This teaching note reviews a four-part discussion post assignment that asks Black-identified students enrolled in a class connected to a Black living-learning community to make sociological and personal connections to concepts related to race, anti-Blackness, and institutional racism in Yaa Gyasi's novel "Homegoing." Reflecting on their…

The contemporary moment has been marred with attacks on diverse children's literature and critical and antiracist pedagogy. The increasing numbers of banned books and curricular materials are aimed at diluting and silencing discussions of difference in classrooms. Moreover, race and racism continue to be "bad words" to some early…

In this article, the authors work to illustrate how "Miles Morales Suspended" by Jason Reynolds, an author whose work has been targeted by book ban efforts (Knight, 2022), can be positioned in English classrooms to teach about contemporary attacks on Black literature through book bans. The teaching outlined in this article is part of a…

This essay profiles Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, the 2020 Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. It begins with biographical information about Bishop and her career trajectory in education followed by descriptions of three of her landmark works and the ways a sampling of scholars have utilized and expanded upon them. The three…

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," sometimes referred to as the Black National Anthem, has been sung everywhere from protests to concert halls in the United States for well over a century. The song's origins, however, come directly from the mind of educator James Weldon Johnson and the needs of his school community. This article recounts the…

When teaching a Drama and Theater class the author's students chose August Wilson's "Fences" to focus on the teaching of "dramatic" texts. As the author reread Wilson's play, she noticed that within the first pages is the n-word, used in conversation between two African American men, two friends, and it became an immediate…

In this practitioner article, we detail how American English language arts and social studies teachers can select and teach young adult literature using LaGarrett King's Black historical consciousness framework. We provide supplemental, related research along with teaching suggestions and titles for each of the Black historical consciousness…

The narrative woven throughout this article elevates the persistence, perseverance, resilience, and resolve of a neighborhood anchored in faith, and fiercely devoted to its children. Contextualized through its rich history of mobilization for social justice, this story uplifts and defends the cultural wealth of a historically marginalized…

"Engaging the African Diaspora in K-12 Education" provides in-service and pre-service teachers with valuable information and resources related to African diaspora communities in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This unique anthology fills an important gap in current pedagogical and curricular publications by combining the…

Critiquing two approaches that English teachers use to teach Black, or African-American, literature in the secondary classroom--one that centralises races and the other that ignores it--this article proposes a hybrid approach that combines both. This double-faced approach recognises the culturally specific themes that give the text and the Black…

Baby Suggs's sermon in the clearing to formerly enslaved Black folx offers readers an important anecdote about living in the afterlife of white supremacy (Hartman, 2007; Sharpe, 2016). Baby Suggs seemed to understand that the priority for survival and emancipation was loving one's flesh in a world where "yonder they do not love your…

When selecting and evaluating historical children's literature, there are many questions that must be considered. For example, who will be reading the book? Is the imagined young reader of these historical stories a White, middle class cisgender heterosexual, able-bodied student who was born in the United States, or are child readers from all…

For the author's final Master Teacher article, she wishes to pay tribute to a scholar whose work in the field of children's literature has inspired her for years. Throughout her long and distinguished career, Rudine Sims Bishop, professor emerita from The Ohio State University, has shared extensive knowledge and numerous insights on issues related…

There is a good child, of any race, who is bullied. And as he grows older, He joins a hate group or a gang too, was bullied by every race, who bullied me. And as I grew older fought for equality for everyone. This is why I became an activist. Thesis why I am a poet. God asks are unwilling to die, fighting for what you believe. This is where I…

In "The Bluest Eye," Toni Morrison presents a community in which a racist ideology is internalized. The sufferers of racial abuse in this community both endure and resist in a complex inverse interrelationship between the two actions. This contradiction of the internalization and the insurrection of racial abuse is one of the crucial…