This article employs the use of black textualities to reimagine an English classroom designed to cultivate critically conscious students. The author argues that a critically conscious classroom engages students in self-determination, citizenship formation, and strategic activism, and further argues that black textualities are perfect for…

A writing invitation the author has found useful is to ask students to identify indelible educational moments. They all have them, some positive, some damaging. The moments don't need to have taken place in school. They could involve outdoor as well as indoor schooling: a moment when they realized betrayal for example; a moment when they knew they…

This article considers how relationships in the English classroom are influenced by the types of literacy activities, the role of the teacher, the tone of oral comments, and the types of writing students share with peers.

This article shares what the author has learned as a high school English teacher and researcher from speaking with teachers and high school and college students over the past five years about what sort of feedback has been most helpful in students' development as writers. When examining the data and looking for overlapping themes in responses, six…

Because we live in an increasingly globalized world, teachers are tasked with cultivating social and cultural competencies in their students to prepare them to act as responsible global citizens. This article explores how including diverse global literary narratives in the English language arts (ELA) classroom is an important step toward preparing…

Teachers know that the most valuable learning occurs in classrooms where a sense of community exists. Community encourages rich learning because of the interactions among many individuals, not the limited, two-way exchange of ideas or information that is often the case when students fail to form a community. But what makes a community?…

This article explores problems with the trend of business language making its way into schools and provides strategies for how to address this issue.

This article focuses on writing instruction and seeks to: (1) define the expectations of first-year composition (FYC) programs; (2) consider the factors shaping high school writing instruction; and (3) explore the gap between the goals of each. The authors have interviewed secondary writing teachers and college first-year composition instructors…

One of the most important educational objectives of high school is to teach critical-thinking skills, and no class does this better than strategic debate. Professor Mike Allen, lead author in a definitive study on debate and critical thinking, lauded debate's promotion of critical-thinking skills. Additionally, researcher Joe Bellon discusses the…