This reflective essay explores the evolution of an educator’s understanding of the inherently political nature of teaching inspired by Paulo Freire’s philosophy and deepened through personal experience and professional development. Initially resistant to integrating politics into pedagogy the author recounts how mentoring new teachers and a pivotal experience with a mentee exposed the inadequacy of apolitical teaching. A Fulbright fellowship further shifted the author’s perspective revealing that classrooms are critical spaces for civic discourse and democratic engagement. Embracing this insight the author began explicitly incorporating political texts and discussions while maintaining a focus on analytical thinking over partisan debate. The essay concludes with a framework for preservice and new teachers to navigate political content thoughtfully and responsibly. It argues that avoiding politics is not a neutral act but rather a missed opportunity to equip students for active citizenship in a complex polarized world.

This article addresses how teacher educators prepare literacy teachers to respond to the politicization of reading and literacy in current contexts. Utilizing a humanizing pedagogies framework the authors explore four nested cases within a case study of one cohort of preservice teachers’ literacy mentoring in a two-semester course-based practicum. They ask how preservice teachers practice humanizing pedagogy and how they reflect toward their future teaching. A qualitative analysis of course artifacts reveals particularities in how participants learn about themselves as they mentor young readers leverage those understandings to build their teaching practice and connect their experiences to the politics of schooling. Participants envision cultivating belonging and critical literacy within their future classrooms conscious of the conditions of schooling and hopeful about their capacity to teach critical literacy. Implications for teacher education include designing spaces to come to know and meet preservice teachers where they are in their journeys toward humanization.

This review of teacher research published in four NCTE journals from 2003–2023 considers who is authoring teacher research articles about which middle and secondary contexts and for which audiences. Despite teacher research’s history in English education epistemic injustice has fragmented its contributions to our field’s knowledge base. Consequently a recent history is critically important to document. Drawing on positioning theory to analyze how article authors position themselves and others through writing for publication this research reveals that most teacher research published in these NCTE journals is authored by English educators. It identifies three vantage points from which English educators differently position themselves in relation to teacher research and teacher-researchers as they contribute to ELA’s emancipatory aims. At a sociopolitical moment when teacher agency and intellectualism are particularly threatened this review calls English educators forward. By capitalizing on our collective power to publish and seek sustainable change with classroom teacher-researchers we champion shared roles as knowledge producers and agents of change working together to emancipate students and one another from oppressive systems of inequities.

Using the metaphor of my grandmother’s garden and her endless pockets of tools this praxis-focused discussion offers practical guidance for educators to effectively and strategically navigate complex political contexts and restrictive mandates. The goal is to equip and empower teachers so that they and students might flourish despite figurative briars and rocky terrains just as my grandmother’s plants did.

In this ELATE position statement issued on November 21 2024 the authors contextualize GenAI as an issue of literacy offering specific considerations for incorporating addressing and exploring this technology in ELA teacher education. More broadly the authors encourage us to question how teacher education can navigate these increasingly complex technologies and the attendant literacies while responding to the political implications of both.

This essay explores an in-class activity designed to prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to leverage critical literacies as they navigate political social media claims about English/reading instruction in a methods of middle school ELA course. PSTs investigated content produced by social media teacher influencers ascribed to the “Science of Reading” (SOR) movement using Gee’s (2014) “tools of inquiry” for discourse analysis. While PSTs shared greater critical perspectives of social media content after the activity they also struggled to identify the political underpinnings of instructional claims. The author reflects on this activity and offers suggestions for teacher educators as they prepare PSTs for twenty-first-century political and pedagogical influences.

The recent ELATE position statement on generative AI in English education is nuanced and wise perhaps the best that can be produced in this historical moment. However we must fully grasp the dangers of the “efficiency” celebrated by the technological economic and ideological interests driving these tools which have consequences for individual cognition and democratic participation. ELA professionals must champion broad human engagements with language including writing that prizes people’s experiences thoughts imaginations and voices for purposes beyond efficiency.