This article will outline how literacy leaders can engage their community through empowering conversations and composition that center the body as knowledge and text.

Using literacies of the body and critical literacy lenses this article examines an author visit and possibilities for centering the body in text-based discussions with children.

In this Research and Policy column the authors define what it means for teachers and students to take a critical stance when reading children’s literature. They offer a framework teachers can use to enact a critical stance when reading picture books with their students and provide suggestions for how teachers might teach students about the world using children’s literature as a tool.

Early in the 2023–2024 school year Mr. Medeiros and a handful of his Kaua’i High School Future Teachers of Hawai’i club members took a two-day huaka’i (trip) to Oahu. This service-learning trip was part of the learning progression for the club which is focused on student advocacy and social justice. With the help of Josh Reppun retired Hawai’i State Supreme Court Justice Mike Wilson the people at What School Could Be and other amazing educators the students began their huaka’i by gathering together to think and talk about the purpose of education/school. Ostensibly they were traveling to Oahu to learn from others but really the adults were there to learn how to keep pushing the boundaries of the idea of “school.”

Across the country GOP legislators parent groups and school boards are banning books and attempting to take away the power of children’s literature. The resistance comes in the form of book bans and Critical Race Theory legislation. Taking away diverse books or banning the conversations that accompany such books from happening prevents books from being windows mirrors or sliding glass doors for students.

Using critical multicultural analysis and a justice-oriented approach to teaching history this study analyzes the portrayal of George Washington in children’s biographies.

As the fifth piece of our year-long inquiry asks “What does it mean to prepare students for civic engagement?” Vivian Vasquez Carolyn Clarke and Barbara Comber speak to the importance of developing learning experiences that center our students’ experiences questions and tensions when helping them develop critical literacies.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have potential as a collaborative model at facilitating culturally relevant/sustainable (CRS) pedagogical practices with preservice teachers. This article presents the results of a study examining the experiences of preservice English educators in a model PLC aimed at fostering understandings of CRS pedagogies with preservice educators. Monthly virtual PLC sessions were conducted over the course of four months focused on developing an understanding of CRS pedagogies with six preservice educators. Transcripts from PLC sessions and individual interviews were examined through a qualitative case-study analysis to determine themes that emerged from participant experiences. Analysis revealed three themes as central to preservice teachers’ experiences in the model PLC: (1) need for sense of community in the PLC (2) apprehension regarding perceived administrative response and (3) enthusiasm for attempting CRS practices in the classroom. PLCs centered on developing CRS practices with preservice educators may aid English teacher education programs in preparing teachers to educate students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

In this piece three leaders of English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) reflect on their individual experiences with ELATE before collectively exploring the benefits of membership in the professional organization.

The 2023 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts are of enduring quality inviting readers to deeply engage with language in expansive and varied ways.

Although most Americans know about haiku another East Asian form of poetry is less widely shared in American classrooms: Korea’s sijo. Sijo poems are longer than haiku (with 44-46 syllables) and by incorporating sijo into the curriculum teachers can expose students to a new form of poetry and expand their knowledge of East Asian culture. This article provides teachers with the tools and resources needed to teach sijo.

Teaching within a Vietnamese Two-Way Dual Language Program the author draws upon her Asian-American background as a reader and writer to inform her pedagogy emphasizing the promotion of students’ identities as readers writers and individuals.

As states across the US begin to mandate the teaching of Asian American histories the authors offer guidance for teaching this content alongside children’s literature.

In the fall of 2018 the First-Year Composition program at North Central Texas College (NCTC) initiated what informally became known as the Textbook Project. Our goal was to provide our community college students with innovative imaginative and inspiring classroom experiences that paralleled the high-impact opportunities their peers were afforded at four-year universities. The Textbook Project encompassed five key features: an NCTC-specific textbook a campus-wide common read resources for faculty and students in our college’s LMS a college-wide lecture series and funding for faculty professional development. Five years later the project’s emphasis on continuity through collaboration has revitalized the department through faculty engagement and increased student success.

The majority of first-year writing “is taught by teachers whose educational backgrounds are more likely to be in literature cultural studies or creative writing than in rhetoric and composition” (Abraham 78). This disciplinary knowledge gap poses a challenge for FYW faculty to adjust to new shifts in FYW pedagogy. We would expect inhouse faculty development opportunities to help fill these gaps; however the results of our year-long qualitative study indicate that the lack of shared disciplinary knowledge and the constraints on adjunct faculty make it challenging for faculty without backgrounds in writing studies to adapt their pedagogies. We add to the body of scholarship on professionalization in two-year college writing studies (e.g. Andelora; Griffiths; Jensen et al.; Sullivan; Toth et al. “Distinct”) and argue that addressing this problem will require investing resources in adjunct support; changing hiring practices to prioritize expertise in writing studies; and designing faculty development that focuses on both theory and pedagogy.

This Instructional Note is designed to assist students with using the rhetorical skills they already have as a bridge to writing rhetorical analysis essays.

This (Re)Active Praxis essay centers on the collaborative revision of two English language arts teacher education courses—one on literature and drama and the other on writing and language—in a state experiencing aggressive legislation against practices of diversity equity and inclusion that impacts teacher education preparing students to design justice-oriented education. Two objectives framed this collaborative course revision: to deliver critical teacher preparation grounded in cultural relevance and justice orientations and to design courses that integrate and demonstrate conceptual and instructional relationships between reading and writing. The authors share and reflect on their experiences and process of collaboratively revising the courses offering a heuristic derived from their decision-making to increase or improve ways education courses support preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn and teach literacy in culturally responsive justice-oriented classrooms.

This year-long ethnographic study explores how two ELA preservice teachers of color enacted pedagogies of abolitionist praxis—centering teaching and learning to and through an abolitionist praxis of identifying and dismantling surveillance criminalization and punishment—via the areas of curriculum and instruction relational work and organizing and activism. When enacting pedagogies of abolitionist praxis with specific attention to curriculum and instruction three findings were identified. First both teachers purposely and strategically designed their curriculum and instruction to explicitly teach an abolitionist praxis yet they did so via distinct approaches. Next the teachers rooted their curriculum and instruction in a radical Black Indigenous and feminist imaginary to teach about but more importantly teach against carceral practices policies and ideologies. Last both teachers facilitated youth-led action research projects that centered present and future world-building actions. This study provides implications for the education and support of preservice teachers and for K–12 teacher practice.

The work of three secondary English teachers illustrates the power and risks of centering talk as a practice in writing classrooms.