Education Commons^™

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Fifth Graders Blog With Preservice Teachers To Discuss Literature, Lindsay Yearta, Katie Stover, Rachel Sease

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

In this study, fifth grade students participated in a pen pal project with pre-service teachers where they blogged for eight weeks about the book, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park. Partnerships were established to provide fifth grade students with an authentic audience in an effort to increase engagement in reading and writing. The authors posit that individualized instruction, access to an authentic audience, and the utilization of technology contributed to students' growth as readers, writers, and global citizens.