bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Excerpts from “Responding to Student Writing”
Authors: Sommers Nancy
Published: March 2024

This is the second installment in the Re-Visions series “an occasional series for which I invite essays that reconsider important work previously published in the pages of CCC. The full text of Nancy Sommers’s “Responding to Student Writing” (CCC, May 1982, 148–56) is available at www.inventio.us/ccc.
Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions:
Authors: Downs Douglas , Wardle Elizabeth
Published: March 2024

In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a course that approaches first-year composition as introduction to Writing Studies. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for first-year composition. It seeks instead to improve students’ understanding of writing, rhetoric, language, and literacy in a course that is topically oriented to reading and writing as scholarly inquiry and that encourages more realistic conceptions of writing.
Teaching and Parenting: Who Are the Members of Our Profession?
Authors: Hammill Bobbi Ann
Published: March 2024

This qualitative investigation explores the perceptions of four women compositionists regarding mothers, teaching, and scholarship in the field of composition. I examine narrative case studies about four women who have PhDs in composition from the same doctoral program.
The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach
Authors: McKee Heidi , Porter James E.
Published: March 2024

The study of writers and writing in digital environments raises distinct and complex ethical issues for researchers. Rhetoric theory and casuistic ethics, working in tandem, provide a theoretical framework for addressing such issues. A casuistic heuristic grounded in rhetorical principles can help digital writing researchers critically interrogate their research designs, carefully examine their relationships with research participants, and make sound ethical judgments.
Teaching Propriety: Unlocking the Mysteries of “Political Correctness”
Authors: Agnew Lois
Published: March 2024

Contemporary composition classrooms have understandably distanced themselves from the elitism associated with the terms taste and propriety. However, writers do need to learn how appropriate discourse is rhetorically negotiated. Understanding and reinventing propriety’s rhetorical function can enable students and teachers to develop notions of propriety that consider complex histories and perspectives.
Rhetoric, Literacy, and Social Change in Post-Mao China
Authors: Wexler Steven
Published: March 2024

Chinese migrant narratives suggest a parodic reworking of China’s official market ideology, “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” as well as new rhetorics that bring worker solidarity and opportunities for positive change.
Institutional Dimensions of Academic Computing
Authors: Selber Stuart A.
Published: March 2024

Academic institutions mediate online literacy practices in meaningful and significant ways. This essay explores the nature of that mediational process, using a visual-spatial method to map out and conceptualize dynamics and structures that have a bearing on the work of composition. A key argument is that composition teachers are intellectually positioned to influence institutional approaches to academic computing.x
Toward a New Critical Framework: Color-Conscious Political Morality and Pedagogy at Historically Black and Historically White Colleges and Universities
Authors: Kynard Carmen , Eddy Robert
Published: March 2024

With the “counterhegemonic figured communities” of HBCUs as our lens, our idea(l)s are shaped within specific rewritings of race, access, and education that move us toward a new framework. Alongside teaching narratives, we foreground collaborative revisions of identity, critical mentoring, and coalition-work as an alternative theory of pedagogy and composition.
Review Essay: Town and Gown: Partnering Writing Programs with Urban Communities
Authors: Brown Robert
Published: March 2024

Review of three books: Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement Linda Flower Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy beyond the College Curriculum Eli Goldblatt Making Writing Matter: Composition in the Engaged UniversityAnn M. Feldman
Review Essay: “Are You Going to Be a Problem?” Race as Performance
Authors: Tinberg Howard
Published: March 2024

Review of Your Average Nigga Performing Race Literacy and Masculinity by Vershawn Ashanti Young
Craft Knowledge: Of Disciplinarity in Writing Studies
Authors: Johnson Robert R.
Published: March 2024

This article argues that craft knowledge can provide a disciplinary rationale for writing studies. It draws from the ancient concepts of teche, phronesis, and the four causes of making and makes the case for a definition of disciplinary knowledge fitting for writing studies. The article concludes with a conceptual framework that can serve as a heuristic to explore craft knowledge.
Composing Knowledge: Writing, Rhetoric, and Reflection in Prior Learning Assessment
Authors: Leaker Cathy , Ostman Heather
Published: March 2024

In this article, we argue that prior learning assessment (PLA) essays manifest a series of issues central to composition research and practice: they foreground the â€œcontact zoneâ€ between the unauthorized writer, institutional power, and the articulation of knowledge claims; they reinforce the central role of a multifaceted approach to writing expertise in negotiating that zone; and they call attention to new and alternative spaces in which learning is gained and call for new forms in which it may be articulated. Ultimately, we claim that PLA as an emergent discourse compels compositionists to re-imagine not only the students we all teach, but also ways we might betterâ€”more explicitly, more reflectively, and more tacticallyâ€”teach such students about writing as a mechanism for claiming and legitimating learning.
Disciplinarity, Divorce, and the Displacement of Labor Issues: Rereading Histories of Composition and Literature
Authors: Ianetta Melissa
Published: March 2024

This essay argues that a trend in histories of literary and writing studies is to bifurcate the origins of the fields and so engage in those modernist narrative fallacies describedby Jean-FranÃ§ois Lyotard. Such works limit our understanding of past practices and the longstanding connections between disciplinarity and labor.
Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework
Authors: Fraiberg Steven
Published: March 2024

This article argues that tracing multimodal-multilingual literacy practices across official and unofficial spaces is key to moving composition into the twenty-first century. Key tothis remixing of the field is a situated framework that locates multimodal-multilingual activities in wider genre, cultural, national, and global ecologies.
Review Essay: The Rhetoric of Social Movements Revisited
Authors: Gaillet LynÃ©e Lewis
Published: March 2024

Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action in the Composition Classroom Kristie S. Fleckenstein Rhetorics, Literacies, and Narratives of Sustainability Peter N. Goggin, ed. Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civic Discourse, and Education in Early America. Mark Garrett Longaker The Responsibilities of Rhetoric Michelle Smith and Barbara Warnick, eds. Active Voices: Composing a Rhetoric for Social Movements Sharon McKenzie Stevens and Patricia M. Malesh, eds.
2009 CCCC Exemplar Award Acceptance Speech
Authors: Villanueva Victor
Published: March 2024

The Exemplar Award is presented to a person who has served or serves as an exemplar of our organization, representing the highest ideals of scholarship, teaching, and service to the entire profession. This is the written version of the acceptance speech Victor Villanueva gave at the CCCC meeting in San Francisco on March 12, 2009.
Teaching Margery and Julian in Anthology-Based Survey Courses
Authors: Petersen Zina
Published: March 2024

Recognizing that many of us teach the medieval English women mystics Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in survey courses, this essay attempts to put these writers in context for teachers who may have only a passing familiarity with the period. Focusing on passages of their writings found in the Longman and Norton anthologies of British literature, the author shows how these women responded to and shaped sociopolitical issues of their day, particularly questions of heresy and disorder as threats to Catholic institutional stability, the role of Mendicant teachings for the laity of the church, and the rise of the cult of the Eucharist.
Review: Multiculturalism in College English Departments
Authors: Mejia Jaime Armin
Published: March 2024

Reviewed is Making Multiculturalism: Boundaries and Meaning in U.S. English Departments by Bethany Bryson.
Review: Whetstones Provided by the World: Trying to Deal with Difference in a Pluralistic Society
Authors: Daniell Beth
Published: March 2024

Reviewed are Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism, by Sharon Crowley, and Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, by Krista Ratcliffe.
Reviving the Thirties: The Case for Teaching Proletarian Fiction in the Undergraduate Literature Classroom
Authors: Casey Janet Galligani
Published: March 2024

Undergraduate literature courses tend to neglect American fiction of the 1930s, especially the proletarian novel. Disregard of this particular genre is often based on the assumption that it emphasized a crude Marxist realism opposed to aesthetic modernism. Various examples of the genre are, in fact, worth teaching, especially because they do not fall simply into either camp. Such texts include John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy and Fielding Burke’s novel Call Home the Heart.
Introduction: Configurations of Transnationality: Locating Feminist Rhetorics
Authors: Hesford Wendy S. , Schell Eileen E.
Published: March 2024

This special issue on feminist rhetorics and transnationalism challenges the disciplinary defining of rhetoric and composition around U.S.-centric narratives of nation, nationalism, and citizenship. Such defining has tended to focus on feminist and women’s rhetorics only within the borders of the United States or Western Europe. The result is, potentially, the reproduction of institutional hierarchies. Transnationality refers to movements of people, goods, and ideas across national borders and, like the term borderland, it is often used to highlight forms of cultural hybridity and intertextuality. To bring a transnational focus to our field will require new methodologies and critical comparativist perspectives, which in turn may shift our objects and areas of study.
Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and
Authors: Jolliffe David A. , Harl Allison
Published: March 2024

The authors discuss a survey of reading practices that they administered to students at their home institution, the University of Arkansas, as well as logs that students at the school kept of their daily reading acts. An important finding was that, contrary to possible belief, students at this university are reading quite a bit, although they are not spending much time on materials assigned in their courses. The authors propose some methods for boosting students’ interest in academic texts, and they call for other institutions to conduct similar studies.
Review: Historicizing Rhetorical Education
Authors: Harkin Patricia
Published: March 2024

Reviewed are "Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States" by Jean Ferguson Carr, Stephen L. Carr, and Lucille M. Schultz; "The Knowledge Contract: Politics and Paradigms in the Academic Workplace" by David B. Downing; and "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres" by Hugh Blair, edited by Linda Ferreira-Buckley and Michael S. Halloran.
Review: Displaying the Visual
Authors: Helmers Marguerite
Published: March 2024

Reviewed are “Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property” by Susan M. Bielstein and “Rhetorics of Display”, edited by Lawrence J. Prelli.
Composing Alternatives to a National Security Language Policy
Authors: Wible Scott
Published: March 2024

President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative focuses narrowly on gearing language education to security and military needs. English educators should work with their counterparts in foreign language departments to promote a broader view, one that encourages study of the multiple language groups that currently exist within the United States.
The Corrido: A Border Rhetoric
Authors: Noe Mark
Published: March 2024

The border rhetorics that Latino/a students bring into the classroom can help them and other students resist being appropriated by academic discourse. For example, the corrido involves a mimicry of conventions that enables students to envision a fluid identity rather than exchange one identity for another.
Composing in a Global-Local Context: Careers, Mobility, Skills
Authors: Lu Min-Zhan , Horner Bruce
Published: March 2024

When composition students look to their teachers for vocational guidance, both groups should acknowledge that the contexts of such terms as career, mobility, and skills have radically changed. In particular, the economy now links the global with the local, and capitalism has shifted from the fordist model, dominant through much of the twentieth century, to a newer, “fast” model.
Classics and Counterpublics in Nineteenth-Century Historically Black Colleges
Authors: Jarratt Susan C.
Published: March 2024

In the post-Civil War United States, several historically black colleges gave a central role to classical rhetoric in their curricula, and many of their students used its concepts to develop a distinctly black, oppositional public sphere.
Reflections on Lincoln and English Studies
Authors: Wilson Douglas L.
Published: March 2024

Acknowledging that 2009 is the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, several scholars argue that Abraham Lincoln has played or can play an important role in the college English curriculum.
The “Place” of Rhetoric in Aggadic Midrash
Authors: Metzger David , Katz Steven B.
Published: March 2024

The authors define midrash and explain its importance as a Jewish rhetorical practice, focusing on how two particular examples of midrash deal with the deity’s response to the destruction of the Temple.
How We Value Contemporary Poetry: An Empirical Inquiry
Authors: Broad Bob , Theune Michael
Published: March 2024

By examining how a group of poets judged particular contemporary poems, the authors identify the aesthetic criteria that often inform such evaluations.
Chaucer’s Haunted Aesthetics: Mimesis and Trauma in Troilus and Criseyde
Authors: Ingham Patricia Clare
Published: March 2024

Studying Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde helps us evaluate current theories of trauma, especially the very different accounts of it provided by Ruth Leys and Cathy Caruth. The poem renders trauma a feature of both linguistic acts and personal pain. Besides citing it in suffering individuals, Chaucer’s text points to a complicated and ambivalent circulation of such wounds both in culture and for it.
Real Teaching for Real Diversity: Preparing English Language Arts Teachers for the 21st-Century Classrooms
Authors: Boyd Fenice B. , Ariail Mary , Williams Robert , Jocson Korina , Sachs Gertrude Tinker , McNeal Kezia , Fecho Bob , Fisher Maisha
Published: March 2024

Attempting to address the following central question, How might literacy educators learn to recognize, promote, and capitalize upon the rich cultural resources of students in diverse classrooms in the United States?, the authors provide a list of belief statements to serve as the foundation for positive changes in the ways in which the literacy needs of diverse learners could be met. The conclusion is that we had better support the learning of all of our peoples if they are to participate meaningfully in our place. The future truly is all Accuse.
Book Walk: Works That Move Our Teaching Forward: Reading the Topography of the Flat World
Authors: Harmon John
Published: March 2024

So, what have you been reading lately? Such a casual question“when asked of colleagues in English education”often gives way to some very interesting responses. Though this inquiry often yields one or two titles, which evoke nods of instant recognition, the depth of the professional conversation is enhanced when at least one of the titles startles the inquirer. John Harmon, past president of the New York State English Council, provides just such a startling response with his discussion of a book that many readers would consider a text about business and commerce. He calls upon his thirty years in English education, both as a teacher and a curriculum coordinator, linking his main text to a constellation of works, which provide ready recognition to professionals in the field.
The Editorial We: Themed Issue on the Arts, New Literacies, and Multimodality
Authors: Harste Jerome C. , Albers Peggy
Published: March 2024

Guest Coeditors Jerome C. Harste and Peggy Albers introduce English Education’s first themed issue on the Arts, New Literacies, and Multimodality.
The Arts, New Literacies and Multimodality
Authors: Albers Peggy , Harste Jerome C.
Published: March 2024

The arts, multimodality, and new literacies studies, each with its own distinct principles, together can redefine literacy and what constitutes being literate. To recognize the roles that each of these fields plays in literacy necessitates a cultural shift in reading, interpreting, creating, and responding to a range of multimedia messages. The everyday literacies that learners bring to the classroom blur the lines between traditional literacy and unpredictable literacy, which promotes reading and writing through multimedia to create morphed and altered texts.
“Speaking” the Walk, “Speaking” the Talk: Embodying Critical Pedagogy to Teach Young Adult Literature
Authors: Miller sj
Published: March 2024

A critical reflection of the efficacy of my teaching and the pedagogies I embody is potentially important because under the continual threat of No Child Left Behind and some research that may devalue qualitative research, I want to support my students in their efforts, while offering them a well-rounded understanding of different pedagogies and possible applications.
“It Makes It More Real”: Teaching New Literacies in a Secondary English Classroom
Authors: Bailey Nancy M.
Published: March 2024

Bailey’s research informs us of the social and cultural practice of literacy shaped by multiple design systems. Her study of one teacher’s classroom shows that new literacies used as daily work, not as a “hook” to get students interested, along with authentic assessment tools, lead to deeper student learning.
A Thousand Writers Writing: Seeking Change through the Radical Practice of Writing as a Way of Being
Authors: Yagelski Robert P.
Published: March 2024

In this frankly utopian essay, Robert Yagelski’s theme is the transformative power of writing as an act in and of itself. He makes us reevaluate our motivation and point for teaching writing in schools and asks us to consider an agenda that will quite frankly scare teachers as he explains why we need an ontology of writing.
Priest, Prostitute, Plumber? The Construction of Teachers as Saints
Authors: Carter Catherine
Published: March 2024

Catherine Carter reminds us that “metaphor is not a decorative adornment to language, but a central mode of thought, both reflecting and affecting concepts of the world and actions in it” as she examines the metaphors that construct teaching and both reflect and perpetuate the conflicted nature of the work.
Static Structures, Changing Demographics: Educating Teachers for Shifting Populations in Stable Schools
Authors: Portes Pedro R. , Smagorinsky Peter
Published: March 2024

Portes and Smagorinsky examine the degree to which stable schools and authoritarian instruction accommodate the needs of learners exhibiting difference, with special attention to Spanish-speaking English Language Learners in a Southern setting. They find that the influx of immigrant students in Southern schools lays bare the normative institutional structures and instructional practices that go unchallenged until a new cultural group enters the school and reveals that what is normative to some is alien to others.
Texting Identities: Lessons for Classrooms from Multiethnic Youth Space
Authors: Paris Django
Published: March 2024

Paris examines texts worn on objects (like clothing or backpacks), delivered over electronic media, and rapped by youth emcees at a multiethnic high school. He argues that these are identity texts, used by young people to express ethnic and linguistic differences.
From the Secondary Section: Grammar Matters
Authors: Sipe Rebecca Bowers
Published: March 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
Snapshots: Dynamic Characters: A Year in the Life of Fourth Hour
Authors: Meikeljohn Julie
Published: March 2024

“Snapshots” offers insights about teaching and learning through teacher stories about a particular classroom event.
Bold Books for Teenagers: Summer Reading 2006
Authors: Gallo Don
Published: March 2024

“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.
Discovering the Inclusive Art of Poetry
Authors: Kryder John B.
Published: March 2024

Inclusion and collaboration are the keys to creating an annual arts celebration in Buffalo, New York. High school teacher John B. Kryder describes how educators across grade levels have brought poetry, music, and dance together in ways that help students better understand and appreciate these art forms. He also suggests smaller-scale possibilities for connecting poetry with art, math, and science.
Reviving Empathy and Imagination: Arts Integration Enlivens Teaching and Learning
Authors: Orzulak Melinda McBee
Published: March 2024

Melinda McBee Orzulak describes classroom practices and professional development activities that were influenced by her participation in an arts integration course. Risk-taking, empathy, complexity, and imagination became hallmarks of her instruction.
Research Matters: The Threat (to) (of) Voices in the Classroom
Authors: VanDeWeghe Rick
Published: March 2024

“Research Matters” provides teachers with review and application of research that illuminates the daily concerns and activities of English language arts teachers and classrooms.
Tools for Teaching: Poetry, Schmoetry! A Potpourri of Resources to Generate Enthusiasm for the Genre
Authors: Ruggieri Colleen A.
Published: March 2024

“Tools for Teaching” "Tools for Teaching" helps you find the best print and electronic resources for teaching English language arts.
From the Secondary Section: Challenging Roles
Authors: Younker Keith
Published: March 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
Beyond Tolerance: Teaching English in a Post-9/11 Classroom
Authors: Cook Raquel
Published: March 2024

Raquel Cook exited the south tower of the World Trade Center just before a plane hit it on 9/11. Deeply moved by her experience, Cook is now a high school English teacher in Utah, where she has created a unit on world literature designed to inspire not tolerance but curiosity among her students.
Using Jay-Z to Reflect on Post-9/11 Race Relations
Authors: Hill Marc Lamont
Published: March 2024

The 9/11 tragedy has inspired conflicted responses from African American scholars and artists. Marc Lamont Hill discusses how he uses popular rap texts in a high school Hip-Hop Lit class to teach literary interpretation and simultaneously engage students in complicated issues of race that have emerged in the aftermath of 9/11.
Sharing Stories and Developing Multiple Perspectives in Post-9/11 Classrooms
Authors: DelliCarpini Margo , Gulla Amanda Nicole
Published: March 2024

Sensitive to the increased importance of valuing diversity and diverse points of view since 9/11, Margo DelliCarpini and Amanda Nicole Gulla describe activities through which ESL students contribute new knowledge to their classes while simultaneously improving their English language skills.
When Academics Are Essential but Not Enough: Writing to Make Connections
Authors: Zimmet Nancy
Published: March 2024

Nancy Zimmet believes that the events of 9/11 emphasize the need for students to develop the ability to work well with others and to better appreciate multiple points of view. She describes writing activities with real audiences that she and her high school colleagues designed and found successful with secondary students in English, math, and science classes.
Research Matters: Scary Stories and Paradigm Shifts: Preparing High School Writers for College Writing
Authors: VanDeWeghe Rick
Published: March 2024

“Research Matters” provides teachers with review and application of research that illuminates the daily concerns and activities of English language arts teachers and classrooms.
Snapshots: The Legacy of Teacher Comments
Authors: Shadiow Linda K.
Published: March 2024

“Snapshots” offers insights about teaching and learning through teacher stories about a particular classroom event.
Bold Books for Teenagers: Making Time for Literature with Middle Eastern Perspectives
Authors: Gallo Don
Published: March 2024

“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.
How Movies Work for Secondary School Students with Special Needs
Authors: Coencas Joseph
Published: March 2024

Joseph Coencas shows scenes from films to help special education students improve their visual and auditory skills, build confidence in their abilities to talk about and analyze the components of a narrative, and feel comfortable engaging in class discussion and writing. He also encourages students to pursue their interests in subjects they have learned about in films.
Yearbook 101: A How-To Guide for Teaching the Yearbook Basics
Authors: Vettraino Christina M.
Published: March 2024

Finding few resources on how to teach a yearbook class, high school teacher Christina M. Vettraino set out to create her own. She offers a detailed, classroom-tested approach to producing an award-winning yearbook. Students on the staff and in the yearbook class learn the purpose and the concept of a unifying theme, graphic design, writing, and photography. In addition, they learn responsibility and professionalism by working under pressure and meeting deadlines.
Literary Magazines: To Censor or Not?
Authors: Mossman Robert C.
Published: March 2024

High school teacher Robert C. Mossman asserts that literary magazines reflect and elevate school communities’ values. As adviser of his school literary magazine, Mossman encourages students to uphold certain standards for decency, while helping students learn to distinguish between original writing that is specific and thoughtful and writing that merely glorifies difficult issues, such as sex, drugs, and violence.
Bold Books for Teenagers: Summer Reading 2007
Authors: Gallo Don
Published: March 2024

“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.
Behind Education: How Can You “Be the Book” Behind Bars?
Authors: Iasevoli Dave
Published: March 2024

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.
The Bard in the Bathroom: Literary Analysis, Filmmaking, and Shakespeare
Authors: Bucolo Joe
Published: March 2024

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.
A Collectibles Project: Engaging Students in Authentic Multimodal Research and Writing
Authors: Moynihan Karen E.
Published: March 2024

High school teacher Karen E. Moynihan creates a multimodal project inspired by the creative nonfiction style of The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Students choose a collectible item and immerse themselves in the subculture of the collectors. The project includes participation in library and field research, interviews, photography and graphic design, process journals, peer editing and drafting of a final story with integrated research, and PowerPoint presentations.
From A to Z: The 2006 Honor List
Authors: Nilsen Alleen Pace , Blasingame James , Donelson Ken
Published: March 2024

This year’s honor list will appeal to everyone. The seven young adult books reviewed reach across genres, subjects, and time. Among them, they have won the Printz and the National Book awards and have been repeatedly listed as “Best Books” of 2006.
Perspective-Taking as Transformative Practice in Teaching Multicultural Literature to White Students
Authors: Thein Amanda Haertling , Beach Richard , Parks Daryl
Published: March 2024

Amanda Haertling Thein, Richard Beach, and Daryl Parks explore the subtle yet powerful changes that transpire when white students encounter multicultural literature and experience tensions between their beliefs and those that appear in the texts. As students mediate the tensions, they become more critically aware of their beliefs and may be more willing to “try on” alternative perspectives or even amend their original beliefs.
Writing Like a Good Girl
Authors: Sitler Helen Collins
Published: March 2024

In a montage of genres, Helen Collins Sitler illuminates the subtle yet powerful, often detrimental messages we send to girls that silence their public and private voices and diminish their opportunities to question and learn.
Teaching Vocabulary Expeditiously: Three Keys to Improving Vocabulary Instruction
Authors: Smith Thomas B.
Published: March 2024

Integrating vocabulary games and activities more often into the structure of the day, Thomas B. Smith establishes a word-rich environment for high school students to experiment with unfamiliar words in varying, playful contexts. Smith asserts that giving frequent opportunities for hearing, speaking, and writing in the typical context of the day is more beneficial to students than lists of vocabulary words to be tested on.
A Context-Based Strategy for Teaching Vocabulary
Authors: Nelson Deanna L.
Published: March 2024

Students in Deanna L. Nelson’s high school classroom study vocabulary gradually over a period of time. Students begin by collecting words from readings and listing them on a designated whiteboard. They prepare practice quizzes to exchange with peers and engage in frequent vocabulary discussions that emphasize recognition of context clues and other language decoding strategies.
Finding the Joy of Language in Authentic Wordplay
Authors: Whitaker Sandra
Published: March 2024

Within the walls of their classroom, high school teacher Sandra Whitaker and students take on the challenge of language acquisition. They play with morphemes and etymologies and examine how authors craft meaning. Whitaker observes that it is possible for students to “learn more words than teachers can teach directly.”
Vocabulary in Action: Strategies for Turning Students into Wordsmiths
Authors: Hardwick-Ivey Amy R.
Published: March 2024

High school teacher Amy R. Hardwick-Ivey loves teaching vocabulary. She describes numerous activities that increase students’ understanding of the nuances of language and their confidence in using language well.
Bold Books for Teenagers: Summer Reading 2008
Authors: Gallo Don
Published: March 2024

“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 will also appear in this column.
New Voices: Keeping It New
Authors: Hunt Tiffany J. , Hunt Bud
Published: March 2024

“New Voices” raises questions, offers insights, and provides a forum for novice teachers to engage in the professional conversation surrounding the teaching of English.
Speaking My Mind: Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Please Stay Out of My Middle School English Class!
Authors: Roberts Mike
Published: March 2024

“Speaking My Mind” invites readers to speak out about controversial issues relevant to the teaching of English language arts.
EJ in Focus: Homework on Homework: Involving Students with a Controversial Issue
Authors: Nelms Ben F.
Published: March 2024

As he suggests useful ways to talk and listen to students about homework, a veteran English teacher and teacher educator surveys the most significant current scholarship on the homework controversy.
Encouraging Student Voice in Academic Writing
Authors: Gemmell Rebecca
Published: March 2024

This twelfth-grade English teacher couldn’t help but dread grading piles of students’ essays, until she began to employ Writer’s Notebooks in her class.
“[T]his book of odd tales / which transform the Brothers Grimm”: Teaching Anne Sexton’s Transformations
Authors: Keely Karen A.
Published: March 2024

A high school English teacher finds Sexton’s retold fairy tales can spark students’ imaginations while helping them learn to analyze literature.
Research for the Classroom: Formative Assessment: Can You Handle the Truth?
Authors: Gorlewski Julie
Published: March 2024

“Research for the Classroom” publishes mini-studies of ELA classroom practices and suggests ways in which high school and middle school English teachers may study the effectiveness of their pedagogy.
Literature from the Modern Middle East: Making a Living Connection
Authors: Webb Allen
Published: March 2024

Webb and his students suggest books and approaches for helping students better understand the cultures of the Middle East.
Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe
Authors: Crovitz Darren , Smoot W. Scott
Published: March 2024

Have you banned Wikipedia from your students’ research papers? Crovitz and Smoot might change your mind.
Self-Discovery through Character Connections: Opening Up to Gayness in Angels in America
Authors: Blazar David
Published: March 2024

Blazar’s students understand the play’s characters and themes by writing and interacting in role.
Authentic, Dialogic Writing: The Case of a Letter to the Editor
Authors: Hallman Heidi L.
Published: March 2024

Pregnant and parenting teen students saw a letter to the editor that criticized their school program. Their teacher saw a way to inspire passionate writing.
From the Secondary Section: Teaching for the Fun of It
Authors: Mitcham Karen
Published: March 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators. Pp. 13-14.
Pedagogy of the Living Dead: Using Students’ Prior Knowledge to Explore Perspective
Authors: Nail Allan
Published: March 2024

Nail calls forth zombies to liven up his students’ study of cultural knowledge, debates about human rights, and literary analysis. Pp. 49-55.
“Ripples in the Upside-Down Lake of the World”: Running a Read-Aloud Marathon
Authors: Iasevoli Dave
Published: March 2024

Spend a day On the Road with Jack Kerouac and Iasevoli’s students and colleagues. Pp. 74-78.
Poem: Croquet
Authors: Davis Andrea
Published: March 2024

P. 37
Poem: Today
Authors: McGinn Deborah
Published: March 2024

P. 44
From the Secondary Section: The Play within the Plays
Authors: Dakin Mary Ellen
Published: March 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
“Stand and Unfold Your Self”: New Moves for Exploring Hamlet
Authors: Rocklin Edward L.
Published: March 2024

Performance is more than fun’s essential to understand Shakespeare’s works.
The Sonnet Tradition and Claude McKay
Authors: E. M. Deniz Newlin Donna Louisa
Published: March 2024

The 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets provides an excellent context for the study of sonnets written by a 20th-century African American poet.
Writing That Excites and Educates: A Class Novel
Authors: Nobles Susanne
Published: March 2024

Would you assign each of your students to write a novel? How about if they write one together?
From the Secondary Section: Teaching about Consumerism through Stories
Authors: Haas Kay Parks
Published: March 2024

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.
The Green Knight Should Be Green: Graphic Response to Literature
Authors: Broz William J.
Published: March 2024

Broz shows how felt, cardboard, and other materials can help students develop innovative analyses of literature.
A Critical Close-Up: Three Films and Their Lessons in Critical Literacy
Authors: Hodges Amanda L.
Published: March 2024

The films Renaissance Man, The Great Debaters, and Akulah and the Bee offer positive representations of teaching and learning.
Off the Shelves: Poetry and Verse Novels for Young Adults
Authors: Letcher Mark
Published: March 2024

Off the Shelves discusses new young adult literature and explores ways of teaching YA texts in middle and high school English classes.
Success with ELLs: Spanish in the Mainstream: Finding Middle Ground for Latino/Latina Immigrant Newcomers
Authors: Siefert Bobbi
Published: March 2024

Success with ELLs suggests effective approaches to teaching English language learners in ways that can be of benefit to all students in mainstream middle and high school English classes.
Technology: Challenges and Concerns
Authors: Wilcox Bonita L.
Published: March 2024

In a perfect world, the computer, with its Internet and World Wide Web, might be the perfect learning tool, but in the real world, many youngsters lack the discipline and/or critical thinking necessary to be in charge of their own learning.
Teachers, Learners, and Questions of Quality
Authors: Wilcox Bonita L.
Published: March 2024

What does it mean to be a “highly qualified” teacher? Editor Bonita Wilcox believes that “quality teachers must be quality learners themselves, and must be able to promote quality learning in others.” Our authors this month stretch our thinking about this question
NCLB and the English Language Arts
Authors: Scherff Lisa , Groenke Susan L.
Published: March 2024

NCTE’s latest online survey regarding NCLB reform indicates that 64% of respondents feel the law needed to be “substantially reformed” and another 31% believe “it should not be reauthorized at all.” The articles in this issue showcase a range of voices, experiences, and strategies for working with and confronting NCLB. The 2007 election slate and ballot also appear.
The Children Left Behind: Memories of Promoting Literacy
Authors: Laczynski Adela R.
Published: March 2024

This memoir examines the use of supplementary educational programs in a low-income school district. Through sharing experiences from an after-school high school tutoring program and a first-grade reading enrichment program, the author raises questions about these programs: Are the causes of students falling behind being addressed? Are the instructors qualified, and are they given adequate resources? How do these programs motivate students to learn? Do these programs truly prepare students? What do the students’ voices tell us about their education?
Listening to Whispered Voices and Heart Melodies
Authors: Smith Andrea
Published: March 2024

This article describes a first grade study of the poetry of Langston Hughes and creation of poems reflecting the children’s dreams. It details how the project went beyond writing poetry to becoming a community building experience in which the children learned the power of sharing their dreams.
Literacy from the Eyes of a Kindergartner
Authors: Psarakis Christina
Published: March 2024

A kindergartener shares her drawings of the special places where she reads at home and at school.
Profiles and Perspectives: Shelley Harwayne: 2006 NCTE Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts
Authors: Hindley Joanne
Published: March 2024

Shelley Harwayne is NCTE’s 2006 Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts. Here, she speaks with good friend Joanne Hindley about what interests, motivates, and inspires her work as a teacher and author.
A New Way to Look at Literature: A Visual Model for Analyzing Fiction and Nonfiction Texts
Authors: Colman Penny
Published: March 2024

This article explores the limited and inconsistent use of nonfiction books in classrooms and offers a visual model for analyzing fiction and nonfiction texts that disrupts the traditional binary of fact and fiction and helps assure that students are exposed to the full range of high-quality literature.
Profiles and Perspectives: An Interview with Poet Nikki Grimes
Authors: Vardell Sylvia M. , Oxley Peggy
Published: March 2024

Poet and novelist Nikki Grimes talks about her background, her influences, her life as a writer, and her thoughts on sharing poetry with children.
Including Students with Special Needs in a Writing Workshop
Authors: Fu Danling , Shelton Nancy R.
Published: March 2024

Danling Fu is a professor in the School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida.This article illustrates not only how students with special needs grew as writers in an inclusive writing community, but also how a fourth-grade teacher systematically structured the learning environment and tailored her instruction to guide her students to develop as writers as well as to improve their language skills.
Full Inclusion: Understanding the Role of Gay and Lesbian Texts and Films in Teacher Education Classrooms
Authors: Hermann-Wilmarth Jill M.
Published: March 2024

This paper identifies some of the resources the author has found and used to help future teachers become fully inclusive teachers, particularly of early elementary students. Through sharing these resources—children’s literature, a children’s literature textbook, edited books for teacher educators and pre- and inservice teachers, and a video—the author engages with issues that face teacher educators who are interested in including the perspectives and concerns of gay and lesbian families and students in their literacy education classrooms. In relation to these resources, she asks the following questions: How can teacher educators better prepare their pre- and inservice teachers to address gay and lesbian issues in elementary school classrooms? What kinds of resistance should teacher educators be prepared for from their students? What types of literature and literacy strategies would support a goal of full inclusion?
“Why Do You Like This Page So Much?”
Authors: Tolentino Efleda Preclaro
Published: March 2024

Based on the results of a qualitative study that examined the role of talk during literacy events in a preschool classroom, this article describes ongoing talk among 4-year old children during three reading activities: reading informational text; narrating a story; and browsing over photos. The reading activities in which preschool children were engaged in talk were examined using Halliday’s (1978) model of the context of a situation. The article confirms that talk and meanings expressed are affected by what is taking place (field), who is talking (tenor) and what part language is playing (mode). This research reveals the potential of child-to-child conversations; at the same time, revealing spaces or gaps in children’s literacy understanding that can be addressed by peer and adult support. The results provide justification for further investigation of the potential of talk in determining children’s emerging understanding of reading.
In Memoriam
Authors: Graves Donald H.
Published: March 2024

Donald Murray 1923–2006.
In Closing…: Ars Libri
Authors: Lewis J. Patrick
Published: March 2024

Poet and author J. Patrick Lewis describes his reflections on the many joys that books can be for readers.
Drafting and Revision Using Word Processing by Undergraduate Student Writers: Changing Conceptions and Practices
Authors: Dave Anish M. , Russell David R.
Published: March 2024

The concepts of drafting and revision were developed out of process theory and research done in the early 1980s, an era when word processing was not as pervasive or standardized as it is now. This paper reexamines those concepts, drawing on an analysis of two decades of previous college-level studies of writing processes in relation to word processing and an exploratory survey of 112 upper-level undergraduate students who use computers extensively to write and revise. The results support earlier studies that found students’ revision is predominantly focused on local issues. However, the analysis suggests that the common classroom practice of assigning multiple drafts to encourage global revision needs to be rethought, as more drafts are not necessarily associated with global revision. The survey also suggests that printing out to revise may be on the decline. Finally, the analysis suggests the very concept of a draft is becoming more fluid under the influence of word processing. The study calls for further research on students’ drafting and revision practices using more representative surveys and focused qualitative studies.
Preparing Students for Active and Informed Civic Discourse
Authors: Farkas (New Voice) Kerrie R. H.
Published: March 2024

This article presents the results of a case study of civic discourse and explores whether and how composition classrooms can prepare students for active and informed participation in civic discourse.
Ice Cream / I Scream for YA Books
Authors: Gallo Don
Published: March 2024

From a 40-year perspective, Don Gallo examines the field of young adult literature, comparing it to ice cream—its various flavors and levels of richness. The article proclaims the profundity of the field and the quality of its writers, summarizes historical highlights, defends it against its detractors, and explains the importance of helping students make informed choices by talking about books and having them available in our classrooms. The author also states his personal preferences along with his concern about the increasing length of YA books.
Opportunity Matters: The Ithuba Writing Project in South African Schools
Authors: Sailors Misty , Makalela Leketi , Hoffman James V.
Published: March 2024

Our lead article explores the impact the authors witnessed when they helped South African teachers create culturally relevant books written in their students’ languages. Through participation in the Ithuba Writing Project, these teachers were able to relate transformative stories about their lives through books that they subsequently shared in the classroom. South African teachers were able to explore what it means to be a writer, refining their definitions of “writer” and their own instruction. The authors document the changes in these teachers as writers and teachers of writing.