Teaching ELA in the 21st

 Book Talk on the Text Set The texts included in this book talk are: We Are the Water Protectors by Carole Lindrom " Another World is Possible " by Helena Marschall We Don't Have Time for This by Brianna Craft        For more on my mention of how texts like these and community organizing can build resilience in young people, click here ! Incorporating Environmental Justice into Teaching      The topic of environmental justice is a high interest topic that many young people are very engaged in, and, luckily, it can be connected to many texts that are taught in the ELA classroom. Any story, fiction or nonfiction, where the setting is or has been at risk or is now different or affected by climate change is able to connect to the topic of environmental justice. In my teaching, I see connections for this topic in our unit about survival. Specifically, there is a text in this unit where we read an excerpt of A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park...

What do young writers need?     Over the last couple years of teaching, I have reflected much on what young writers need to truly grow and develop. While my time as a preservice teacher in college was formative and fundamentally shaped much of my teaching philosophy, it was not until I was in a classroom regularly reading the writing of over one hundred students that I began to really question: how am I supposed to teach all of these students to become better writers? The beauty of teaching is that I will likely spend my entire career to exploring strategies for teaching writing, like this semester when I was fortunate to have my students partner with writing coaches who provided them with feedback and opportunities for revision on several writing tasks. In this section, I'll explore what I believe students need throughout their writing and revising processes and how the various roles intertwine.      From teachers, students need clear expectations for how a wri...

       Lately, I've been reminiscing on the telenovela I made when I was in high school for a Spanish project. For what felt like forever, the roughly 6-7 minute long video was posted publicly on YouTube by my classmate who recorded and edited it; but, tragically, I can either no longer recall the correct title of the video or their YouTube channel or they have deleted the channel or video. I hope to find the video one day, but for now I will include another example of a student created telenovela I found on YouTube in my search (although theirs is far better than mine). I was first reminded about this video because I planned to show my students how far I've come with learning Spanish, since sometimes students who are new to learning a language at my immersion school feel hesitant to begin speaking and learning a language when compared to peers who began learning their language in kindergarten. However, in connection to the work we have been doing in Currins 547 wit...

 How did we get here?     In today's world of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Generative AI galore, we are immersed in the wonder of "writing" that can be produced with the entering of a short prompt. When ChatGPT came onto the market in November 2022, I was about to begin my final semester of my bachelor's degree in Secondary English Education. As I entered my full time student teaching the following spring, students I had gotten to know first semester who had rarely turned in writing assignments began to turn in full length essays, always well-written but with an uncanny tendency to deviate from the expectations of the assignment that were explained and scaffolded in class.  Outside of the classroom, I saw many posts online about people experimenting with talking to AI chatbots; at the time, I imagined those chatbots like the robot pictured above: a cute, helpful friend who had a knack for writing. In the early days of seeing AI seep into the English classroom we began discus...

This semester, I am fortunate to venture back into the world of working with writing coaches, exploring how providing feedback to student writing can shape them as writers and deepen their sense of how their writing communicates their ideas. I am even more fortunate to bring my students along, which one of my students phrased as being "guinea pigs for the writing coaches to learn about being teachers." While my sense about giving feedback to student writing has changed immensely from the first time I was a writing coach since I now offer regular feedback to students from the teacher role, as I step back into the role of writing coach I'd like to reflect on my literacy journey that has brought me to where I am today. I read all of those books! When I think of all the experiences that have shaped my enjoyment and understanding of literacy, I am transported back to my love of reading as a middle and high schooler. Nearly all of my highest achieving students are reading other...

    Let's face it: digital literacy has become ubiquitous to everyday life, whether it's creating a post for social media, writing an email to a colleague about a current project, or submitting paperwork digitally to a new doctor's office. In many ways, digital composition and the way we connect with those around us online has become so ingrained into everyday life, we can sometimes forget the ways in which we use it. I struggled for days on how to begin this blog post, stumped on any experience of digital composition outside of my monthly posts to social media--all the while composing emails to coworkers and the parents of my students, creating quizzes on Google Forms, and creating interactive vocabulary practice sets on websites like GimKit and KnoWord (try them on your own, if you dare). In fact, I did not realize how much digital literacy had permeated my daily life until my father called me on my lunch break as I attempted to write this post. My digitally illiterate ...