Students emerged from Covid classrooms, but not unscathed. More than ever, they were not engaging in their own learning. Our course team decided we couldn’t keep lamenting the fact that our tried-and-true approaches weren’t working anymore; we needed to adapt to teach the students in front of us now. Inspired by a book for math teachers on getting kids to think, we adapted our own approach to writing instruction.
Blog Archives
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.
Culturally Responsive Teaching Standards, Practices, and Resources for the HS English Classrooms
In March of 2021, the Illinois State Board of Education adopted a set of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards for the purpose of better preparing future teachers to create culturally rich spaces and curricula that are welcoming and supportive for all students. While the new standards are an important tool for teacher education programs, there does not seem to exist a similar set of standards for practicing teachers in Illinois. While research suggests that culturally responsive teaching is a practice of many high school English teachers regardless of a required set of standards, we wanted to determine the extent to which this is happening using the CRP standards as a lens for teachers to consider the ways in which they are already embracing culturally responsive practices.
Specifically, our session will first share the results from a survey and interview with several high school English teachers in Illinois about their perspectives on and teaching habits related to the CRP standards. Then, we will share a repertoire of resources that we have curated and created to support teachers in their continued implementation of the CRP standards and culturally responsive practices in general.
Perils of the Participation Grade: Rethinking our Evaluation of Participation
As educators, we know the value of participation. However, we also know that many barriers to participation exist in and out of the classroom. We know that participation grades favor extroverted students, and at their worst, participation grades “may be inherently ableist” (Laurel Bastian, as cited in D’Agostino, 2023). But what if there is a way we could abandon the perilous participation grade while simultaneously showing students we value daily engagement? There is a way: the Engagement Grade.
In this session, Dr. Stephanie Bailey will define the Engagement Grade and the implementation of it with various abilities and grade levels. Dr. Bailey has been teaching high school English for 27 years and has taught at the community college level. Also, she has been a reader for the AP Language and Composition test. Currently, she teaches AP Language and Composition and remedial junior English.