In this article, the author reflected on the challenges and opportunities that emerged as they introduced climate fiction, or cli-fi reading and writing into the curriculum, including the author's attempts to navigate the politics of the genre, activate the students' imagination and interest, and invite the students to become creators as well as…

Authentic writing allows students to write for audiences other than the teacher for reasons that matter to them and that lead to changing how an audience thinks, feels, or acts. How can teachers prioritize authentic writing instruction and help students become successful writers? Lauren Esposito does this through improv, an art form that develops…

We live in what a growing number of scientists call the Anthropocene. Combining the Greek root word anthrop- (human) and the suffix -cene (new or recent), the Anthropocene is a period of time in which human activity is understood to have grown so impactful as to alter Earth's conditions. Examples of these planetary changes include (but are not…

Close reading, as Paula Moya (2016) writes, may remain the "most powerful discipline-specific tool we have at our disposal" (p. 9). At a time when the work of English teachers is threatened by many factors, including political polarization and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), close reading may be the soundest way of unifying and…

Process texts are published works that pull back the curtain on composition to show the techniques, tools, technologies, procedures, and/or inspirations of the creative process. Process texts also emerge mostly from nonfiction genres including memoirs, documentary films, and podcasts. In this article, educator Jason Griffith shares ways teachers…

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…

There is a growing body of research arguing that, alongside education in climate science literacy, our education systems need a deeper, broader, and more interdisciplinary education in climate literacy. Specifically, the push is to reframe climate literacy from a narrow competence taught in science classes to a broad socioscientific and cultural…

It's clear that the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT (generative pre-trained transformer) will significantly impact education, and it is natural for teachers to feel apprehensive about this change. This article explores the role of ChatGPT in a high school English classroom and discusses how it can…

In this article, the authors share what they learned from their study of writing communities, which they refer to as writing groups, during the 2017-18 school year. The authors propose a conceptual framework for writing groups that engages students in the process of designing and participating as writers with their peers. The framework emphasizes…

Teacher-researcher, Katherine Macro spent six weeks observing an eleventh-grade Advanced Placement and Composition class at Sunnybrooke Central High School to examine the teacher's use of creative drama to teach Shakespeare. In this article, Macro describes ways the instructor used theater-based instructional strategies, especially a staged…

In this article, the authors (Aaron Guggenheim, a White cisgender researcher and English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, and David Glover, a mixed-race, cisgender former ELA teacher) explore how a digital writing project on podcasting enacted with eleventh and twelfth graders provided opportunities to uncover the students' hidden identities as…

On a February morning, Ms. Nelson (all names pseudonyms) was preparing her eleventh-grade class for a new unit with the goal of crafting arguments about the people and issues present in the classic novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. As, teacher educators Eileen Shanahan and Min-Young Kim were observing in the classroom, it was…

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…

Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

After watching his fifth-grade son perform in "The Taming of the Shrew," Ben Lathrop realized that having learned the play through performance, his son found the experience enjoyable. Moreover, his acting decisions (movements, gestures, vocal inflections) demonstrated that he had at least some understanding of his lines, suggesting that…