This article describes literacy practices and outdoor activities in high school English classrooms--framed as critical rambling, a pedagogy seeking to raise awareness of issues like climate justice--with illustrations from a dissertation of teacher research and additional student work.

English language arts must be a class of both challenge and engagement. Joyful literacies can open the door to the unplanned and the new for both students and teachers as they center students' literacy experiences alongside the skills of the discipline, not just at the end of the year but, alternatively, throughout the whole school year. This…

This article explores how the Jewish tradition of l'dor va-dor (from generation to generation) is reflected in the readers/writers workshop model, highlighting the role of mentorship and introducing the 6M framework to support student-centered reading and writing instruction.

A high school teacher advocates for the use of the CARE method in the selection and teaching of fiction about disability in the English language arts classroom, considering the centrality, agency, and respect afforded disabled characters, as well as the expertise of the author.

English language arts (ELA) teachers and researchers have trialed methods for supporting youth who advocate for alternative and more just climatic futures (Beach & Smith, 2024; Datta, 2023). However, many educators are encountering legislation that muzzles critical talk in classrooms. Understanding that schools are not separate from society…

A teacher education professor and former secondary school instructor discusses using punk pedagogy and content in the English classroom to promote experimentation, interdisciplinarity, participation in community, and process-focused work.

In this article, the authors work to illustrate how "Miles Morales Suspended" by Jason Reynolds, an author whose work has been targeted by book ban efforts (Knight, 2022), can be positioned in English classrooms to teach about contemporary attacks on Black literature through book bans. The teaching outlined in this article is part of a…

This article details a unit of study bringing together shared reading, place-based pedagogies, and climate-centered texts to engage students in youth participatory community action (YPAR). The authors envision an English classroom where youth read, write, and argue for change as activists as they encounter climate justice literature through YPAR…

In this article, two researcher-educators assert that Black Language should be valued in the English language arts and reading classroom and provide four examples of novels (as well as corresponding activities) that can be taught in the classroom and that demonstrate authentic Black Language.

A teacher remembers her classroom as it used to be before the pandemic as she prepares for a new year of unknowns. Brieanne R. Lucy reflects how before COVID-19 and schools were closed, students in her English class would stand in a circle and read their first thoughts aloud. Students would showcase their command of repetition for effect, sensory…

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was alarming, and compounding this traumatic shift in the world's cultural awareness of safety was the social and political unrest that unfolded during this time, which students were acutely aware of through the news and social media. After experiencing that unprecedented trauma, rich novel studies in the English…

The author's eighth-grade ELA curriculum is rich with opportunities for students to bear witness to a variety of experiences. Besides the Holocaust unit, they read "Ghost Boys" by Jewell Parker Rhodes (2018) while exploring police brutality and segregation; "The Giver" by Lois Lowry (1993) while investigating government…

When teaching a Drama and Theater class the author's students chose August Wilson's "Fences" to focus on the teaching of "dramatic" texts. As the author reread Wilson's play, she noticed that within the first pages is the n-word, used in conversation between two African American men, two friends, and it became an immediate…

During the fall of 2019, the chaotic American political landscape was charged with scandal, debate, and accusations. As a result, students would often bring local and national politics into the authors' high school English language arts (ELA) classes. Instead of ignoring the students' heated debates in the classroom, the authors decided to embrace…

Two teacher educators offer several activities for youth to examine representations of adolescence by writing poetry, studying social media, and analyzing young adult literature through a youth lens.