials also often don't reflect the growing majority of multilingual children of color, compromising their right to access texts that reflect their cultural values, language practices, and historical legacies.

Promoting equitable, inclusive, and plural understandings of literacy, Mariana Souto-Manning and eight New York City public school teachers explore how elementary teachers can welcome into their classrooms the voices, values, language practices, stories, and experiences of their students who have been minoritized by dominant curricula, cultivating reading and writing experiences that showcase children's varied skills and rich practices.

Readers are invited to enter classrooms where teachers have engaged with the principles detailed in two NCTE position statements--NCTE Beliefs about the Students' Right to Write and The Students' Right to Read--in the pursuit of justice. Collectively, their experiences show that when teachers view the communities their students come from as assets to and in school, children not only thrive academically, but they also gain confidence in themselves as learners and develop a critical consciousness. Together, stepping into their power, they seek to right historical and contemporary wrongs as they commit to changing the world.

About Principles in Practice

Books in the Principles in Practice imprint offer teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.

Each book discusses the research on a specific topic, links the research to an NCTE brief or policy statement, and then demonstrates how those principles come alive in practice: by showcasing actual classroom practices that demonstrate the policies in action; by talking about research in practical, teacher-friendly language; and by offering teachers possibilities for rethinking their own practices in light of the ideas presented in the books.

The Lifespan Development of Writing presents the results of a four-year project to synthesize the research on writing development at different ages from multiple, cross-disciplinary perspectives, including psychological, linguistic, sociocultural, and curricular.

Although writing begins early in life and can develop well into adulthood, we know too little about how writing develops before, during, and after schooling, as well as too little about how an individual’s writing experiences relate to one another developmentally across the lifespan. There is currently no adequate accepted theory of writing development that can inform the design of school curricula and motivate appropriate assessment practices across the years of formal education. 

The Lifespan Development of Writing is a first step toward understanding how people develop as writers over their lifetimes and presents the results of a four-year project to synthesize the research on writing development. First collectively offering the joint statement “Toward an Understanding of Writing Development across the Lifespan,” the authors then focus individually on specific periods of writing development, including early childhood, adolescence, and working adulthood, looked at from different angles.

They conclude with a summative understanding of trajectories of writing development and implications for further research, teaching, and policy, including the assertion that writing research “can raise our curricular vision beyond the easily measurable to recognize that writing development is far more than the accretion of easy testable skills, and that successful writing development cannot be defined as movement toward a standard.”

This practical book brings together coauthors Troy Hicks and Jill Runstrom with the voices of ten additional middle level educators (Grades 4–9) to explore applications of NCTE’s Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom position statement in middle grades classrooms. 

Including chapters and vignettes that explore lessons and technologies for close and critical reading for literary analysis, writing to argue and inform, and considerations for remote and hybrid learning, the book follows a year in the life of Runstrom’s ninth-grade English classroom. With specific lesson ideas and examples of student work, the book brings the entire Beliefs statement to life while also foregrounding the primary goal that we should consider “literacies before technologies,” creating rich opportunities for reading and writing, enhanced with digital tools. An annotated bibliography is also included.

Making Middle School is the story of eighth-grade English teacher Steve Fulton and science teacher Tiffany Green’s explorations of the intersections between critical literacy and science through maker spaces alongside their students. 

Steve and Tiffany, with thinking partner Cindy Urbanski, use the idea of make to center student learning in their classrooms as well as to democratize learning, back-loading English and science standards while front-loading the current focus on STEAM. 

Making—following one’s own desire to create—is based on principles of connected learning, where students work in community to challenge themselves, to be creative, and to wonder about their world. Making represents a pathway directed by the learner and allowed to unfold organically, without a scripted route or destination. By looking up close at the real work of teachers and students, Fulton and Urbanski illustrate the rich and real applications of a make-based approach in today’s middle school classrooms.

Celebrate the profound impact of Victor Villanueva’s scholarship, teaching, and mentorship in the field of rhetoric and composition with this remarkable collection. Engaging both emerging and established scholars, this book explores the legacy of Villanueva’s contributions.  

Victor Villanueva is Regents Professor Emeritus, a former director of comp, director of a university-wide writing program, director of an American Studies program, English department chair (twice!), former editor of the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric monograph series of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, former head of that organization, its Exemplar, and Rhetorician of the Year. 

From the politics of language, literacy, and education to Latinx rhetoric, colonialism, and racism, each chapter dives deeply into relevant themes upon which Villanueva has left his mark, and into the significance of Villanueva’s work from the perspectives of each contributor. Grouped into three sections—Memoria of Rhetoric, Memoria of Mentoring, and Memoria of Relations—the essays in this book invite the reader to sit alongside one of the field’s pioneers and to experience the power of his influence on the discipline. CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series  

Winner of the 2015 CCCC Outstanding Book Award

As our field of composition studies invites students to compose with new media and multimedia, we need to ask about other possibilities for communication, representation, and making knowledge—including possibilities that may exceed those of the letter, the text based, the composed. 

In this provocative look at how composition incorporates new forms of media into actual classrooms, Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes argue persuasively that composition’s embrace of new media and multimedia often makes those media serve the rhetorical ends of writing and composition, as opposed to exploring the rhetorical capabilities of those media. Practical employment of new media often ignores their rich contexts, which contain examples of the distinct logics and different affordances of those media, wasting the very characteristics that make them most effective and potentially revolutionary for pedagogy. On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies urges composition scholars and teachers to become aware of the rich histories and rhetorical capabilities of new media so that students’ work with those media is enlivened and made substantive.

Unlock the power of personalized reading with practical strategies and easy-to-use ideas to engage students in the digital age. In the first edition of this book, the authors identified ways for working with four different types of readers—struggling readers, reluctant readers, English learners, and advanced readers—using technology to accommodate their various reading journeys and learning styles. The second edition identifies a fifth type of reader—the emerging reader—and ways of personalizing instruction to their needs.  

With updated research on the science of reading, this book offers strategies for incorporating social-emotional learning, Universal Design for Learning, and active learning strategies to support the diverse readers in your classroom.  

Chock-full of classroom-ready ideas to incorporate technology in the middle and high school English language arts classroom, this second edition packs even more: 

• Tools and resources to meet the needs of all learners where they are; 
• Empowering strategies to help students decide for themselves how they learn best; and 
• Hands-on activities that ignite students’ personal passions and joy for learning. 

Through case studies of individual students and lively portraits of elementary classrooms, editor Diane Stephens and colleagues explore how artful preK–5 teachers come to know their students through assessment and use that knowledge to customize reading instruction. 

Throughout the book, the educators profiled—classroom teachers, reading specialists, and literacy coaches—work together to take personal and professional responsibility for knowing their students and ensuring that every child becomes a successful reader. The teachers detail the assessment tools they use, how they make sense of the data they collect, and how they use that information to inform instruction. 

Like the other books in the Literacy Assessment strand of NCTE’s Principles in Practice imprint, Reading Assessment is based on the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, which outlines the elements of high-quality literacy assessment. These educators show us how putting those standards in action creates the conditions under which readers thrive.

Redesigning Composition for Multilingual Realities argues that students of English as a second language, rather than always being novice English language learners, often provide models for language uses as English continues to spread and change as an international lingua franca. 

Starting from the premise that “multilingualism is a daily reality for all students—all language users,” Jay Jordan proceeds to both complicate and enrich the responsibilities of the composition classroom as it attempts to accommodate and instruct a diversity of students in the practices of academic writing. But as Jordan admits, theory is one thing; practical efforts to implement multilingual and even translingual approaches to writing instruction are another. 

Through a combination of historical survey, meta-analytical critique of existing literature, and naturalistic classroom research, Jordan’s study points to new directions for composition theory and pedagogy that more fully account for the presence and role of multilingual writers.

A reflective and practical guide for secondary school teachers on using innovative technologies in the classroom to support multimodal literacy development.

Living in a multimodal, multimedia, and multi-sensory world can be overwhelming. To prepare students to produce and consume the multimodal texts made possible through modern technologies, Schmidt and Kruger-Ross advocate for a slower and more deliberate approach to thinking and planning for teaching literacies. They showcase how technologies can expand, enhance, and inspire the consuming and producing powers of secondary students by examining visual and aural literacies before multimodal literacies. 

Embedded throughout the book are the voices and materials of real practicing and preservice teachers, via QR codes. Teachers of all experience levels will find new ideas to challenge, extend, and enhance their literacy practice.

Rethinking Reading in College argues for more systematic attention to the role of reading comprehension in college, as a necessary step in addressing the inequities in student achievement that otherwise increase over time.

Synthesizing theory from literacy scholars with strategies derived from classroom inquiry projects, and through a critique of the philosophy behind the Common Core State Standards, Arlene Fish Wilner examines the needs of college-bound high school students and interrogates the nature of “remediation” in college. Arguing that when supported by rhetorical-reading assignments, students in all first-year writing classes can and should explore complex and enduring texts. 

Addressing both composition and reading across the curriculum, Wilner demonstrates how faculty in all disciplines and at all curricular levels can improve student outcomes by first deliberately inhabiting the persona of novices, rethinking their assumptions about what students know and can do as apprentices in a field.

She also illustrates the limitations of the literary vs. nonliterary text binary through a study of the demands posed by To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel commonly taught in both high school and college. An outline for a two-semester first-year general education course and examples of writing-to-read assignments from a range of disciplines are adaptable across subject areas and institutions.

Winner of the 2016 IWCA Outstanding Book/Major Work Award

Drawing from her decade leading Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center (CWC), Tiffany Rousculp advocates cultivating relationships within a “rhetoric of respect” that recognizes the abilities, contributions, and goals of all participants. Rousculp calls for understanding change not as a result or outcome, but as the potential for people to make choices regarding textual production within regulating environments. The book’s dynamic movement through stories of failure, success, misunderstanding, and discovery is characteristic of the way in which academic–community relationships in transition pivot between disruption and sustainability. 

By inquiring into the CWC’s history, evolution, internal dynamics, relationships with stakeholders, and interplay between power and resistance, Rousculp situates the CWC not as an anomaly in composition studies but as a pointer to where change can happen and what is possible in academic–community writing partnerships when uncertainty, persistence, and respect converge.

Salt of the Earth is an autoethnography and cultural rhetorics case study that examines white supremacy in the author’s hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, a community long marred by its racist culture. 

James Chase Sanchez investigates the rhetoric of white supremacy by exploring three unique rhetorical processes―identity construction, storytelling, and silencing―as they relate to an umbrella act: the rhetoric of preservation. 

Sanchez argues that we need to better understand the productions of white supremacy as a complex rhetorical act and that in order to create a more well-rounded view of cultural rhetorics as a subfield, we need more analyses of the way cultures of the oppressor survive and thrive. 

About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series:

In this series, the methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition—including rhetoric, communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse—ranging from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms and communities and curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts of writing and its teaching.

Susanne Rubenstein shows how to focus on voice in the teaching of writing to help students take ownership of their work, enjoy what they’re writing, and produce writing that shows depth of thought and originality of expression.

As writing instruction becomes more standardized and structured, student voices grow silent. Speak for Yourself: Writing with Voice places a new emphasis on voice in the teaching of writing. Armed with the philosophy and concrete teaching ideas offered in this book, teachers can find the courage to speak up in order to create writing classrooms where students take ownership of their work, enjoy what they’re writing, and produce writing that shows depth of thought and originality of expression. This book acknowledges the pressures English teachers face in today’s educational climate, but challenges teachers to rally their expertise and enthusiasm so that student writers develop voice and speak for themselves.

Edited by Detra Price-Dennis, this first volume of Special Issues: Racial Literacy gathers some of the most compelling and practical recent articles across NCTE journals, addressing the importance of racial literacy and its implications for curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. 

There’s a great deal of uncertainty, discord, and increased volatility across a number of critical institutions in our society. Each day on social media and TV news outlets we read, listen to, and/or watch events unfold that are linked to political, economic, health, legal, and educational inequities that can be traced to racist ideologies and practices. Public schools across the country are being subjected to pending state legislation and new laws that seek to limit how race—among other markers of identity—can be taught in K–12 classrooms. 

Editor Detra Price-Dennis has curated this collection to show how teaching from a racial literacy perspective is in conversation with antiracist, culturally responsive, equity-oriented frameworks that uplift curriculum design and instructional strategies. These articles can help educators (re)imagine the classroom as a space that supports the development of racial literacy skills and practices with their students.

About the Special Issue series:

Most teachers and students across the country are grappling with several important issues. We hear from many educators who are looking for compelling and engaging approaches racial literacy, critical media literacy, and trauma-informed teaching. 

NCTE is responding to these needs with Special Issues, a series of books designed to directly address these pressing topics in K-12 and college classrooms today. The first volumes collect content on these topics from across all of NCTE’s journals in one place, to make the most relevant material accessible and practical. 

Edited by expert practitioners in the field, each volume contains teaching tips to help implement these approaches in classrooms. 

During a time of increased book banning and censoring, of scrutiny of the word critical, and even calls for surveillance of K–12 teachers, the burgeoning field of critical media literacy is more important than ever. These new challenges demonstrate the importance of teaching media literacy to address some of the most pressing needs of our youth. This second volume devoted to critical media literacy picks up where the first volume left off, as it continues the work of defining this important area of focus and looks for practical and innovative ways to bring these important topics into ELA classrooms. Editors William Kist and Mary T. Christel have curated and edited a wide range of original essays by leading educators in the field, focusing on pedagogical directions of critical media literacy, integrating it into reading, writing, and interdisciplinary instruction, and new ways of teaching about and with media.

Teach Living Poets opens up the flourishing world of contemporary poetry to secondary teachers.

It is designed to give advice on reading contemporary poetry, discovering new poets, and inviting living poets into the classroom, as well as sharing sample lessons, writing prompts, and ways to become an engaged member of a professional learning community. 

The #TeachLivingPoets approach, which has grown out of the vibrant movement and community founded by high school teacher Melissa Alter Smith and been codeveloped with poet and scholar Lindsay Illich, offers rich opportunities for students to improve critical reading and writing, opportunities for self-expression and social-emotional learning, and, perhaps the most desirable outcome, the opportunity to fall in love with language and discover (or renew) their love of reading. The many poems included in Teach Living Poets are representative of the diverse poets writing today.

Recipient of the 2025 Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research Publication

Teaching Literacy Online (TLO) is a practical guide for secondary and college teachers of English in digital and online environments. Like other, practical, “how to teach online” books, TLO includes an overview of good practices and guidelines for teaching in digital environments and provides detailed suggestions and samples. The suggestions portion of the book focuses on applying the online teaching guidelines to literacy educators who are concerned about teaching literacies through

• digital organization;

• engagement with materials;

• analysis and synthesis of information; and

• the production of texts in a multitude of media and modalities.

By focusing on the engagement, analysis, and production of texts, TLO puts literacy pedagogy as the driving force when making decisions about how to teach online and/or with various digital applications.

Macbeth, a story of ambition, terror, and conscience, speaks to our students and our era. Through differentiated instruction, Lyn Fairchild Hawks offers myriad ways to engage students with different readiness levels and interests in this timeless tale of fear and courage, order and chaos, guilt and remorselessness. The book offers a wide range of exciting lesson ideas to challenge your learners, including

• key scenes to teach,
• big ideas and essential questions,
• film analysis activities,
• close reading assignments,
• performance activities, and
• preassessments and summative assessments. Macbeth can come alive for all students through independent reading options linked by theme, activities and projects mirroring professional roles, and relevance "hooks" to meet students' interests. Also included are a unit calendar, DIY tips for lesson design, and a companion website with more than forty ready-to-use handouts.

Drawing on both the production aspects of theater and the generative learning elements of drama, Theater, Drama, and Reading provides language arts teachers the tools and resources they need to help students transform text from print to interaction and deeper understanding.

Judith Freeman Garey establishes a simple framework for how to read as an actor who builds characters’ lives, a set designer who constructs context, and a director who generates action. In the same way that theater artists engage in a rehearsal process to transform printed words into a world of people, space, sound, and action for the stage, readers can learn a modified version of this process to make text visible and concrete, unlocking its meaning. 

This significant and practical new resource for all language arts teachers details the components of these reading strategies, provides step-by-step examples from classroom practice, and clearly demonstrates how the strategies achieve the Common Core State Standards. Additionally, the book defines a unique approach to teaching dramatic literature, features a short overview of additional popular classroom drama strategies to engage students with written text, and integrates practical suggestions to convert all these strategies to online instruction.