The author asks, "Where can we, as English language arts teachers, create room in our classrooms for curiosity--for students and for ourselves?" She outlines ways to use Genius Hour to help create an equitable, level classroom with access and ownership for all.

This article discusses ways literature is taught at the university. It describes a gap in the way English is often taught in literature programs and the way future teachers are taught to teach English to secondary students. It argues for teaching literature in ways that might be good for majors in both fields, ways that support the work valued by…

It was week three of the first semester of the author's Master of Teaching degree at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and already lecturers were talking about first assignments. In the English method unit, students were required to write a reflective autobiographical narrative inquiring into particular critical incidents from past…

The author, who teaches the English Methods class in the credential program, knew from entries in students' Writer's Reader's Notebooks (Rief) that they were struggling with the articles assigned about a five-paragraph essay. Following a discussion of form-first instruction and CCSS assessments, this article provides concrete suggestions for…

This essay maps some of the ways in which the professional knowledge of English teaching has been defined and positioned in the present moment in the United States. The first part of the essay traces multidisciplinary shifts in English education/literacy research that have expanded and shifted the discursive boundaries of teacher education and…

There is an alternative to conventional teacher mentorship. The authors describe and analyze a promising model of mentorship where multiple mentees and mentors, each with varying levels of experience, engage collaboratively in the study of teaching practice. They have found that well-designed contexts in which beginning and experienced teachers…

Using examples from college and high school students, the author describes how asking students to respond to literature using a variety of graphic media can enhance their interpretive skills. Some students who don't like to write essays or who seemingly aren't good at writing essays enjoy making graphic response to literature and are good at it.…

This theoretical article outlines the rationale behind one teacher educator's decision to use student-written narratives as part of a narrative inquiry in a year-long English methods course. The article is an explication of why narrative inquiry, as both an individual and a collective endeavor, can be a powerful tool for student learning. Finally,…

If a university-school partnership is to be viewed as a mutualistic relationship, benefits should be provided not only to the preservice teachers, but to the members of the school environment as well. As a means of exemplifying how to connect the learning of students, in-service and preservice teachers, and teacher educators, this article…

Shares what is being done in one English methods course to address the call for English education teacher preparation programs to help prospective teachers construct pedagogical understandings of subject matter. Includes three drafts and a final version of students' basic premises for teaching English language arts. (RS)

Recognizing that it can be a challenge to make an undergraduate literature methods course realistic, a methods instructor at a Michigan university has developed three major and several minor activities that have proven effective in preparing pre-student teachers for the "real world" of teaching and, at the same time, have been challenging and…

Describes the collaboration between a third-year high school teacher and a seasoned education professor, in which the two traded places, coteaching each other's classes for the entire school year. Discusses getting started, what they expected and what they learned, long-term individual effects of collaboration, ensuring success, and collaboration…

Although he may not have spoken quite as eloquently as the Bard of Avon, Ernie Page, the author's methods instructor at Penn State, once said that teaching English was less a subject and more a predicament. He was alluding to the many complexities and range of subject matter that constitute teaching the English language arts. In the 30 years since…

Describes the collaboration between a seventh-grade English class of unmotivated readers and a group of reading methods students at a nearby university. Discusses how both classes read Carolyn Meyer's "Rio Grande Stories," wrote to each other as pen pals, made a quilt together, visited the university class, and enjoyed a visit from Meyer. (SR)

Argues that reflecting on important "marker" stories in people's lives by using counting ropes (based on the children's book "Knots on a Counting Rope" by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault) helps students and teachers make sense of their complex worlds. Describes how they are used in the author's language arts methods course. Describes a…