Teaching Literacy For Love And Wisdom

This book lays out a new vision for the teaching of English, building on themes central to Wilhelm's influential "You Gotta BE The Book." With portraits of teachers and students, as well as practical strategies and advice, they provide a roadmap to educational transformation far beyond the field of English. --from publisher description

This award-winning book continues to resonate with teachers and inspire their teaching because it focuses on the joy of reading and how it can engage and even transform readers. In a time of next generation standards that emphasize higher-order strategies, text complexity, and the reading of nonfiction, “You Gotta BE the Book” continues to help teachers meet new challenges including those of increasing cultural diversity. At the core of Wilhelm’s foundational text is an in-depth account of what highly motivated adolescent readers actually do when they read, and how to help struggling readers take on those same stances and strategies. His work offers a robust model teachers can use to prepare students for the demands of disciplinary understanding and for literacy in the real world. The Third Edition includes new commentaries and tips for using visual techniques, drama and action strategies, think-aloud protocols, and symbolic story representation/reading manipulatives. Book Features: A data-driven theory of literature and literary reading as engagement.A case for undertaking teacher research with students.An approach for using drama and visual art to support readers’ comprehension. Guidance for assisting students in the use of higher-order strategies of reading (and writing) as required by next generation standards like the Common Core.Classroom interventions to help all students, especially reluctant ones, become successful readers. “This book points the way for us to cast our students as experts and collaborators in the educational enterprise.” —From the Foreword by Michael W. Smith, Temple University, College of Education “Simply put, it is a classic—timeless in its basic approach and yet full of relevant ideas and strategies for the era of Common Core.” —Deborah Appleman, Carleton College On the Second Edition: “This important book remains on the must-read list for literacy teachers working with adolescent learners.” —CHOICE “I hope this book is read and considered by all the stakeholders who can make a difference in education by following Wilhelm's lead of improving instruction to enhance students’ lives.” —Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy

This is the first book to specifically address the needs of transnational youth, a growing population of students who live and go to school across the United States and other nations including Mexico and different Caribbean islands. The author describes a coherent approach to English language arts and literacy education that supports the literacy learning and development of transnational students, while incorporating these students’ unique experiences to enrich the learning of all students. Drawing from exemplary teachers’ classroom practice and research-based approaches, the book demonstrates how teachers can engage with transnationalism to reap the unique and significant benefits this phenomenon presents for literacy education. These benefits include a deeper appreciation of cultural and linguistic diversity, an increased awareness of world citizenship, and the development of globally informed ways of reading, writing, investigating, and thinking. Book Features: Describes a comprehensive approach to literacy education that is more inclusive, productive, and powerful for all students. Shows teachers how attending to transnationalism can fit within and enhance the work they already do with all of their students. Includes learning activities that align with best practices for building multicultural, multilingual, and other forms of border-crossing knowledge and skills. Includes specific strategies teachers can use to address the unique challenges that transnationalism poses, such as extended absences from the classroom. “Allison Skerrett shows in this book that teachers can mitigate harm through specific choices in their teaching, by viewing difference as a resource that is available to a greater degree when we are fortunate enough to have transnational students in our classrooms.” —Randy Bomer, Professor and Chair, Curriculum and Instruction, The College of Education, University of Texas at Austin “This well-researched and engagingly written book brilliantly illuminates the often hidden or sorely misunderstood life and schooling experiences of transnational youth. It is a primary text for courses on literacy theories and practices, and fills a critical gap in how we conceptualize and implement literacy instruction for all youth.” —Jabari Mahiri, professor of education, UC Berkeley

"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"--

Curating a Literacy Life spotlights the idea of curation as a process for inspiring student-centered learning with digital media. Young people need to learn to become purposeful collectors and, thus, curators of their own learning. In this book, Kist shows educators how to empower students as they make sense of all the books, videos, websites, and social media they access. Packed with ideas and activities developed over time in a high school setting, the author presents a model for learning to learn—a way of processing, making meaning, and repurposing all the texts around us. Kist demonstrates how curating can happen no matter where the teaching and learning are taking place, whether virtually or face-to-face, in school or out of school. Using Smart phones; a Netflix account, and access to a variety of YA, canonical, and media texts, this resource provides a foundation for becoming lifelong scholars and artists. Curating a Literacy Life is for both teachers and parents who are interested in helping young people harness, manage, and learn from the multiple messages and texts they encounter every day. Book Features: A powerful model to help teens make sense of and even repurpose the texts they encounter daily.Ideas for making use of digital media in ways that are meaningful to today’s students.Strategies for bridging the divide between in-school and out-of-school literacies. Activities developed during the author’s years as an instructional coach at Cleveland’s Glenville High School.

The story begins when some committed and curious teachers from the Red Clay Writing Project gathered into a teacher inquiry community to spend a year focusing on and documenting their experiences with one of their most disenfranchised students. By analysing and rethinking what they do in the classroom and why they do it, the authors come to re-imagine who they are as teachers and as human beings. These honest and compelling stories about connecting with one student uncover valuable insights for becoming more responsive to all students. The book introduces the Oral Inquiry Process and examines its role in fostering critical awareness among educators. Perfect for use in teacher preparation courses and professional learning groups, the text includes prompts at the end of each chapter to support teacher-writer groups, along with a suggested writing exercise.

Over a decade ago, Jeffrey Wilhelm's groundbreaking book showed educators how to think of reading as a personally meaningful, pleasureable, and productive pursuit. This edition includes an added commentary to each chapter, which reflects on the research and insights originally introduced.

The Teacher-Writer shows how teachers can pursue and sustain personally and professionally worthwhile writing practices, even amidst the many demands associated with teaching. It meets teachers wherever they are—as novice teachers just beginning to pursue writing, as teachers emerging from a professional development experience, or as accomplished writers seeking to further their craft. Chapter by chapter, the book provides strategies to help teachers get started on projects, build energy for writing, overcome obstacles of limited time, create support systems using online technologies, and develop coherence across their writing lives. The text includes useful writing group routines, questions for framing collaborative inquiry, methods for adapting writing communities to online settings, and rich examples of conversations and texts shared in actual teacher writing group meetings. Book Features: Focuses on teacher-writers and their actual experiences working together in a writing group, including benefits and challenges. Includes vignettes taken from writing group meetings that demonstrate the variety of ways teachers may participate and engage in writing. Offers practical suggestions for teachers seeking to form writing groups, including plans for online groups. Shares strategies to help teacher-writers expand their concepts of writing to include everything from exploratory texts to professional and academic writing. “An extremely important read for every teacher of writing, this book focuses on the development of ideas and the exploration of language and structure instead of formulaic routines. Here we see how teachers can locate (or reawaken) themselves as writers bringing fresh language, literacy excitement, and expertise into their classrooms.” —Judith A. Langer, distinguished research professor, University at Albany “Readers of Christine Dawson’s new book might be surprised to find themselves in a novelistic world where the literary characters are women who, through talk and writing, act in and on their complex lives. They are teachers, yes, but they are also thoughtful mothers and daughters, wives and friends, and ready companions. This is a newly liberated notion of a writing group—of women who teach—and a practical guide to those readers inspired to start their own group.” —Anne Haas Dyson, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign