This article details a classroom-based study designed to provide agency and voice to first and second grade emergent bilinguals as they processed the COVID-19 pandemic. Two California teachers created a narrative writing unit not only to teach specific writing skills, but also to challenge pervasive deficit assumptions that young children…

In the field of rhetoric and composition, literacy narratives are sometimes framed through the idea of "inventing the university"; this, unfortunately, creates a trope of literacy as success. I argue that the success trope limits student expression of "outlaw" emotions in literacy narratives--like loss, pain, and anxiety--and…

Purpose: This paper aims to draw on the analysis of instruction and student work in an English Language Arts classroom to discuss how teachers may support dispossessed students' journeys toward radical healing (Ginwright, 2010) by using critically caring pedagogies -- pedagogies grounded in teachers' deep understanding of the systemic inequalities…

It is important to find the means by which struggling writers can find success in the English Language Arts. For students struggling with reading and writing, the visual arts may be a way of accessing and expressing their ideas and ultimately opening up a world of creative possibilities. This article explores drawing and painting as a pre-writing…