Education Commons^™

Doing The Work -- Collectively Pursuing Anti-Racist And Equitable Teaching: One High School English Department’S Journey, Sharon Murchie, Anthony Andrus, Pat Brennan, Gina Farnelli, Shelby Fletcher, Dawn Reed, Emily Solomon, Benjamin K. Woodcock

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Our district has long been heralded as a beacon school, one that delivers exceptional education in an exceptional community. Peeling back the layers, however, revealed a district that lurched towards the traditional, even with the hiring of DEI faculty and the step away from an historical indigenous mascot. In a time where teachers are exhausted and afraid of community backlash, our

English department dared to tear off the scabs of old wounds and united to push toward what is best for our changing community and students. Hard conversations, difficult topics, and months of legwork at last successfully provided the impetus …

Reading On The Ropes: A Pilot Study Of An Accelerated Remediation Program With Alternative High School Students, Joanne V. Coggins, Laura C. Briggs

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

High school students must read to learn curriculum, yet few interventions are proven to substantially help close literacy gaps for older students with reading deficits. Students with large literacy deficits particularly benefit from explicit, systematic instruction of interventions emphasizing the structure of language (i.e., phonology, orthography, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics), aspects of cognition (i.e., problem solving, attention, reasoning, and inferencing), and organization of spoken and written language.

A 14-week pilot study of Readable English, a reading intervention using these structured literacy elements, provided embedded interactive orthography to scaffold online grade level content for students at two alternative high schools ( …

A Restorative Justice Book Club For Secondary Classrooms, Mary M. Mcconnaha

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Schools face several challenges in creating meaningful community relationships, and the breakdown of these relationships causes harm to students, teachers, and administrators. Many schools have turned to restorative justice practices as a way to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, reduce discipline referrals, increase graduation rate, and strengthen the school community (Evans & Lester, 2013; Winn et al., 2019; Weaver and Swank, 2020). However, Winn (2013, 2018) and others have proposed that the principles of restorative justice can be embedded into the English Language Arts curriculum. In this paper, I describe a restorative justice book club unit for early adolescents that is …

Hook’D On Ebonics And Black Texts: Enacting An Engaged Pedagogy In An 11th Grade Ela Classroom, Teaira Mcmurtry Phd

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

In this article, the author discusses the process of creating an engaged pedagogy (hooks, 1994), one that prioritized authentic, engaging, and equally rigorous engagement activities that were ongoing preparation for standardized tests and embedded in core ELA instruction. These learning experiences were not only academically necessary, but they were also integral in developing positive racial identity. The author shares three ways to amplify reading instruction that prepares students for skill-based standardized tests and beyond.

Wakanda: Opening The High School Classroom To Afrofuturism, Carrie M. Mattern

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Afrofuturism has a solid place in high school classrooms thanks to the current work of Ryan Coogler, but also to those who have been in this work for decades including the Mother of Afrofuturism herself, Octavia Butler, adrienne maree brown, dream hampton, and a litany of Black poets and artists. This article leaps inside an Afrofuturistic unit curated for high school seniors with feedback and insight from their teachers and also the students who buckled up for a journey through time, space, and place.