From the Editors

Abstract

Dear Readers of The Reading Teacher, We have big news for you: The International Reading Association (IRA) is now the International Literacy Association (ILA). We are excited about the changes for our organization and especially the specific changes in The Reading Teacher. Starting with this issue, you can see ILA's new name in print and the new look for the journal. You may be thinking, So, what is so different in changing just one word? Is that all there is to this big change, a new name and a new logo? Actually, these changes are just the obvious ones, the visible changes we see. Underneath the surface, that one word, literacy, represents a transformation for our Association. This transformation—or change, alteration, conversion, renovation, makeover, and/or revolution—is the result of our organization's huge rebranding effort. The rebranding process began in March 2014. This was no overnight project; it required thoughtful reflection before any action occurred. The primary focus of the rebranding effort was to consider 60 years of IRA goals and activities to determine key elements and how to leverage them more effectively for the future. This whole process of rebranding has been a carefully constructed and thoughtful endeavor. As part of the process, there were surveys of members and nonmembers and intense research that considered every aspect of IRA. We were thrilled that the research confirmed the Association's credibility as the premier source about literacy, premised as it has always been on rigorous research. We learned that our content, including our journals, books, magazine, online offerings, and conference programs, is widely sought and in strong demand. For instance, The Reading Teacher had a million downloads of articles last year alone. We were acknowledged for having partnered with and enriching the professional lives of hundreds of thousands of teachers and, through them, enhanced the literacy learning of millions of students. It was consistently revealed that the Association's reach is global. In this transformation, ILA will work toward advancing our cause of ending illiteracy in the world—an audacious goal, for sure, but one that ILA will strive to achieve through the important work carried on by its members. To reach this goal, ILA will support members with resources and journals that we know are valued. You will soon see us reaching out to new audiences to build on our core work with teachers, researchers, and teacher educators. ILA's goal is to bring the transforming power of literacy to all teachers, students, and schools. We want to collaborate with those for whom economic and social distress present formidable obstacles to teacher and student learning. We hope to develop solutions to many of the issues that surround literacy so the number of illiterate individuals is vastly reduced from the 800 million in today's world. We need you, our readers, to join us in becoming brand ambassadors for ILA, helping us to advance this important work in a needful world. You can share our positive new spirit through your teaching, conversations, and collaboration. Our mission, in which we hope you will join with us, is to empower educators, inspire students, and encourage leaders with the resources they need to make literacy accessible for all. As journal editors, we work to advance the mission of making literacy accessible for all by publishing peer-reviewed, cutting-edge practitioner pieces. In addition, beginning in this issue, we will prepare a brief From the Editors note that highlights crosscutting, key ideas within each issue. We view this brief overview as a means to opening a dialogue that connects you to the content in the journal and helps make the content relevant to your teaching circumstances. We hope that you will engage in this conversation and let us, and others, know how you used the content in your work with students. In thinking about all of the pieces in this issue, one idea that really stuck with us was empowerment. That is, we noticed that the authors in this issue share their work in ways that inspire practitioners. From pieces on engagement to collaboration, the authors provide meaningful practices in ways that value teachers as thoughtful and knowledgeable professionals. common themes across the books that speak in poignant and powerful ways to issues of identity, meaning, and agency in the lives of young Black boys. In doing so, I hope to inspire teachers with a vision of the rich and transformative potential of African American children's literature to make a difference for children in their own classrooms. complexity is not a matter of simply increasing the length of the books we ask students to read; it is about engaging students in deeper conversations, reading more complex narratives, and considering both the textual and visual aspects of contemporary picturebooks. Their column is filled with examples of challenging picturebooks, along with ideas for how to assist students in engaging with and through texts. A second strand of articles in this issue that empowers teachers is focused on collaboration in professional development. Kay Stahl writes on this topic in the opening piece of this issue, which is also a part of The Inside Track for volume 68: “Literacy Research and Classroom Instruction.” Stahl describes a successful approach for professional development (i.e., professional learning communities) designed to improve instruction in comprehension. In emphasizing the importance of collaboration, she suggests that “developing professional bonds with our peers as we increase our instructional effectiveness helps eliminate the isolation that is often an unexpected aspect of being a teacher.” technology should not drive the curriculum nor determine content; rather, technology should be ubiquitously integrated at every available opportunity based on the increased opportunities for expanded depth and breadth of student learning as identified by TPACK knowledge domains and overlap. From community to collaboration and from engagement to empowerment, we hope that as you read the pieces in this issue, you will feel the same excitement and inspiration that we did.