Restorative Literacies

Through eight compelling stories of restorative literacies, Wolter explores the complex relationships among cognition, metacognition, identity, behavior in schools, and literacies. Based on the principles of restorative justice, restorative literacies are designed to help educators repair harm, restore relationships, and expand the concept of literacy for some of our most disenfranchised and disengaged students. Restorative literacies are not just about growing readers and writers per se. They are about creating a community of care that involves students, teachers, administrators, and families so that all students experience racially, culturally, linguistically, and economically responsive instruction in multiple forms of literacies. Drawing on the authorÕs rich experiences cultivating a love of reading among her students and studying the practices of other educators, Restorative Literacies advances a provocative set of examples about centering the voice and stories of people in our quest to humanize and reimagine how we care for, about, and with others. Book Features: Presents a literacy model of restorative justice that includes participation from teachers, principals, administrators, and parents.Contains engaging narratives from elementary and secondary schools to illustrate concepts and strategies.Explores compassionate listening as a conscious process of assuring that all involved are fully heard, a skill that requires removing assumptions, judgement, and bias.Identifies practices that take a positive view of learners, as opposed to referring students to special education.Uses restoration as an alternative to pushout practices that are designed to control students and often prevent them from reaching their capacity. “Restorative Literacies offers a refreshing perspective on the power of story in cultivating emancipatory, restorative, and transformative contexts of learning, teaching, and development. . . . During these times of civil and civic unrest, this is the book we need in education.” —From the Foreword by H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education, Vanderbilt University

What happens when learning is approached as a transaction between teachers, students, texts, and methods? Based on classroom action research conducted in a diverse suburban school district, the author shares a framework that encourages teachers to approach their work with a restorative mindset by focusing on four elements of instruction: methods; literature; relationships; and culture, identity, and language. In each chapter, Faughey shares a scenario or problem from her ELA classroom, the action she took to address it, and the outcomes. Examples include a 9th-grade classroom where students developed podcasts to share their thinking about Romeo and Juliet, a 10th-grade classroom where multilingual learners created graphic essays to share their comparative analysis of Things Fall Apart and the film Black Panther, and a 12th-grade classroom where students reimagined Dracula in order to connect personally with the text through restorying. This accessible text provides resources, lesson plans, and examples of student work, as well as suggestions for teacher preparation programs. Book Features: Shares the perspective of a classroom teacher who understands the daily interactions teachers have with students, as well as the possibilities and limitations of teaching in today’s schools. Demonstrates a problem-solving thought process with a step-by-step explanation of the author’s teaching process. Includes vivid anecdotes about students, pictures of students working together, and examples of student work. Situates each scenario within a body of theoretical and research literature, introducing concepts such as cosmopolitan theory, reader response theory, and literary theory. Offers lesson plans, rubrics, and handouts that teachers can use to inform their own practice. Provides lists of podcasts, videos, articles, and books that can be used when teaching classic texts such as Dubliners, The Great Gatsby, and “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Examines the literacy practices of Black LGBTQ people, developing - from sixty in-depth interviews conducted with individuals of various ages living across the United States - an analytical theory of "black queer literacies".

While standard language ideology (SLI) is harmful in its exclusion of minorities through expression of language and race, translingualism provides a positive scaffolding characterized by the disposition of openness. Translingualism suggests that each utterance creates meaning and is a direct rebellion against SLI. It privileges unprivileged varieties of English over so-called Standard English. In order to combat SLI, scholars have emphasized the need for congenial multicultural spaces where students can use their cultural and linguistic resources as an asset and which supports the idea of students learning from each other through their diversity. Teaching Practices and Language Ideologies for Multilingual Classrooms is an essential scholarly publication that examines the educational necessities for diverse student populations and multilingual students and provides rich teaching resources for guiding the creation of classroom environments that engage multilingual students and support their writing and problem-solving skills. Featuring a range of topics such as ethics, code-switching, and language education, this book is ideal for teachers, instructional designers, academicians, sociologists, administrators, language professionals, researchers, and students.

In a documentarian investigation of the major LGBTQ archives in the United States, Queer Literacies: Discourses and Discontents identifies the homophobic discourses that prevailed in the twentieth-century by those discursive forces that also sponsored the literacy acquisition of the nation. Mark McBeth tracks down the evidence of how these sponsors of literacy—families, teachers, librarians, doctors, scientists, and government agents—instituted heteronormative platforms upon which public discourses were constructed. After pinpointing and analyzing how this disparaging rhetoric emerged, McBeth examines how certain LGBTQ advocates took counter-literacy measures to upend and replace those discourses with more Queer-affirming articulations. Having lived contemporaneously while these events occurred, McBeth incorporate narratives of his own lived experience of how these discourses impacted his own reading, writing, and researching capabilities. In this auto-archival research investigation, McBeth argues that throughout the twentieth century, Queer literates revised dominant and oppressive discourses as a means of survival and world-making in their own words. Scholars of rhetoric, gender studies, LGBTQ studies, literary studies, and communication studies will find this book particularly useful.

This book provides targeted suggestions that educators can use to ensure successful teaching and learning with today's growing population of transnational, multilingual students. The text offers insights based on the author's observations, interactions, and interviews with second-generation immigrant children, their families, and their teachers in the United States and South Korea. These collected stories give educators a better understanding of how elementary school children engage in language, literacy, and learning in and across spaces and countries; the forms of unique linguistic and cultural knowledge immigrant children build, expand, and mobilize as they move across contexts; the ways in which immigrant children position themselves and represent their identities; and how educators and researchers can honor these children's identities and unique talents. Featuring children's narratives, drawings, writings, maps, and photographs, this resource is a must-read for educators and researchers seeking to create more inclusive learning spaces and literacy practices. Book Features: Examples of students' literacy practices with insights for more effective teaching. Practical lessons gleaned from children engaging with language and literacy in flexible and dynamic ways in their everyday lives. Targeted suggestions to help educators better understand and utilize children's unique linguistic abilities and cultural understandings. Discussion questions and examples that challenge deficit perspectives of immigrant children and reposition them as multilingual and transnational experts. Implications for educators and researchers seeking ways to amplify young immigrant children's voices and leverage their knowledge.

"A number of academic texts address culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), but very few focus on literacy practices that are culturally sustaining, unlike this one. Despite widespread interest among educators in culturally sustaining pedagogy, implementation of its practice is limited. This text provides authentic examples of culturally sustaining literacy pedagogy in real classrooms so that readers can see how CSP is enacted in practice, across multiple grade levels"--

This book shows literacy professionals how to develop the dispositions and actions associated with advocacy-focused teaching. While portraits of culturally conscious literacy teachers are now readily available, becoming such a teacher continues to be a challenge. Drawing from 60+ years of experience working with teacher candidates and teachers in the city of Philadelphia, the authors argue that becoming an advocacy-focused literacy teacher requires making moral commitments to students and developing professional competencies that fuse literacy, language, and equity studies. Recognizing that educators can be overwhelmed trying to match the realities they face daily with the theory behind good practice, Connecting Equity, Literacy, and Language packs a lot of big ideas into one readable, concise book that is perfect for use in literacy methods courses. The text includes definitions and examples of equity concepts, relatable teacher vignettes, and “Pause and Reflect” boxes to encourage reflection and classroom conversation. Book Features: Examines the central problems of students’ disconnection with school, spirit murdering, and the teacher education gap.Looks at inequities that have become normalized in classrooms and schools through standardized testing, literacy teaching routines and structures, and deficit-laced language about students and families.Discusses literacies and languages as cultural practices and the need to be vigilant about the linguistic violence that occurs when students’ languages are delegitimized.Describes critically and culturally centered teaching frameworks.Provides vivid examples of advocacy-focused teaching.