Since literary traditions are ever-evolving, it’s crucial to engage with the perspectives of future educators on how to refine and redefine these traditions. This presentation will offer insights and research from pre-service teachers enrolled in the licensure program at Northern Illinois University. These emerging educators represent the next generation of literary leaders, and their voices are instrumental in shaping the future of ELA education. This panel features pre-service teachers at various stages of their licensure program, each offering a unique perspective on the refinement of literary traditions. Through interactive discussions, personal reflections, and practical examples, the presenters will delve into innovative approaches to teaching literature that honor tradition while embracing contemporary voices and perspectives. By amplifying the voices of future leaders in education, this session contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how literature can foster empathy, criticalthinking, and cultural understanding. The presentation will inspire conference attendees to reevaluate their own teaching practices and consider new ways to engage students with literary texts. Areas of focus include: 1) Reimagining canonical texts for diverse classrooms; 2) Integrating contemporary literature into the curriculum; 3) Using technology to enhance literary learning experiences; and 4) Empowering student voices through reader-response pedagogy.
Blog Archives
“My Excellent Friend”: The Letter-Writing of Frankenstein in the Age of SnapChat
Our students use text to correspond with each other more than ever, often churning out micro-epistles while we teach our most engaging lessons. But while research overwhelmingly suggests that handwriting stimulates brain development and correspondence boosts mental health, snapping bypasses many of these benefits, due to the brevity and screen-dependence of the medium. When given the opportunity to turn a text into a real letter, however – one with an elevated salutation, advanced vocabulary, and ornate sentences, students will scribble seriously for half an hour, phones forgotten in backpacks. Engaging this activity in preparation for reading novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will allow students to playfully encounter the language of the 19th century, consider new words and their shifting meanings over time, and compose heartfelt and often hilarious missives (if only to scold the dog for soiling the “citadel” of their bedroom).
In this workshop, participants will examine sample letters, both from Frankenstein and from online archives of Victorian-era correspondence; next, they will draw from an extensive word list in composing letters of high emotion and elevated language. At the end of the workshop, participants will discuss further implications for how such writing generates authentic stakes, stimulates discussions of word usage and parts of speech, and increases student confidence in the otherwise daunting task of reading 19th century texts.
Voices Silenced: Unpacking the Dilemma of Book Challenges in the Context of Culturally Responsive Pedagogies Through Content Analysis
This session will discuss the findings of a three-year dissertation study about the reasons for and rhetoric surrounding book challenges and bans. The presentation will discuss how this rhetoric interrupts culturally responsive teaching practices and silences marginalized voices. This session will also present effective ways of discussing these challenges with stakeholders.
“Picturing” Socially Just Research Writing
As we are navigating “contentious times” in the ELA field, a high-interest and non-threatening approach to moving our students towards engaging in social justice issues is using diverse children’s picture books as a jumping-off point for students to choose topics for required research papers. We encourage teachers to use a mentor text to lead students through the process of engaging with diverse picture books for children, critically examining the texts that capture their attention, and then using a single text to lead their higher-level research and study of visual media. This approach is a highly motivating and non-threatening way to engage students in important discussions, concerns and eventual research about culturally diverse topics. Teachers will come away from this session understanding the research that supports a move towards this type of unit, as well as with practical tools and lists of texts to use immediately in their lessons.
Session Materials: PDF
It Does Happen Here: The Literary and Cultural Roots of American Authoritarianism
It hardly seems arguable that U.S. national politics have, for nearly a decade now, veered in a decidedly and intensified authoritarian direction. That nearly half the nation seems to crave autocratic rule and repression is not, in fact, a brand new development. Despite the fact that prominent trailblazers in American literary study such as F.O. Matthiessen defined American literature precisely by its strong democratic impulse and individualist spirit, one finds from even a cursory study of the U.S. literary tradition a powerful and canonical anti-democratic politics—relentlessly so. In the works of such writers including T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner, one finds unapologetic supremacist values. Even the romantic individualism of Emerson and Thoreau endorse autocratic behavior, eschewing the rule of law that is a key principle of democracy. This seminar invites us to scrutinize closely as teachers of literature what values we are transmitting to our students as we teach U.S. literature, reflecting on how the institution of literary study itself has participated in creating our current national condition.