Teaching ELA in the 21st

 Hello everybody! There are most likely many new viewers here (unless I convince friends from the original iteration of my blog circa 2022 to come check out what I've changed), but this blog is currently changing gears a bit. It's original title was "Blogging the Journey from Student to Teacher" and to my delight, I am now a fully grown teacher upon returning!! So, if you're new and you are taking Currins 547 in Spring 2026, everything above this post will be my work for this semester; scroll below this post only if you dare (which upon my posting of this, I have not yet).

     Zines Talk!: How Visualization Can Support Student Understanding             As a visual culmination for the work I have done with zines as a mode for unlocking adolescent literacy, I have created my very own zine titled Zines Talk . As I reflected on the texts I curated for a potential zine-based unit in my future teaching , I noticed there was a glaring lack of full, print-based zines. In fact, the only zine I had included until in the teaching of this unit was meant to scaffold students’ understanding of another non-zine text. In response to this, I decided to create my own print-based zine about two significant publication topics that created vast communities in the history of zines and the endless potential zines have to create more communities.                When I began to conceptualize this zine, I decided I wanted to focus on real, historical movements that have been made ...

 Introduction     This text set is built around understanding zines and their impact on the communities surrounding them. I curated this text set with my current field students in mind, high school sophomores in American Authors II at Rufus King International High School. These students are currently in the Middle Years Program, which is meant to prepare them to take IB English courses in their junior and senior years at Rufus King. The current students in American Authors II have shown a good amount of interest in reading a young adult novel in our last unit, where we read Poet X  by Elizabeth Acevedo. To keep the students interested in and connected to the unit about zines, I have chosen another young adult novel, Moxie  by Jennifer Mathieu, to be a central text in guiding our unit on zines. This YA novel will hopefully give students more relatable, concrete ideas of how zines impact and create culture; furthermore, this novel was recently adapted into a ...

  Zine a shortened form of the term "fanzine"   a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images  has roots in the informal, underground publications that focused on social and political activism Introduction to Inquiry Blog Topic     As you may have gathered by the above definition (provided by University of Texas Libraries ), I am considering exploring zines as the topic for my inquiry blog. I have been fortunate to learn a bit about the production and background of zines through a couple of courses I have taken at UWM; however, I am increasingly interested in the role they can play in demystifying adolescent literacy through the versatility the format provides. As mentioned in the third portion of the definition, zines are rooted in underground publication that push for social change and activism. These roots provide an amazing pathway for the cosmopolitanism aspect Christopher Edmin lays out in equity literacy. Zines are...

 Welcome (back) to my Blog!      Hello! My name is Kimberly Winston and I am in the fourth and final year of my undergraduate degree! I'm majoring in Early Adolescence-Adolescence English Education, which means I will be certified to teach ELA for grades 4-12. I am currently student teaching at Rufus King International High School with sophomores in Mrs. Bishop's American Authors II classes. When I finish my time at UWM, hopefully in May 2023, I hope to apply everything I have learned in teaching ELA in and MPS high school.     I am excited to add to my blog with the posts I will be creating for Currins 545. As you may have noticed on my blog, I initially created this blog for Currins 547 which is another class I had with Candance. As I add to this blog, I definitely want to learn more about refining how my writing is affected by the online format. In creating this blog post, I was inspired to think about how I can adapt my writing to better fit blog conven...

 Thanks for staying tuned for Currins 547, but it's out with the old and in with the new! All posts following this one will be done for Currins 545, Reading in the Content Areas. 

  Reflecting on the Journey Thus Far           In reflecting on my experience of blogging throughout this semester, it has been a very rewarding journey of entering the world of blogging. Just a few months ago at the beginning of the semester, the world of blogging seemed lightyears away and I could not imagine myself a part of it. However, when I began setting up my blog in one of the first class sessions, I started to see the possibilities that blog spaces provided for new modes of communication. With each week that passed, I became more comfortable speaking about the content of Currins 547 through my blog and playing with what my voice could be whilst "Blogging the Journey from Student to Teacher."  In this final blog post, I will look back on the posts I've made for Currins 547 and determine the best of the best for different categories of my blog.          1.  Professionalism: Reflecting on Young Writers and My E...