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English Instruction

• A "Tempest" Project: Shakespeare and Critical Conflicts
  Describes a 4-week unit of study that focuses on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a text that has been especially controversial in today's climate of increased multicultural awareness. Involves students in a larger conversation about the possibilities for reading and interpreting literature and prepares them to write mature analyses of the play.
• Check Out the Real America: Many Hued, Many Tongued, and Many Storied
  Describes how a high school English teacher went looking for and found Mexican-, Filipino-, African-, European-, and Native-American Literature, in order to bring all her students' worlds and voices into the classroom. Argues that all students must be included in an education that socializes them to a multicultural rather than a monocultural America.
• Children's Literature in Adult Education
  Investigates the possible role of children's literature in the education of adult learners of English. Shows that children's literature can be effective in teaching linguistic skills such as pronunciation practice and improving language acquisition.
• Chronicle of a Battle Foretold: Curriculum and Social Change
  Argues an English curriculum infused with multicultural literature and perspectives will not cause the educational and social outcomes attributed to it. The crux of the problem is to help students acquire, from their own experience with literature, a greater desire for literature.
• Diversity in the English Curriculum: Challenges and Successes
  Shares some perspectives of a professor of English education, from work with English teachers, related to diversifying the high school English curriculum . Reports on responses of 240 teachers to a survey about works taught.
• Dramatized Experience, Civil Discourse, Sensitive Issues
  Describes the author's experience when the director and teacher-trainers of a writing program persuaded him that the oral interpretation he wished them to perform was too troubling and explosive to use. Outlines his questions and anguish about the incident, and the urgency of dealing with the dilemmas of multiculturalism, racial intolerance, and the teaching of writing.
• Electives: Once More to the Defense
  Presents two educators' views on elective courses. Argues that single-subject high school English courses teach the same skills that are taught in traditional English courses, offer students the opportunity to choose, can meet students' particular interest or needs, and should fulfill an English requirement.
• Experiencing Things Not Seen: Educative Events Centered on a Study of "Shabanu."
  Describes the theoretical foundations, classroom context, and activities of a multicultural literature study (based on S. F.
• Exploring Linguistic Diversity through World Englishes
  Presents the rationale and basic concepts for teaching about World Englishes. Describes a sample instructional unit based on the pilot project the authors conducted in a public high school in North Carolina, in which they provided instruction in linguistic diversity once a week for seven weeks.
• Homophobia and the Demise of Multicultural Community: Strategies for Change in the Community College
  Looks at teaching strategies for incorporating texts by sexual minorities into writing and literature classrooms, and for handling blatantly homophobic comments. Argues that such comments work to undercut the idea of a writing community.
• IFTE 1995: Some Notes from a Subgroup
  Within the paradigm of cultural pluralism, four areas seem worth exploring in depth: (1) language and power; (2) multiculturalism vs. /as cultural pluralism; (3) English itself--the discipline, course, and class; and (4) individual vs.
• IFTE 1995: Some Notes from a Subgroup
  Within the paradigm of cultural pluralism, four areas seem worth exploring in depth: (1) language and power; (2) multiculturalism vs/as cultural pluralism; (3) English itself--the discipline, course, and class; and (4) individual vs/as the collective.
• Literacy and Effective Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
  This study explored the ways in which English educators could most effectively plan and implement their teaching to best serve the multi-literacies of the diverse student populations in today's schools.
• Literacy and Effective Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
  This study explored the ways in which English educators could most effectively plan and implement their teaching to best serve the multi-literacies of the diverse student populations in today's schools. The researcher conducted interviews with classroom English teachers and teacher educators in north Alabama to gain the participants' perceptions of their effectiveness in teaching diverse literacies, opportunities for practicing effective strategies and pedagogical skills, and opportunities for improving teaching and learning and professional development.
• Multiculturally Challenged
  Voices the lament and the anger of a lone black teacher in an all-white school district in Wyoming trying to teach the "other" while simultaneously representing the "other." (SR).
• On Exclusion and Inclusion in Classroom Texts and Talk. Report Series 7.5
  To analyze some of the processes through which student voices and lived experiences can be either excluded or included, a study focused on elements of the classroom environment already addressed in previous analyses, examining "texts and talk" in two middle school English classrooms. This study analyzed how the classroom environments that the teachers constructed--through literature choices, classroom pedagogy, interactions with students, and responses to linguistic and cultural diversity--work in ways that either affirm or exclude the voices and lives of nonmainstream students.
• On Exclusion and Inclusion in Classroom Texts and Talk. Report Series 7.5
  To analyze some of the processes through which student voices and lived experiences can be either excluded or included, a study focused on elements of the classroom environment already addressed in previous analyses, examining "texts and talk" in two middle school English classrooms.
• On Exclusion and Inclusion in Classroom Texts and Talk. Report Series 7.5
  To analyze some of the processes through which student voices and lived experiences can be either excluded or included, a study focused on elements of the classroom environment already addressed in previous analyses, examining "texts and talk" in two middle school English classrooms. The study analyzed how the classroom environments that the teachers constructed--through literature choices, classroom pedagogy, interactions with students, and responses to linguistic and cultural diversity--work in ways that either affirm or exclude the voices and lives of nonmainstream students.
• Returning to Class: Creating Opportunities for Multicultural Reform at Majority Second-Tier Schools
  Looks at two representative examples of the impact of multiculturalism on higher education in order to get a concrete sense of how different perspectives can affect understanding of the multicultural transformation of the college curriculum in general and English studies in particular. (SG).
• Text Design Patterns in the Writing of Urban African American Students: Teaching to the Cultural Strengths of Students in Multicultural Settings
  Detailed text analysis was used to examine the expository writing patterns of four academically successful African American high school students. These bidialectic students brought culturally influenced text design patterns into the classroom.
• The "Tesoros" Literacy Project: Treasuring Students' Lives (Rainbow Teachers/Rainbow Students)
  Describes a project in a southeast Michigan high school in which Latino English-as-a-Second-Language students worked collaboratively for 10 weeks with at-risk working-class Anglo counterparts from an 11th-grade American literature class. Describes reading and writing activities that centered around the notion that students should search for and value the treasures of their own experience.
• The International Assembly
  Looks at the missions and goals of the International Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, a global multicultural network promoting communication and cooperation for international exchange of teaching practices, literature, literacy, curriculum development, and research in English. Suggests some criteria to look at when developing an international curriculum.
• The Myth Ritual Theory and the Teaching of Multicultural Literature
  Grapples with the difficult task of helping students differentiate between "myth" as a false belief or lie and "myth" as a cultural phenomenon embedded in sophisticated systems of meaning and action. Outlines four goals for the world mythology unit that help explore this greater sophistication with ninth graders.
• The Necessity of the Literary Tradition: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One-Hundred Years of Solitude."
  Argues that literature from other countries, taught as multicultural literature, must be taught in the context of its own literary tradition in order to provide high-quality academic instruction. Offers an example with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One-Hundred Years of Solitude" to show how teaching multicultural literature can live up to its ambitious goal of illuminating different cultures.
• The Siren Song That Keeps Us Coming Back: Multicultural Resources for Teaching Classical Mythology
  Notes the presence of references to classical mythology throughout modern culture, and offers an annotated list of 43 works of contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama that use mythological sources and that can help close the gap between today's students and the gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters of long ago. (SR).
• Tossed Salads: Family Recipes That Define Our Cultures
  Describes a writing assignment in which students think about how their families celebrate their own cultures through special meals or a certain dish, find out how this dish became part of their rituals, write a brief summary of the history of the dish, and write up the recipe itself. (SR).
• Trends and Issues in English Instruction, 1999--Six Summaries. Summaries of Informal Annual Discussions of the Commissions of the National Council of Teachers of English
  This 16th annual report presents information on current trends and issues informally discussed by the directors of six National Council of Teachers of English commissions.
• United in Diversity: Using Multicultural Young Adult Literature in the Classroom. Classroom Practices in Teaching English, Volume 29
  Addressing the complexity of the question of multicultural literature in the classroom, this anthology of 27 articles includes: contemplations by seven award-winning writers of young adult (YA) literature on the subject of diversity; a resource section that describes over 200 literary works and lists 50 reference tools to help teachers stay current on multicultural YA literature; and practical ideas from 16 educators who provide strategies proven to work in literature and language arts classes and across the curriculum.
• Voices in English Classrooms: Honoring Diversity and Change. Classroom Practices in Teaching English, Vol. 28
  This book presents a collection of classroom practices that view the personal experiences of diverse student populations as valuable resources for instruction. It offers teachers various responses to the challenges posed by students' cultural, linguistic, and social group affiliations.
• What's a (White) Teacher To Do about Black English?
  Argues that it is important for Black students and for all students to understand that Black English is indeed a language with rules, beauty, and power so that they come to respect it, respect its history, and respect their own bilingualism. (SR).
• White Students' Resistance to Multicultural Literature: Breaking the Sullen Silence
  Describes a writing assignment in which students study and imitate the language of a minority author. Discusses how the assignment helps negotiate conflicts when students resist multicultural literature, as their creative responses mediate between themselves and works they might otherwise find foreign and antagonistic.