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To embrace today's culturally and linguistically diverse secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms, this text presents ways in which teachers can use digital tools in the service of antiracist teaching and developing equity-oriented mindsets in teaching and learning.Addressing how the use of digital tools and literacy practices can be woven into current ELA curricula, and with consistent sections, each chapter covers a different aspect of digital tool use, including multimodal texts, critical media literacies, connection-building, and digital composing. Understanding that no classroom is a monolith, Barnes and Marlatt's timely text presents practical applications and resources suitable for different environments, including urban and rural contexts.The volume is essential reading in courses on ELA/literacy methods and multicultural education.

This practical book provides teachers with step-by-step guidance for developing a class culture that welcomes curiosity and ignites social action. Student-driven inquiry has a lasting impact on learning, yet questions posed from students'own contexts rarely serve to shape their understanding of the outside world. The authors show teachers how to use literature to introduce characters and worlds that exist outside of their students'lived experiences. Through this exposure, students can develop questions that seek to build empathy for others, which ultimately positions young people to be change agents in their communities and in the larger world. This book translates ideas from theorists in critical literacy, student motivation, and culturally responsive pedagogy into practical approaches for the English language arts and social studies classroom (6–12). Each chapter poses questions designed to get teachers thinking about how to use mind-opening texts with students to address social problems.Book Features:Shows teachers how to use literature to help students navigate a shifting world.Equips students with the skills to advocate for themselves and others, including using digital tools in meaningful, effective ways. Asks students to face controversial points-of-view head on and interrogate the world in which they live. Includes examples of discussions that lead to projects and opportunities that allow youth to do work in the community.Demonstrates how to move theory into practice, providing teachers with the rationale for using inquiry as disruption if questioned by stakeholders.Contains a scope and sequence that outlines an entire year devoted to inquiry, as well as how to break it down into individual units and lessons.

Service learning presents an experiential learning opportunity, particularly for students at higher education institutions. At the same time, it allows the university to engage communities and apply its considerable resources addressing community needs. This book, Educating for Empathy: Service Learning in Public Policy Education, will introduce readers to the concept of service learning and how it can be applied to higher education. While service learning has been recognized as a useful pedagogical tool that can enhance students'learning experience, the application and practice of service learning in Singapore has been limited.The book will also provide a broad overview of service learning in the context of a service learning initiative that was conducted by the author under Nanyang Technological University (NTU)'s Public Policy & Global Affairs Programme, as well as the author's experience as NTU's inaugural Community Research Fellow. It will cover the policy, pedagogical, and socio-political aspects of service learning and include insights from students and stakeholders. In doing so, it aims to provide valuable insights into the role of service learning as a driver of civic education and grassroots volunteerism. The book will also provide both education and policy professionals a greater understanding of how their work can intersect, and provide students with a highly rewarding learning experience.

Educating for Empathy presents a compelling framework for thinking about the purpose and practice of literacy education in a politically polarized world. Mirra proposes a model of critical civic empathy that encourages secondary ELA teachers to consider how issues of power and inequity play out in the literacy classroom and how to envision literacy practices as a means of civic engagement. The book reviews core elements of ELA instruction—response to literature, classroom discussion, research, and digital literacy—and demonstrates how these activities can be adapted to foster critical thinking and empathetic perspectives among students. Chapters depict teachers and students engaging in this transformative learning, offer concrete strategies for the classroom, and pose questions to guide school communities in collaborative reflection.“If educators were to follow Mirra's model, we will have come a long way toward educating and motivating young people to become involved, engaged, and caring citizens.”—Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst“Grounded in respectful research partnerships with youth and teachers, this is a book that will resonate with and inspire educators in these precarious times.”—Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania“If ever there were a time for a book on empathy in education, the moment is now.”—Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University

Can I Teach That? Negotiating Taboo Language and Controversial Topics in the Language Arts Classroom is a collection of stories, strategies, advice, and documents collected for teachers who are using or plan to use materials or implement policies they know may be controversial. It is for any teacher dedicated to engaging their students in the complex, challenging, and rewarding activities of reading and writing, for any teacher committed to speaking honestly with students. For any teacher, period. Because when we decide to work with young people, when we commit to sharing books and ideas that engage their hearts and minds, when we strive to get adolescents to think critically and write honestly, we open ourselves up to suspicion and critique from someone, somewhere, no matter how above reproach we feel our materials and strategies are. Few language arts teachers will experience a full-blown challenge to the content of their curriculum, but many may self-censor or suffer through awkward and challenging conversations with colleagues, administrators, parents, and other members of their community. This book is for those times when teachers are called on to defend and legitimize their use of controversial material in their classroom––material that they know reflects students'reality, even as it makes adults uncomfortable and fearful about their inability to protect children from that very reality.

This book explores the role of identity in adolescent foreign language learning to provide evidence that an identity-focused approach can make a difference to achievement in education. It uses both in-depth exploratory interviews with language learners and a cross-sectional survey to provide a unique glimpse into the identity dynamics that learners need to manage in their interaction with contradictory relational contexts (e.g. teacher vs. classmates; parents vs. friends), and that appear to impair their perceived competence and declared achievement in language learning. Furthermore, this work presents a new model of identity which incorporates several educational psychology theories (e.g. self-discrepancy, self-presentation, impression management), developmental theories of adolescence and principles of foreign language teaching and learning. This book gives rise to potentially policy-changing insights and will be of importance to those interested in the relationship between self, identity and language teaching and learning.

A critical reality of contemporary education in a globalised world is the growing cultural, racial and linguistic diversity in schools and the issues involved in educating increasing numbers of students who are still learning the dominant language. This poses extraordinary challenges for second and foreign language teachers in many countries, where such students must engage with the mainstream curriculum in a new language. What do these increasingly plurilingual and multicultural classrooms look like? And how do language teachers address the challenges of such diverse classrooms? This book brings together a group of well-recognised language education scholars who present their research in a range of international settings. They focus on the key areas of pedagogy, language policy and curriculum and exemplify new research directions in the field.