This article considers high school students' relationship to poetry through a small-scale qualitative study guided by the question: what happens to student perceptions of poetry when class begins each day with a poem? As a former teacher and current teacher educator, I conducted a series of interviews with a small group of my former students…

Personally and professionally, the author shares experiences with school safety and how the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom may utilize middle grade novels to address gun violence with adolescents. Highlighting five middle grade novels that address school shootings--Katherine Erskine's (2011) "Mockingbird," Emily Barth Isler's…

Scholars in recent years have explored the connections between video games, literacy, and learning. Research illustrates that video games can serve as texts for engagement and analysis in English language arts classrooms. Scholars have also demonstrated how games themselves effectively integrate a complex array of learning principles that help…

This study examines the ways pre-service English language arts teachers (PSTs) conceptualized activism and experimented with visual and multimodal approaches to composing about activism. Drawing on qualitative methods, we examined 22 PSTs' graphic narratives completed as part of their teacher preparation coursework, and center our discussion on…

This article examines the recent increase of book bannings and challenged books and their possible effects on marginalized youth, including students who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, and/or identify as LGBTQIA+. Arguing against these reading restrictions, this article breaks down the normative ideologies inherently promoted through book…

Historically, language instruction involving Black Language (BL) assumes a goal of eradication, particularly in school-sanctioned literacy practices. Language arts education for Black students must be liberatory, that is, antiracist and artful. The opportunities for English Language Arts (ELA) teachers to create, augment, and change the course of…

There has been a noticeable shift in how young readers approach reading where digital literacy communities serve as much purpose as traditional literacy communities like an ELA classroom. This article offers an introduction to TikTok and BookTok as well as several methods of integrating TikTok into classrooms. As the sub-community for book lovers…

In this paper, we highlight how restorying with preservice secondary English language arts teachers can encourage them to explore what is possible with mandated texts, like those found in the canon, for diverse world building centered in empathy, self-exploration, and justice. Findings highlight the critical reflective process preservice teachers…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

Focusing on a large study of the implementation of secondary English Language Arts curriculum in California and Washington, we assess how teachers use learning goals to support students developing expert learning practices. Highlighting the value of goal setting to support students' agency in learning to write, we describe teachers' reasons for…

This paper explores the possible negative implications of teacher selected whole-class reads rooted within the traditional canon of English Language Arts instruction and possible solutions for re-engaging the disengaged adolescent reader through choice reading and the implementation of more culturally relevant texts. Historically, English Language…

Foundational skills are often viewed as necessary components for automaticity in reading and writing. In this study, we draw on teacher interviews to explore what secondary English/language arts teachers identify as necessary language for successful school writing. Findings suggest that teachers believe White mainstream English is a necessary…

The 2016 presidential election marked the beginning of a so-called "post-truth era" in which mis- and disinformation have contributed to political polarization and violence, the acceleration of global warming, and thousands of preventable deaths. In this paper, I draw on the results of a 2-week, practitioner inquiry-informed case study…

Students face several challenges when asked to locate relevant and credible information from the internet. This article introduces three principles for designing online inquiry lessons and documents what we learned from five language arts teachers from Finland who implemented and provided feedback on a learning unit framed in those design…

Engaging students in the reading process is challenging when they are unable to connect to texts. It is important to provide inclusive and diverse texts (IDTs) in the language arts curriculum. To promote a positive reading experience, all students need to read IDTs with non-stereotypical depictions of girls, women, people of Color, and more. This…