In a world marked by grief, violence, and erasure, joy becomes more than a feeling--it becomes resistance. This article amplifies the authors' personal narratives as men of color and veteran educators, illustrating how joy can serve as an act of resistance while demonstrating how teachers can use their stories to reflect, enhance literacy…

The digital is inextricably woven across people's everyday lives and literacy practices, and English educators are tasked with preparing students to be critical, ethical, and agentic inventors and consumers of digital text. What has crystallized for English educators is an awareness that facilitating "digital discourse"--or the multiple…

Essential Questions (EQs) are familiar landmarks in the national teaching landscape, applied across varied disciplines and diverse classrooms. They provide frameworks for collaborative team curriculum creation; yet, controversy around such questions arises because of several factors. In this article, the author proposes five recommendations for…

This article explores three ways a teacher incorporated text sets into her seventh-grade classroom to foster authentic inquiry. Student reflections suggest this approach helped them cultivate questioning, researching, and cooperative learning skills that became lasting habits of inquiry and helped them succeed on core tests.

In this article, the authors contend that high school English classes are a critical place for teaching democratic ways with words, and they call on and extend the tools of intercultural inquiry for the purposes of teaching democratic deliberation. The authors describe their collaborative engagement with an inventive data-driven genre--the…

This article examines how to use performance-related resources to teach research skills. In particular, it focuses on Shakespeare's "Othello" and argues that linking research and performance helps students put their ideas in conversation with other sources to articulate research-based arguments about a text.

In a nation and political climate where models of communication and respect for another's ideas are difficult to find, the authors take seriously their charge to support educational practices that prepare students to critically engage in a free and democratic society. As part of a summer high school outreach program, they sought to develop a…

In this article, the author presents two snapshots that document how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) influenced her writing instruction. She uses Dewey's concept of inquiry to frame the disastrous effects that high-stakes testing can have on the students with the greatest needs. Finally, she looks ahead to consider how the Common Core text exemplars…

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…

When approaches to critical inquiry and critical literacy are used by students to interrogate the dynamic between both fiction and nonfiction texts simultaneously, they shape a classroom culture of questioning that empowers students to take an informed and more activist stance about larger issues in the world. This article explores how nonfiction…

Considering how to better assess student writing, middle school teachers Molly Fanning and Brigid Schmidt revolutionize their conception of themselves as teachers. They challenge all educators to become what Henry A. Giroux calls "transformative intellectuals" by identifying as writers, practicing collaborative inquiry, and sharing their work with…

Being aware of and using factual, conceptual and contextual questions is vital to the teaching-learning experience. (JH)

Argues that writing instruction is most effective when instruction focuses on inquiry which includes: utilizing concrete data, solving problems by using thinking strategies inherent in various writing tasks, focusing on student-centered problems, and encouraging student interaction with a minimum of teacher lecture. (JAD)