I have an announcement to make

 

Dear Sarah, 

I’m writing with the good news that your contract for Genocide Literature in Middle and Secondary Classrooms: Rhetoric, Witnessing, and Social Action in a Time of Standards and Accountability has been fully countersigned.

Indeed, friends, I have a signed contract to publish my book with Taylor & Francis, which should (fingers crossed) be available next fall.

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I am new to the whole book publishing process and imagine some of you might be curious how I managed to get this lovely contract, so here is an overview of the process:

Briefly, the first step is to select a publisher who has indeed published books like the one you have written or plan on writing. Next, you write a proposal following their guidelines and send it in along with sample chapters. If the concept and writing have promise, the editor will send your proposal to reviewers who will read your proposal and sample chapters and write a review that includes praise (one hopes), critique, suggestions, and then, ultimately, a recommendation as to whether or not the book should be published. At that point, you respond to the reviewers’ comments; then, all your materials (proposal, reviews, and your response) go to the board.

In my case, the board suggested the title above, as did a reviewer. I think “genocide,” “witnessing,” “standards,” and “accountability” all side by side capture the content and the tension my book explores. Essentially,  I ask: how can teachers of English Language Arts — emphasizing language and art — do the very complex nuanced work we do in this era of education so focused on standards and accountability?

I present genocide literature as one example –one profoundly nuanced and complex example — of literature that cannot be read for a “right” answer that meets or does not meet standards.  Comprehension of Loung Ung’s memoir as a child solder in Cambodia, First They Killed My Father, cannot be quantified on some multiple choice test. And to ask students to read Ben Mikaelsen’s Tree Girl, a fictional account of the Guatemalan genocide, because of its lexile minimizes Mikaelsen’s experience of bearing witness to a survivor’s story and rendering it in this account, a process worth inquiry and also demanding careful reading and discussion that defies measurement.  Genocide is an extreme example of what happens when the state excludes humanity in the name of progress.

This book is my personal inquiry. I tell the story of my experience as a middle school teacher who began her career during the NCLB era concerned with making AYP and achieving quantifiable outcomes. I have witnessed the implications of measurement based, data-driven policies on students who have, for their entire education, been “targeted.”  And, as we are entering this revision of NCLB with Common Core and PARCC, I make a case for rethinking how we “do” English Language Arts.

Included are stories from my own classroom and travels. I invite English teachers to take up this ethical endeavor as they respond to and make choices in this new era of education reform.

At NCTE in Minnesota, I will be chairing a session related to this book: Reading as Activism: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Genocide in YA Lit. My colleagues — Stefanie Rittner, Sabrina Anfossi-Kareem, Amy Estanislao, and Mike Krzysztofiak — and I will be holding round table discussions about how we  read about trauma and genocide with our middle and high school students. If you are at NCTE this year, we hope you join us on Saturday, November 21st from 11:00 to 12:15pm.