Having students read news articles or novels, watch television snippets, engage in class discussions, essay-writing, emailing, and drafting letters are excellent ways to broach any number of society's systemic and oppressive social maladies. Engaging in these activities in the English language arts classroom can serve as a catalyst to encourage…

In an era of "colorblind racism," in which race and racism are often suppressed as topics of discussion in classrooms, this article explores how students used comics to invent workarounds for "colormuteness" in their school. Knowing comics are not generally taken seriously, students employed the medium to subversive ends.

In this article Deidre Faughey shares an experimental classroom project that she developed with a diverse group of students in three ninth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) classes. Podcasts provide a unique opportunity for students to embrace experimentation and to take risks with their own voices, explore the school building and community, and…

Larissa Pahomov teaches students English and Journalism at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school opened its doors to students just seven years ago and was designed to encourage both inquiry and critical pedagogy. To those ends, there is a thematic curriculum for each grade level--for sophomores, it's…

Visible teaching invites educators to bring activist and change-agent identities directly into their teaching, working collaboratively with a community to enact sustainable, albeit constantly transforming, societal change. This article uses data from a year-long ethnographic study to paint a portrait of one Chicana veteran teacher who enacts an…

This article promotes project-based learning in English education as a way to combat the loss of cultural relevancy under the pressures of standardization. Project-based learning, a specific pedagogy consistent with Paulo Freire's problem-posing theory of education, is one way to create student-centered learning experiences that allow students to…

What does democracy look like in the teaching of literature? Selecting texts that authentically and democratically engage students in the knotty questions of contemporary life is no small task, especially where young adult (YA) literature is concerned. This article critiques didactic YA literature grounded in a developmental stage model of…

In a thematic study she calls The Hero's Journey, the author introduces the classical archetype of the hero and the journey of the hero with Homer's "The Odyssey." After all, the wily tactician dreams up the idea for the wooden horse trick, thereby winning the war for the Greeks. He visits hell and, against all odds, makes it back. He defeats the…

When it comes to writing, the most advanced secondary textbooks for English and most state rubrics for judging writing do not deal with what is involved in critical thinking in writing. Rather, they opt for vague discussions of "persuasive writing." Those who know the needs of college writers and who are familiar with the new ACT and SAT writing…

Movies are a part of social discourse, and they may show "life the way people would like to make it." As educators look at society's changing views of knowledge, learning, teaching, and success, they can engage in that discourse and consider ways it does--or does not--reflect and affect pedagogies and daily lives. As Hollywood directs society's…

In this article, the author describes how she used a commonplace book assignment to help students expand their background knowledge and as a means to formulate mature, informed perspectives regarding issues of importance. In the assignment, the author wanted the students to: (1) investigate issues of the day; (2) develop multiple perspectives…

When people dive into the varied texts of culture, print and non-print, and explore and critique them, they are doing much more than showing various persuasive appeals or advertising gimmicks to sway their audience; they are examining the purposes and values of capitalism, the economic system that produces a consumerocracy. People might even turn…

Reading skills are vital to student success, and those skills could be practiced with Shakespeare "if students are taught reading skills in the classroom." The problem is that many teachers of English do not consider themselves reading specialists and do not teach reading skills to their students. Fred L. Hamel notes that teachers in a recent…

Allison L. Downey, a middle school English teacher, has used dramatic tableaux to help students think critically about literature as well as social and historic episodes. It is noted that students move to more abstract thinking, going beyond plot to an understanding of theme and metaphor.

Describes the "vox pops" method, in which students respond to conflicting news media reports on identical issues and, thus, learn that watching television and reading newspapers require critical attention. (ARH)