Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Seasons, Emily Feveryear

The Utah English Journal

Fall:

The falling leaves

Bring a familiar crunch and

A familiar warmth.

This time I am ready.

Flames, Lorena Lesué

The Utah English Journal

She had worked herself thin,

hunched over a keyboard or the students’ desks

for fifty hours a week.

By year nineteen,

the muscles atop her shoulders

bookended her neck

like turtle shells.

Book Review: There Goes The Neighborhood, Feliciana Lopez-Goodman

The Utah English Journal

Rhea’s motives seem simple—save her best friend from eviction and stop the neighborhood from falling apart. As is true for all complex characters, there is more to Rhea, Zeke, and Malachi as they create a fake gang in their South LA neighborhood of Kofa Park. In Jade Adia’s debut novel There Goes the Neighborhood, gentrification is front and center as three teenagers take on the responsibility of saving their neighborhood and their chosen family.

Kendrick Lamar Brings New Literature To The Ela Classroom, Chris A. Peck

The Utah English Journal

Until April of 2017 I was only mildly aware of Kendrick Lamar. I had listened to and enjoyed songs like “Alright” and “Swimming Pools” but had little experience past these songs. After his album D.A.M.N. came out, I began to see several posts regarding the importance of this album, many responses by professors and teachers I knew well and trusted.

Co-Creating A Community Of Learners Through Interactive Read-Alouds Of Expository Texts, Kari Allsup

The Utah English Journal

I am reading aloud Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead (Johnson, 2013) to a group of 7th grade students. The text describes the larva stage where a young jewel wasp feasts on the cockroach’s insides. As I read, there are scattered exclamations of “ewwww,” “sick,” and audible gasps. I stop reading to dig into these reactions.

Sentence Detective: Investigating Sentence Structure To Support Reading Comprehension, Rachel Knecht

The Utah English Journal

Jacob was honest about his usual reading strategies. Like Jacob, readers with a history of reading difficulties may deal with challenging, long, or unfamiliar sentences by skipping or stumbling over them (Nomvete & Easterbrooks, 2020; Vaughn et al., 2022). But, Jacob offered another strategy— Sentence Detective. Over the past six weeks, Jacob had learned how to use Sentence Detective, a strategy for breaking sentences down into meaningful, more manageable parts. Although skipping or skimming may have been his go-to strategy for sentence-level comprehension, he now had another tool to try out.

Book Reviews: Family Style: Memories Of An American From Vietnam, Derick Marchant

The Utah English Journal

Do you ever eat a meal so intertwined with memory that each bite transports you back to the moments surrounding it? For me, it’s paella. The rice dish seasoned with saffron, paprika, and lemon juice puts me right back in small apartments in Spain with my legs under a blanket-covered table, a heater blasting on my legs, laughing and shelling shrimp with Spaniards. I can’t eat paella without craving the company that surrounded me in those warm Spanish apartments. In Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam, Thien Pham chronicles his family’s immigration story via vignettes centering around his …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 53, 2025: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Improving Small-Group Discussion Through Literature Circle Activities, Reilly Ryan

The Utah English Journal

Consider the following scenarios in which I’ve given students a platform to discuss “high-interest” topics: “Class, I want you to discuss whether you think school should start one hour later than it currently does. I’m going to set a timer for three minutes, and I would like you to continue your discussion during the entire time.” If school start time seems too educational, I might offer an even more accessible topic such as “What is the greatest movie of all time?” or “Where is the best place in town to get a hamburger?” The pleasing cacophony I hear immediately after …

Moving Beyond Summary, Susan E. Anderson

The Utah English Journal

The due date. That dreaded day when 50% of my students have worked their way through the writing process and are ready to turn in their essays ON TIME. They chose topics, researched, organized, wrote rough drafts, edited and revised repeatedly, peer-reviewed, more editing and more revising, cited their sources, formatted, and even applied the hanging indentation to their works cited page. And as the other 50% trickle in their late papers clearly lacking some of these important steps, my next responsibility begins: I start to read 175 essays. With my rubric ready to start assessing, I see a frustrating …

The Uses And Challenges Of Teaching Writing With Artificial Intelligence, Tom Henry

The Utah English Journal

Computers and Composition recently noted: “In less than a year, ChatGPT hit 100 million weekly users which made it the fastest-growing consumer Internet application to date. The ease, practicality, and ability to compose both in text and multimedia has made generative AI technology (like ChatGPT) ubiquitous” (Ranade and Eyman, 2024). Popularity aside, the question should be asked: Can students use AI ethically? A white paper from UNESCO puts forth the proposition that “Technology is never ideologically neutral… New generative AI models and utilities are no exception” (Giannini, 2023, p.3). Collating these claims, there are tasks where AI is ethical and …

Facilitating Dialogue: Leveraging Classroom Literature To Navigate Critical Conversations With High School Students, Kaylee Smedley

The Utah English Journal

The quotation refers to the Contemporary American Thought (CAT) class, a high school course in Chris Crutcher’s Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, where Moby and his classmates navigate complex and controversial issues under Ms. Lemry’s guidance. Encouraged to discuss meaningful topics like children’s rights, war, social class, abortion, and religion, they research, debate, and explore nuances, ultimately drawing scrutiny from parents, the community, and the administration (Crutcher, 1993).

Talent, Passion, And Teaching Writing: A Teacher’S Reflection, Kelley Paystrup

The Utah English Journal

Which comes first, the passion to write or the talent? Every school year I share examples of my written work with my classes, and every time I hear students tell me they can’t write like that; they will never be that talented. I respond that I’ve had more practice and experience than they have, and I earned a Master’s in Writing and Rhetoric, so they shouldn’t compare. I wonder if I should show them my work since it’s discouraging for so many.

Book Review: Something Like Home, Kimberly Stewart

The Utah English Journal

Something Like Home is a poignant exploration of resilience and adaptation. Laura, the protagonist, finds her life disrupted when her parents are forced into a drug rehabilitation program and she must navigate a new environment with an unfamiliar aunt and school. Her initial resistance to accepting this change forms the central conflict of her journey.

Book Review: How To Become A Better Writing Teacher, Merry Gravett

The Utah English Journal

Carl Anderson and Matt Glover’s book How to Become a Better Writing Teacher is an excellent tool to have in your toolbox as a writing instructor. Whether you have a 20-year career in teaching writing or you’re still completing your degree and student teaching experience, this book can provide insight into and impetus for your growth as a writing teacher.

Book Review: Simon Sort Of Says, Sarah Strachan

The Utah English Journal

Nothing ever really changes in Grin and Bear It, Nebraska. Since the town is a research site for the SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), there is a ban on internet and cell phones that makes getting news from the outside world a little slow. For 12-year-old Simon O’Keeffe, that sounds perfect. Having survived a school shooting two years earlier, Simon has spent far too much time in the spotlight and longs to fade into the background in this new town where no one knows his past. However, blending in proves challenging with his accident-prone Catholic deacon father, his quirky …

Book Review: The Faint Of Heart, Hailey Christensen

The Utah English Journal

Is it better to experience negative emotions with the positive, or to not feel at all? The Faint of Heart, a graphic novel by Kerrilyn Wilson, takes place in a society where scientists have discovered how to successfully remove the human heart without killing the patient. Once a heart is removed, it is placed into a numbing solution, which effectively eliminates the patient’s ability to experience emotion. The procedure quickly gains popularity, and people flock to the hospital to have their heart removed, in an effort to escape feelings of grief, pain, and stress, only to inadvertently remove positive emotions …

Book Review: Remember Us, Lauren Ratliff

The Utah English Journal

Brooklyn in 1990 is all about rapid gentrification and rising social tensions. For Sage, a young black girl growing up in this setting, life is all about change. Her community, her friendships, and even her view of herself are all shifting. Sage questions if she fits into the evolving version of Brooklyn that she sees rising up all around her. Due to her newfound awareness of socio-economic divides as well as rising racial tensions in her neighborhood, she grapples with feelings of losing the only place she’s ever called home. Happy memories of Brooklyn and her community feel disconnected from …

Good Practice For All Sentence Frames To Support Multingual Students In The Ela Classroom, Genevieve Palestino

The Utah English Journal

The struggle to meet student needs is an ever- present concern for all teachers. Besides English 9, I teach English Language Development (ELD), and I frequently find myself in conversations with other teachers about how to support our school’s multilingual (ML) population. One thing I try to emphasize in my conversations with teachers is that most “extra steps” for MLs are best-practice strategies that will benefit all students. A strategy that can be especially beneficial for students is leveled sentence frames.

Thinking And Writing With Ai As A Dialogue Partner, Jon Ostenson, Johnny Allred

The Utah English Journal

When generative AI burst onto the public stage in late 2022, it took many of us by surprise. After we had time to see what chatbots like ChatGPT were capable of, they filled many writing teachers with a sense of dread. Some of us realized that assignments we had relied on for years would no longer work because they could easily be completed by a chatbot. All of us worried about how this new technology would influence our students’ writing and the way we taught writing.

Me Between The Lines: An Intertextual Search For Self, Jamie Jo Porter

The Utah English Journal

In the winter of 2023, I noticed a general struggle among my AP Literature students to connect and identify with characters and events we were reading about in class. Upon further investigation, I realized that this wasn’t because my students weren’t reading relatable texts, but more because they were still developing a sense of self; in their search for identity, they were not seeing pieces of themselves reflected in the world around them. As a teacher, it pained me to realize that my students weren’t even anticipating that there were things out there in the world that they could relate …

“Charles? We Don’T Have Any Charles In The Kindergarten”: Our Professional Responsibility To Compassionate Self-Reflection, Ben Inouye

The Utah English Journal

Shirley Jackson’s immortal “Charles” recounts the mischievous deeds of Charles, a character created by the equally naughty Laurie. His mother, the narrator, blames her son’s poor behavior on Charles’ influence. She is blissfully unaware that her son is the reason for the kindergarten chaos; she is all too quick to begin searching for the most “haggard” face in the PTA crowd–unable to fathom that she might be the mother responsible for Charles. Such delusion!

As I was pondering the narrator’s lack of self-awareness, I found myself thinking: Oh crap, is that me? Am I the teacher who can’t be honest …

Threading The Needle: Teaching Critical Reading And Writing In The Age Of Ai, Emily A. Durham, Andrea A. Berta

Humanities

All instructors--but particularly instructors who must teach students specific disciplinary ways of reading and writing--face a difficult position with AI. Students will need to use AI in collegiate and professional writing, but using AI for assignments can hinder critical thinking skills crucial to analyzing and correcting AI output. This presentation demonstrates three practices from our developmental English classrooms: a critical reading and writing summary assignment, AI-resistant rubrics, and an exercise to help students evaluate AI-generated suggestions on how to review their work. These activities are designed to help students develop crucial AI-literacy skills to help them succeed in an increasingly …

Literary Homeplace As A Site Of Knowing And Healing, Shamonique Hassell

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The concept of literary homeplace serves as a locus of rhetorical healing for Black women, emphasizing their lived experiences and creative expressions as forms of resistance and restoration (Collins, 1986; hooks, 1990; Nettles, 2001). The labor of Black women within families, churches, and artistic endeavors contributes to the cultivation of a collective consciousness surrounding oppression and healing (Edwards, 2010; Carey, 2016; Morrison, 1992). Building upon hooks’ (1990) notion of homeplace, this dissertation examines how Black women foster spaces characterized by care, dignity, and resilience (Hersey, 2022; Tate, 1984). Using personal narrative and articulating Black women’s voices, I position homeplace as …

New Reader Response: An Examination Of Three High-Achieving High School Readers And Their Literacies, Minkyu Kim

Essays in Education

Since its inception, reader response theory has battled misrepresentations. It was reduced to discursive anarchy, perceived as not rigorous, and set apart from important scholarship movements like critical theory. This research argues that by expanding the definition of “reader” in “reader response” to include digital (aka “new”) literacies, the reader-text transaction can be much more inclusive, dynamic, and most importantly, true to our students’ everyday literacies. This article also includes a discussion of why it is so important for teachers to include digital platforms as sites of interrogation in a safe educative setting. By studying the out-of-school literacy behaviors of …

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter for The Writing Center Journal 42:3 (2024).

Using “Compare Documents” To Facilitate Substantive Revision And Reflection, Ryan Mccarty

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Ai Tools In University Writing Instruction: Enhancing Student Success While Upholding Academic Integrity, Daisuke Akiba, Rebecca Garte

Publications and Research

The emergence of AI-powered Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, presents both opportunities and challenges for higher education, particularly regarding academic integrity in writing instruction. This exploratory study examines a novel pedagogical approach that integrates LLMs as required feedback tools in a university-level psychology writing assignment. The exclusive online approach emphasizes improvement through revision, requiring students to obtain AI-generated feedback on ungraded initial drafts based on an instructor-provided rubric, with final assessment focused on the quality of subsequent revisions. Analysis of survey data from 39 undergraduate students, incorporating both quantitative measures and qualitative responses, revealed several …

A Qualitative Study Of Iranian Efl Teachers’ Perceptions Of A Digital Diversified Education, Seyed Mohammad Reza Marvasti Zadeh, Azizollah Dabaghi Varnosfadrani Advarnosfadrani, Mohammad Amiryousefi

The Qualitative Report

Because Iran is a country of learners of diverse languages, socio-economic classes, genders, and ages, digital diversified education seems appropriate to address needs in English language education. However, there is a notable gap in research on teachers’ perceptions about this type of education. To fill this gap, this study aimed to investigate the perspectives of Iranian teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) regarding a diverse digital education. Data were collected via an open-ended survey with 30 EFL teachers, both male and female, who were selected through convenience sampling. Analysis revealed several key themes, including the utilization of diverse …

Revisiting Paradise Lost Through K-Pop: A Global Approach To Teaching Writing, Nayoung Bishoff

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The short film series Wings (2016) by the Korean musical group BTS (Beyond the Scene) revisits John Milton’s Paradise Lost. BTS reinterprets Adam and Eve’s leaving of Eden as youths’ self-discovery process, overcoming a binary mindset. BTS emphasizes how experiences—trials, pains, and the struggle of youths to walk out of black-and-white perspectives—turn out to be “all so beautiful” as resources to grow. Wings demonstrates how the themes and elements in Paradise Lost can be used as a tool not only to explore Biblical concepts, but also to understand what pedagogical environments youths need to fully express themselves as writers. …