On the second day of a 2019 high-stakes English Language Arts assessment, Massachusetts 10th graders faced an essay question that was based on a passage from the novel "The Underground Railroad" and publicly characterized as racially insensitive. Though the state excluded the essay responses from student scores, an unresolved public…

In the United States, many academic institutions are plagued by a history of anti-Black racism. Today, librarians from different racial backgrounds who work at libraries at predominantly White colleges and universities are given the important task of describing materials related to African American cultural heritage. This task has the potential to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share my personal memories and emotions of my experience as an African American, a Woman of Color, teacher-peer, teacher-researcher, student and a colonized standard American English speaker, situated in English classrooms as white teachers teach African American literature from a white gaze. I concur with…

Approaches to teaching critical language awareness are gaining traction in urban schools with culturally and linguistically complex student populations; however, what teachers need to know to enact these pedagogies is not well understood. Using a lens of pedagogical content knowledge for critical language teaching, this study examines what happens…

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…

In this paper, educational pathways emerge from the nexus of ancient narratives and future possibilities. Such imaginings are as much attributed to the African American intellectual tradition as to contemporary Afrofuturisms, including those born in histories of Blackness. The overlay of what was and what is not yet is significant because it…

Leveraging the aesthetic turn in hip-hop scholarship, this article examines how some of the goal-directed and compositional techniques of DJs can be used to redesign and remix African American literature courses. Specifically, we focus on drops and blends, two moves evident among DJs and turntablists in hip-hop culture. Anchoring our analysis to…

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…

In this commentary, the author sttes that she has gained much insight from reviewing the collection of writing on whiteness. While there is agreement among those authors that there is a distinction between the first wave and second wave whiteness studies, there is a unified theme to not minimize the consequences of inhaling racist air, which is a…

We explore how valuing Black male students' literacies within academic contexts during multimodal writing can position students' ways of knowing at the center of their learning. This centering requires a repositioning of students' cultural literacies at the core of instruction. Using multiliteracies and Critical Discourse Analysis frameworks, we…

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…

In this article, we share findings from a content analysis of six picturebooks about hair. The picturebooks selected feature Black female protagonists and are written by African American females. Our content analysis examines the ways in which Black hair is theorized and represented to children (from diverse backgrounds) very early on in their…

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 fifteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, countless literary and artistic works have responded to the incident. This paper examines Amiri Baraka's literary response to this violent event through his most famous poem entitled "Somebody blew up America," which defies American orthodox responses to the attacks. The…