National Council Of Teachers Of English Research Articles

Navigating tensions: A critical policy analysis of expectations for English educators in Georgia

We compare the institutional standards and expectations for English language arts (ELA) educators from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the leading professional organization in this field, and the state of Georgia. By conducting a critical policy analysis of documents from NCTE and the Georgia Department of Education (GADoE) we sought to understand the tension between standards set for training English education students in institutions of higher education and the standards those teachers would be required to use in Georgia K-12 schools. We analyze these documents through Cooper et al.’s (2004) policy analysis framework, which questions the normative, structural, constituent, and technical dimensions of policy development. We found that the ideological beliefs and values embedded in the policies and documents from NCTE and GADoE have developed divergent sets of expectations for ELA teachers in Georgia, particularly around how teachers respond to oppression in our society; how we understand the overall purpose of ELA instruction; and the scope of responsibilities for educators. We end by presenting implications for educators working among these two sets of policies, in recognizing where these expectations may overlap as well as diverge.

Editorial: A New Generation of Fugitive Scholarship

Guest Editors’ Note: The Fugitive Literacies Collective is a constellation of critical scholar-friends of color assembled from the 2016-18 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color (CNV) cohort. The Collective is committed to resisting hegemonic academic norms and mores. Our members think, study, write, and publish together in an intentional effort to irradiate the knowledges, complexities, and tensions that percolate when possibilities for the real or fictive liberation of historically marginalized and dehumanized persons and communities are embraced as desirable and worthwhile purposes for educational research(ers). The Collective seeks to embody and animate humanizing approaches to the intellectual labor of scholarship by enacting collaborations that honor a horizontal approach to the co-construction of knowledges while also highlighting literacies that break from educational practices that are inextricably rooted in anti-black, racist, and colonialist ideologies. This special issue of English Education features work from a fraction of the collective that theorizes and illustrates fugitive literacies by variously examining ways of knowing and meaning-making practices across multimodalities. The issue opens with an introductory editorial written by CNV cofounder Carol Lee that sets the stage for the ensuing critical conversations. To borrow from the Combahee River Collective, this issue is our proclamation to the world that we choose—and are ready for—a lifetime of work as freedom-seeking scholars of liberatory literacies.

From Snowflakesto Avalanche: Meet Laura Purdie Salas, the Puzzle Poet

Laura Purdie Salas grew up in Florida, currently lives in Minnesota, is a former teacher, and is now a prolific poet and frequent presenter with more than 130 books to her credit. She has authored both poetry and nonfiction, as well as resource books for educators and aspiring writers. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards, including selection as a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Notable book, an International Literacy Association Teachers’ Choice, and a Junior Library Guild Selection.

Policy, Practice, and Dialogue: A Framework for NCTE Action and Relational Strategy

This essay is an invited response to Noah Asher Golden and Deborah Bieler’s Provocateur Piece in this issue in which they share a loving critique of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). This response highlights and extends Golden and Bieler’s observation about “the strengths of our members: policy, practice, and dialogue.” The response essay illustrates how NCTE, an association for literacy educators, could use “policy, practice, and dialogue” as a framework to drive and connect its work.

NEWS & ANNOUCEMENTS

Greetings Everyone,The news for this new year’s issue consists mainly of a list of a major children’s literature awards that have been announced, as well as a few upcoming conferences.AWARDS2017 ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) Book and Media Award WinnersJohn Newberry MedalThe Girl Who Drank the Moon Written by Kelly Barnhill and published by Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman PublishingNewberry Honour BooksFreedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan written and illustrated by Ashley Bryan and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing DivisionThe Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog written by Adam Gidwitz, illustrated by Hatem Aly and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCWolf Hollow written by Lauren Wolk and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCRandolph Caldecott MedalRadiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, written by Javaka Steptoe and published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.Caldecot Honour BooksDu Iz Tak? illustrated and written by Carson Ellis, and published by Candlewick PressFreedom in Congo Square illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and published by Little Bee Books, an imprint of Bonnier Publishing GroupLeave Me Alone! illustrated and written by Vera Brosgol and published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited PartnershipThey All Saw a Cat illustrated and written by Brendan Wenzel and published by Chronicle Books LLCLaura Ingalls Wilder AwardNikki Grimes -- Her award-winning works include “Bronx Masquerade,” recipient of the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 2003, and “Words with Wings,” the recipient of a Coretta Scott King Author Honor in 2014. Grimes is also the recipient of the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award in 2016 and the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 2006.2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor AwardNaomi Shihab Nye will deliver the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture.Mildred L. Batchelder AwardCry, Heart, But Never Break - Originally published in Danish in 2001 as “Græd blot hjerte,” the book was written by Glenn Ringtved, illustrated by Charolotte Pardi, translated by Robert Moulthrop and published by Enchanted Lion Books.Batchelder Honour BooksAs Time Went By published by NorthSouth Books, Inc., written and illustrated by José Sanabria and translated from the German by Audrey HallOver the Ocean published by Chronicle Books LLC, written and illustrated by Taro Gomi and translated from the Japanese by Taylor NormanPura Belpre (Author) AwardJuana & Lucas written by Juana Medina, is the Pura Belpré Author Award winner. The book is illustrated by Juana Medina and published by Candlewick PressPura Belpre (Illustrator) AwardLowriders to the Center of the Earth illustrated by Raúl Gonzalez, written by Cathy Camper and published by Chronicle Books LLCAndrew Carnegie MedalRyan Swenar Dreamscape Media, LLC, producer of “Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music”Theodor Seuss Geisel AwardWe Are Growing: A Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! Book written by Laurie Keller. The book is published by Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book GroupRobert F. Sibert Informational Book MedalMarch: Book Three written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, published by Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works LLC  Stonewall Book Awards - ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT)Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature AwardIf I Was Your Girl written by Meredith Russo and published by Flatiron BooksMagnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor written by Rick Riordan and published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book GroupHonor BooksPride: Celebrating Diversity & Community written by Robin Stevenson and published by Orca Book PublishersUnbecoming written by Jenny Downham and published by Scholastic Inc. by arrangement with David Fickling BooksWhen the Moon Was Ours written by Anna-Marie McLemore and published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press2017 Children’s Literature Association Phoenix AwardsPhoenix Award  2017Wish Me Luck by James Heneghan Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997Phoenix Honor Books 2017Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman HarperCollins, 1997Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye Simon & Schuster, 19972017 Phoenix Picture Book AwardTell Me a Season by Mary McKenna Siddals & Petra Mathers Clarion Books, 1997One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Tale by Demi Scholastic, 1997 CONFERENCESMarchSerendipity 2017: From Beginning to End (Life, Death, and Everything In Between) The Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable Mar. 4, 2017 | 8am to 3:30 pm | UBC Ike Barber LibraryJuneChildren’s Literature Association ConferenceHosted by the University of South Florida June 22-24, 2017 Tampa, FL  Hilton Tampa Downtown Hotel Conference Theme: Imagined FuturesJulyInternational Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Congress 2017 – Toronto July 29 - August 2, 2017  Keele Campus, York University  The Congress theme is “Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies." That is all for this issue. Best wishes!Hanne Pearce, Communication Editor 

Creating supportive and subversive spaces as professional dyads enact culturally relevant teaching

In 2013, several leaders of the Early Childhood Education Assembly (ECEA) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) developed a multi-year project called Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching (PDCRT). Funded by NCTE, early childhood teacher/teacher-educator dyads from various locations across the United States work together for two years to investigate, generate, implement and document culturally relevant pedagogies in their respective early childhood contexts. This article outlines some of the work of two PDCRT dyads conducted from 2013 to 2015. The project was developed in response to the long-time need for culturally relevant early childhood education and teacher education reform by focusing on overturning inequitable practices that ignore, misrepresent or marginalize children and families of Color, emerging bi/multilinguals and children from low-income communities. We argue that the PDCRT dyad model is an innovative avenue for addressing inequitable educational realities in the Eurocentric educational system that persists in the US and for moving equity work forward.

James Weldon Johnson and the Speech Lab Recordings

James Weldon Johnson and the Speech Lab Recordings Chris Mustazza (bio) Projects of historical reconstruction are common to all contemporary oppositional intellectuals in America. This follows from the erasure of ‘other’ from dominant historical accounts; if it is said by those who deny us now that we have no past, then we have to insist that we have a past as deeply as we have a present. (Hunt 1990:201) Introduction On Christmas Eve in 1935, James Weldon Johnson met with Columbia Speech Professor George W. Hibbitt (1895-1965), a lexicologist and scholar of American dialects, and read thirteen of his poems. Johnson, a polymath who distinguished himself as a poet, a lawyer, a professor, a lyricist for Tin Pan Alley musicals, the American Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua, and a leader of the NAACP, had returned to his alma mater to capture his poetry in— or perhaps reconvert it to—sound.1 Together, Johnson and Hibbitt created four aluminum records of Johnson reading his poetry, with selections from Johnson’s 1917 Fifty Years and Other Poems (his first collection of poems), the much-praised 1927 God’s Trombones, and his 1935 St. Peter Relates an Incident. While bits of these recordings, most frequently the recording of “The Creation,” have emerged in poetry audio anthologies,2 the majority have lain dormant in the archive. It is odd that these recordings were never published in light of their quality. Many poetry recordings made in Hibbitt’s speech lab were released in a series of records produced by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and sold to schools on a subscription basis (more on this later). Johnson may have opted to record only for Columbia’s on-site record archive, and as a result, these recordings were never distributed, save for the fragments that made it out of the archive—until now. For the first time, these recordings are available for public download, historically contextualized, as part of the PennSound archive (Johnson 1935). The context for the creation of these recordings begins in 1931, when the poet Vachel Lindsay approached Barnard Professor of Speech W. Cabell Greet (1901-1972) and implored him to record Lindsay reading his poetry. Lindsay had recently been rebuffed by the commercial record companies he had approached since their executives had believed that poetry was not sufficiently commercial to warrant the production. Greet, who possessed a Speak-o-Phone recording device that he used to record samples of American dialects for his research, agreed to use it to record Lindsay. In January of 1931, Greet and Lindsay recorded nearly five hours’ worth of Lindsay’s poetry (Mustazza 2014).3 Lindsay died nine months later. Galvanized by what he saw as the recording industry’s disrespect for poetry in favor of more profitable content, Greet partnered with Hibbitt to create a series of recordings of American poets, all made in Greet’s speech lab, with some being distributed in a series that would come to be known as The Contemporary Poets Series. Greet and Hibbitt worked with Walter C. Garwick, an audio engineer and the inventor of the portable field-recording device he later sold to John A. Lomax for use in recording African American spirituals, cowboy songs, and other ethnographic repertoires (Mustazza 2014). The series, which grew to include poets such as T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Harriet Monroe, and Robert Frost, was distributed by the NCTE on 78rpm records to schools and to the public on a subscription basis, intended for “teachers, students, and other lovers of literature” (Greet 1934:312). Greet and Hibbitt actively sought out poets whose work was better heard than read, those that foregrounded the sonic facets of their poetry. In a call for suggestions for poets to be recorded in the series, published in American Speech, Greet prompted (1934:312): “You are asked to give some thought to the use of records in studying and teaching literature, to ask yourselves the following questions: What poems of present-day authors lose most when transferred to the printed page, and should, therefore, be preserved as the poet reads them? What poets and what poems would I and my friends...

Using the Digital Transmedia Magazine Project to Support Students With 21st-Century Literacies

Digital technologies have had a significant impact on how educators have come to understand and define literacy, and on the types of literacies and literacy practices that are required in the 21st century. In response, organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) have designed frameworks that attempt to articulate practices required to be literate in the 21st century. Although educators often turn to the NCTE framework to define the characteristics of a 21st-century literacies curriculum, missing from the professional literature are examples of student projects that have the potential to embody these characteristics. This article describes 1 such project, a digital transmedia magazine, in which groups of students transmediated a story or novel into a magazine using digital technologies. The article illustrates ways in which this project can be used to support students with the 6 elements of the NCTE framework.

SEXISM IN EFL TEXTBOOKS USED IN INDONESIAN SCHOOLS

<p><strong></strong>Since English is a compulsory subject in Indonesian schools where students have to use certain EFL textbooks, examining sexism in these textbooks is important. This study examined sexism in three of the most widely used EFL textbooks in Indonesian schools. Six criteria of sexism were used in analysing the data, namely: generic he; generic man; titles, labels and names; occupational roles both in texts and pictures/ illustrations; omission, the number of females and males both in texts and pictures/ illustrations; and firstness, the order of mention. The analysis was based on the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s ‘Guidelines for gender-fair use of Language’ (2002) and Porecca’s study (1984). In all criteria of sexism, there is evidence that sexism is present in the EFL textbooks used in Indonesian schools. The most unbalanced and the worst finding is the firstness (the order of mentions) with the ratio 10:1 in favour of male gendered words that appear first. This study suggests that there should be improvement in the production of the EFL textbooks used in Indonesian schools.</p>

English renewed: Visions of English among teachers of 1966

This article examines the way in which curriculum renewal in English teaching in the late 1960s was brought about largely through the democratic process of teacher participation. It describes the role that the newly formed National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) played in creating the process in conjunction with American colleagues from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) at the 1966 Dartmouth Conference. The author, who participated in this event, describes the values debated at this conference which underpinned reform and which were subsequently tested out and implemented in England by practitioners in schools, supported by NATE local branches. He asks the reader to consider the ways in which this process of reform differs from the ways in which processes of curriculum change are currently structured.

The Importance of Understanding and Utilizing Fair Use in Educational Contexts: A Study on Media Literacy and Copyright Confusion

This brief paper discusses the recent study conducted by Hobbs, Jaszi, & Aufderheide (Oct. 2007), The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, and its implications for educators and particularly writing teachers. This paper is also available along with other Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2007, hosted on the website of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

TYCA and the Struggle for a National Voice: 1991–1993

In the early 1990s, a small group of dedicated two-year college English faculty, led by Helon Raines, began the fight for the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), a professional organization that would give two-year college English faculty across the nation a respected identity and voice within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Exploring a Literacy Website That Works: ReadWriteThink.org

While it is easy to find lesson plans on the Internet, the quality of plans and the formats in which they are written vary considerably, and the process of sifting through the chaff in order to find the wheat can be time‐consuming and discouraging. To address these concerns the authors of this Technology in Literacy column introduce www.ReadWriteThink.org. The International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and a consortium of other organizations developed the site, which provides lessons in reading and writing, as well as many other interactive features that provide unique supports for teachers: Lessons are written and reviewed by literacy educators. Lessons are carefully screened and edited to save teachers from wasting time with poorly prepared materials. Lessons are linked to other lessons in the collection with related objectives, activities, or themes, to help teachers develop focused units of study. Lessons are offered in a level of detail that far surpasses the lesson plans provided at most other educational sites. Lessons include many online activities and resources that can be accessed easily to save teachers from spending time in looking for necessary materials. Resource links are provided in the body of the lesson, as well as in a sidebar accompanying the lesson. Links to sites offering further information and resources are kept up‐to‐date. Lessons are aligned to the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts.

Multicultural Hybridity: Transforming American Literary Scholarship and Pedagogy (review)

Grobman, Laurie. Multicultural Hybridity: Transforming American Literary Scholarship and Pedagogy. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 2007. $37.95 s.c. 207 pp.Multicultural Hybridity is readable, ambitious, methodical, helpful, and perhaps too tame. It speaks with refreshing frankness about curricular and pedagogical troubles facing the discipline of college literature with reference to multiculturalism; it connects those struggles to contemporary theory; and it offers concrete suggestions for both individual classroom instructors and departmental re-visioning of coursework. I was disappointed, though, that it does not offer a more fierce critique of the aesthetic standards of literary scholarship.Hybridity is a notion associated with post-colonial work, such as Homi Bhabha's, one of many theorists to whom Grobman cites her indebtedness. (On occasion, I found myself wishing for more limited lists of scholars and scholarship, or, conversely, deeper delving into the ways that various theories inform her own.) Used in the nineteenth century to justify colonialism, in recent reformulations, hybridity is a contested, problematic, but ultimately generative, mixing of cultures, forms, and values: ambivalent and contradictory space in which the colonizer and colonized interrelate, deconstructing-and then reconstructing-subjectivities and cultural systems (21). Grobman's book sets out to theorize multicultural texts as literary spaces, texts located in the interstices. In five tight chapters, Grobman methodically lays out the terrain of multiculturalism in English studies, explains her theory of literary hybridity, describes a hybrid aesthetics, specifies the political value of a theory of literary hybridity, and, finally, suggests a revisioning of U.S. literature as a whole.The book begins with a very readable discussion of the larger question of versus critical multiculturalism. The liberal version is the one Grobman's students (and many of my own) seem most familiar with: we are all essentially human (universality and the call to assimilate); we can all be different on the surface (food, rituals, dialect) but underneath, we are all the same (plurality with the call for equal treatment). Later in the book, Grobman highlights the ways that such a perspective leads her students to see only universal tropes in books such as The House on Mango Street or A Lesson Before Dying, such as the healing power of love. Such analyses miss the specificity of these texts: the lived realities of racism or poverty, or intra-group tensions among men and women in a particular culture, or the myths and narrative forms called upon by an author which are particular to her way of life.As Multicultural Hybridity progresses, Grobman effectively describes the pedagogical work she does to move both general education students and English majors beyond such homogenizing tendencies. These details, while not exhaustive, will be helpful reading for many faculty looking to shift their practice. But be warned: it is work. In order to get at lived and textual intersections, Grobman asks students to bring independent, sometimes primary community-based research, back to the classroom, or engages them in service-learning projects; she brings speakers to her classes or requires that students attend related campus events. Grobman provides many concrete examples of the varied textual linkages that she provides for students, too, such as among Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood and Virginia Woolf 's A Room of One's Own as well as Toni Morrison's Tar Baby and Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior.These mini-syllabi and course descriptions-where an entire course is structured around one central text, and many other literary and rhetorical texts are brought into dialogue with it-are valuable, and Grobman presents them in the hope that this model will take hold more broadly in the discipline. …

NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship

This article documents aspects of the history of support for scholarship by two professional organizations involved with teaching composition at the postsecondary level: the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Evidence is found that for the past two decades, the two organizations have substantially withdrawn their sponsorship of one kind of scholarship. That scholarship is defined as RAD: replicable, aggregable, and data supported. The history of RAD scholarship as published in NCTE and CCCC books and journals, compared to that published elsewhere, is traced from 1940 to 1999 in three areas: teaching of the research paper, gain in writing skills during a writing course, and methods of peer critique. The history of NCTE and CCCC attempts at scholarly bibliography is also traced. Implications are considered for the future of the study of college composition as an academic discipline.

?The conditions of difficulty and struggle?: A Discovered Theme of Curriculum Transformation and Women's Studies Discourse

This article describes a content analysis of journal articles from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) that sought to measure the degree of curriculum transformation in a large professional organization using Tetreault's Feminist Phase Theory scale. In the course of analysis, a theme emerged which was not addressed in Tetreault's scale, nor in the other feminist phase theory scales. This emergent researcher-labeled challenges theme provides important insights regarding the ongoing difficulty of achieving curriculum transformation and suggests the need for a more comprehensive scale to assist both researchers and practitioners.

Read, Write and Think Gender History: Making Over the Comic Landscape

Gender history, examining as it does the ways in which societies have defined femaleness and maleness, involves the study of used to define and perpetuate notions of gender. While evidence of these can be found in many parts of a culture, one especially useful area for study is that of illustration. Ear lier in this issue ofthe OAH Magazine of History, historian Kimberley Phillips discusses the importance of Mine Okubo's use of words and images to tell the story ofthe U.S. internment of Japanese Americans during World War II (see pages 20-24). Though Okubo used illustra tions out of necessity, since cameras were not allowed in the camps, many artists either knowingly or unintentionally express their social and political views in their work. As Phillips also observes, even early car toons and comic strips had encoded ethnic and racial stereotypes (page 22). Indeed, cartoons and comic strips can be a useful tool for teachers trying to reach their students while teaching about gender and the past. Much as Mary Rech Rockwell notes in her lesson plan in this issue (pages 31 40) that advertisements can be a rich source for examining the parameters of gender in a culture, so too can the lowly comic strip be a useful tool for reaching students through a form with which they are familiar. For teachers looking for help in developing this perspective in some of their classes, a resource exists that is worth checking out. In Comic Makeovers: Examining Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Media, at , Traci Gardner asks students to examine in popular cartoons and comic strips as a means of getting students to think about the ways in which are a part of our daily lives. She writes: Stereotyped images create false ideals that real people can't hope to live up to, foster low self-esteem for those who don't fit in, and restrict people's ideas of what they are capable of. In this lesson, then, she encourages students and teachers to rethink and reform their ideas about what gender, race, class, and ethnicity mean and reformulate stereotypical images. Most interesting ly, the lesson plan culminates in a Comic Makeover Project in which students choose popular characters from comic strips to makeover into more realistic representations of society. While this lesson plan focuses on the present, it can be used as a jumping off point for study ing gender in comics in several past eras. Comic Makeovers is sponsored by ReadWriteThink , a Web site developed in partnership with the International Reading Association (IRA) , the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) , and the MarcoPolo Education Foundation . The partnership was established in April 2002 to provide teachers and students with access to

"The conditions of difficulty and struggle": A Discovered Theme of Curriculum Transformation and Women's Studies Discourse

This article describes a content analysis of journal articles from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) that sought to measure the degree of curriculum transformation in a large professional organization using Tetreault's Feminist Phase Theory scale. In the course of analysis, a theme emerged which was not addressed in Tetreault's scale, nor in the other feminist phase theory scales. This emergent researcher-labeled "challenges" theme provides important insights regarding the ongoing difficulty of achieving curriculum transformation and suggests the need for a more comprehensive scale to assist both researchers and practitioners.

Managing the Complexities of a Statewide Reading Initiative

Working with the National Council of Teachers of English, South Carolina has taken the bold step of focusing professional development in reading on teachers, rather than programs. And the decision is paying off. SOUTH CAROLINA is taking a bold step in professional development for reading teachers. Instead of focusing on programs -- e.g., basal reading series or computer-based reading programs -- the state department of education, in conjunction with state universities and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), is focusing on teachers' knowledge base. The department is doing this because it wishes its efforts to be grounded in research, and what the research overwhelmingly makes clear is that it is the teacher, not the method, that makes a difference.1 The goal then is to deepen and broaden teachers' knowledge base about reading as a means of improving literacy instruction and literacy scores in South Carolina. To achieve this goal, the state created the South Carolina Reading Initiative (SCRI), a multi-year, research-based professional development model. Funded by an annual $3.2-million appropriation from the state, teachers and principals in 121 South Carolina schools work together to examine and discuss the latest research in the field of reading and the implications of this research for their instruction. While large-scale, long-term professional development efforts are more complex than the one-shot professional development offerings traditionally associated with education, Roland Barth has argued that unless adults talk with one another, observe one another, and help one another, very little will change.2 Furthermore, he has pointed out that the best way to foster these conditions is through the establishment of long-term collegial groups. The SCRI model ensures long-term collegial conversations by stipulating that teachers and administrators meet bimonthly in site-based study group sessions. In these sessions, teachers and administrators read research and critically question both the research and literacy programs. They then use their increased understandings and their knowledge about children to inform instructional and assessment decisions in their school. Literacy coaches facilitate these study groups under the guidance of university professors and state department liaisons. The coaches also work in participating teachers' classrooms, giving demonstration lessons, observing lessons, and providing feedback. Because South Carolina was the first state to implement a professional development model with the features just described, there were many complexities encountered along the way. In the first three years of this initiative, much was learned about both the difficulties and the benefits of such a large program. We understand, for example, that what made the implementation particularly complex were the diverse expectations that stakeholders held about the job description of the literacy coach and about support for coaches, study group experiences, the roles of school and district personnel, and the change process. Staff members at the state department had a vision of how these aspects would unfold within the model; these visions gave way to multiple realities as the model was implemented throughout the state. In this article, we share the vision and the realities as they have been lived in South Carolina. We then offer some insights into how we have used this information to adjust and modify subsequent versions of SCRI. Job Description of the Literacy Coach: The Vision The envisioned literacy coach was to act as a consultant, a knowledgeable person who would be available in a school to help teachers and administrators better understand how children learn to read and write. Literacy coaches would help teachers examine their current instructional and assessment practices and introduce authentic, research-based practices that could be incorporated into their literacy instruction. …

From the Secondary Section: NCTE Secondary Section Activities and Annual Report

Outlines the highlights of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 2001 Baltimore convention. Explains the Teacher of Excellence Awards, which identifies outstanding high school English language arts teachers. Comments on a selection of a new editor for the “English Journal,” and details new initiatives as well as the Portland Reading Initiative, which helps secondary English teachers provide reading instruction to dependent readers.