inklings of thought

I chose to share the image above because I believe showcasing the different languages in our classrooms can not only create a visual for all students to see and even participate in the creation of (if we choose to go that route with word walls, charts, et cetera), but it is also a beautiful act that inspires empathy, courage, and a greater sense of one's own power, secure in his/her identity. To share what makes us us and to celebrate those differences rather than force them out in the name of conformity and a false sense of unity (unity by erasure of history, heritage, identity)... I believe that's part of what makes translanguaging such a powerful and necessary practice in the classroom.  Translanguaging can pair well with much of what we do specifically in an ELA classroom, whether we are talking about writing, speaking, observing, and reading. Often times the fear of another language that we, the teacher, may not understand kind of stops us in our tracks, I think. ...

I dig my fingers through my hair, accidentally ripping a few strands from my scalp. Part of me considers cutting all of it off, but even without my white hair, my maji heritage would damn our family all the same. We are the people who fill the king's prisons, the people our kingdom turns into laborers. The people Orishans try to chase out of their features, outlawing our lineage as if white hair and dead magic were a societal stain. (Children of Blood and Bone, page 27) The quote above captures one of the complicated perspectives from Tomi Adeyemi's YA fantasy novel Children of Blood and Bone . Zelie is a seventeen year old girl born into a world where those with magical descent, the   "diviners", are regarded with disdain, fear, and disgust. When she was a child, the king of the land set forth a 'Raid,' a genocidal event that wiped out all practicing maji , including Zelie's mother. Having witnessed her mother be dragged away by the throat in cha...

When posed with the question "What makes a good lesson for you?" and after considering all the 'nuts and bolts' that go into creating a sound lesson (standards, objectives, materials required)... for me, it comes down to the essential questions, and deliberately breaking whatever we're reading or viewing in class open wide and connecting class material to real life by letting the information seep out.  Sometimes, the stuff we have to teach isn't all that exciting... but it has potential to be. We might find that we're teaching and reading texts we personally hated when we were in school. I think essential questions help frame texts and media in new ways, acting as launch points into discussions we never would have had if we just read the book, watched the movie, did some vocabulary sheets, and wrote a final essay about it. The EQ makes us look more critically at what the heck is actually important about xyz, even if the important thing is a bad th...

I can't speak for everyone, but most of us, at some point in this digital age, have run into the phenomena known as the meme. This is particularly true if you have an account with Facebook and Instagram, but memes are present all over the internet -- even in news articles and comment threads on forums. It's a pretty common occurrence for friends to text each other memes back and forth. I know -- I do it all the time, mainly for laughs. But it's this humorous nature of memes that can blind us to what's actually going on with the images we share and post all over the internet, and the potential damage they can do to those portrayed in the adapted images. In her article " Why are memes of black people reacting so popular online? " Ellen E. Jones comments on this and explores the underlying racism that often goes unnoticed and is ignored in our meme culture that also, in turn, ridicules so-called "politically correct social justice warriors" and tho...

In his article "What is Critical Literacy?" Ira Shor reflects that critical literacy is "words rethinking worlds, self dissenting in society," bridging "the political and the personal, the public and the private, the global and the local, the economic and the pedagogical" (282) so that a truly just society may come to pass, where none are oppressed or silenced. Shor encourages educators in particular to teach critically -- not just for their students' well-being, but out of mutuality, a shared effort to break away from the injustices of society and work toward bettering it as a whole (291). This means, then, that the lessons and materials we share with our students have implications, for better or worse. "Every educator [...] orients students towards certain values, actions, and language with implications for the kind of society and people these behaviors will produce (Shor 300). As a future ELA teacher, these words, of course, have me thinki...