#ELATE19, Arkansas

ELATE, English Language Arts Teacher Educators, is a professional community engaged in the preparation, support, and continuing education of ELA teachers. Members meet yearly at NCTE and every two years for an intensive 3-day ELATE conference to share research and stories of effective English teacher education.

This year, ELATE is at the University of Arkansas. Below are the sessions in which I am participating, but the entire agenda can be found here. If you are a graduate student (or work with teachers), I highly recommend attending this conference. The people are smart and compassionate, and you will find colleagues with whom to collaborate on research projects and initiatives. Check out this newsletter about the different ELATE commissions to see how you can get involved (Growing Scholars Chronicle). The YA Summit with Dr. Bickmore emerged from the 2017 conferences as did several book publications. Personally, and perhaps more importantly, I made some friends who share my values to honor and serve practicing teachers across the country. Friends!– a big deal for this introvert.

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Exploring the State of the Field: Where Are We Now in Research on Young Adult Literature?

Saturday @10:30, Main 0323 (Panel): Crag Hill, Steve Bickmore, Ashley Boyd, and Sarah Donovan discuss how we are advancing in the field in terms of research, pedagogies, and publications as well as how we are responding to external criticisms and perceptions. What projects are we undertaking to provide solid support for our arguments about the benefits of young adult literature?

• What are the research goals for young adult literature scholars– uncover, advocate, promote?
  • Is YA classroom-worthy, equal to or a complement to the canon? What “counts,” as valuable in our testing culture with AP, college and career readiness, or what is literary “culture” (merit)?
  • Is our mission to promote life-long readers within and beyond the classroom (choice, voice, habit, in place of tech, alongside tech, storytelling format)? YA is youth-oriented, so are we saving or reviving their reading lives in middle and secondary spaces?
  • Are we interested in what can do for human beings, humanity — bearing witness, documenting humanity, uncovering humanity?
  • Who do we serve? Authors and publishing? Are we serving authors, shaping the publishing industry, complicit or resistant in the consumerism? Libraries — are we serving libraries, communities? Readers? Universities? Ourselves?
• Chapters, columns, blogs, and articles. Are they making it into the hands of practicing teachers? Are they supporting curriculum shifts we’d (English Ed) like to see? What curriculum shifts do we want to see, should we see, why? 
• YA Courses: What are our plans to support pre-service teachers? Are there in-service teacher courses available online or in the summer to support teachers in reading new releases? Do our YA courses to teacher practice? In what way? Is one YA novel a year, 4 in high school the goal?
• Conferences and Initiatives: What is the role of The ALAN Workshop, the YA Summit, and YA Blogs in the young adult literature landscape?

Anger, Advocacy, Gun Violence, and English Educators

Saturday @2:15, Main 0523 (Roundtable): Steve Bickmore, Jason Griffith, Alice Hays, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, Shelly Shaffer, Melanie Shoffner, and Sarah Donovan consider ways ELA teachers advocate for students in the face of school gun violence. Using young adult literature and writing activities, presenters acknowledge that by addressing issues surrounding school violence in our classrooms, “We open doors for critical thought and active citizenship. We cultivate thinkers and democratic participants; we bring to light what can and should be done to effect change and to make a difference” (Boyd, 2018). Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom

In this roundtable, I talk a bit about my chapter in Contending with Gun Violence. The focus of this chapter is how Jason Reynold’s contemporary novel in verse A Long Way Down is in conversation with many stories traditionally found in junior high classrooms like The Outsiders and even A Christmas Carol. All explore grief, community, and regret. Still, for a novel to become an accepted, core text in a school district, it must pass curriculum gatekeepers. Teachers are the ones who are going to create a new canon, one that is dynamic and responsive.

Developing a rationale for adding new novels to the curriculum begins with its position in relation to other texts. The gun in A Long Way Down and The Outsiders is a plot device, an object characters hold, a mechanism for action when characters feel powerless, when they have no way of processing their grief and outrage. The ghosts in A Christmas Carol and A Long Way Down are also a plot device, a mechanism for nudging characters toward change when, in their world, they feel alone. There are no literary ghosts in The Outsiders, but the specter of absent parents haunts many characters.

While I was not able to get A Long Way Down adopted in my school, I was able to share this book with individual students who came to love Jason Reynold’s work and.or verse novels. I am a big advocate of choice reading to allow students to encounter texts as they need to without the teacher telling them what it is about, what they should pay attention to, what it ought to mean for them. Listen and see for yourself how one student makes sense of A Long Way Down. With just a little guidance in this “vlog instruction sheet,” this reader welcomes us into her reading experience. Notice how she makes meaning as she discusses. Notice how she is pointing out form, text structure, characters, plot devices, themes, and, perhaps most importantly, her experience of the book and its contents. For her, the book is not about “guns” but about grief. For her, the book is not traumatizing but about making visible the impact of trauma. For her the characters are not “others” but family there to advise. She knows that Will, the main character, still has to make a decision for himself. And, in the video, all along, she is aware of us, fellow readers, with whom she is generously sharing her reading experience.

Writing and Publishing Tips for Graduate Students

Sunday @10:15, Main 0329 (Panel): Jason Griffith, Tara Star Johnson, Melanie Shoffner, and Sarah Donovan share writing and publishing tips for graduate students.

I began Ethical ELA in June 2015 as a way of synthesizing what I learning in my doctoral program with what I was doing as a classroom teacher. The tension between theory and what I knew about the education system in practice created a dissonance that logic and research could not resolve. Writing blog posts was a way for me to find my real writing voice– away from the pressure of conforming to a genre or style for publication. The blogging helped me see how my dissertation about a specific topic, genocide literature, could be a bridge to other English language arts topics: the ethics of teaching English language arts. What was “right” and what I “ought” to be doing as a teacher was what essentially drove me to write about genocide literature and education to begin with.

The blog post, as an evolving genre, also helps me to be conscious of the situations within which I write. I did not start a blog to avoid ever writing a journal, but some posts have over 5000 readers within days, so blogging can have a great impact on teachers and teacher-educators. Also, blog posts are free and immediately accessible, inviting live conversations. Thus, when I write for journals, chapters, or books, I am much more conscious of how my process and craft shift depending on the situation and thus genre. Of course, I feel most comfortable blogging, but I have learned a great deal in collaborating on columns, journals, chapters, and books with editors and copy editors. We do not write in a vacuum, and I am shaped as a writer with every project.

A Few Tips for Writing and Publishing

Blogging: Spent some time deciding on a name, logo, and general aesthetic for your blog that will stand the test of time. Consider if you’d rather be found by name or idea. I chose Ethical ELA because I imagined having contributors but also as a way of anchoring my work. I was able to add pages for my C.V. when I went on the market, but I also add pages for conference presentations to keep all my work in one place. Engaging regularly with other bloggers is perhaps as important posting regular, relevant content. Read other blogs, comment, and encourage conversation across bloggers as a way of keeping the content dynamic.

Chapters: In 2018, I wrote a novel and six chapters for edited books. I do not recommend this, but there was a wonderful demand for YA literature chapters that year. I heard of the calls from ELATE-related Facebook pages and colleagues whom I met at ELATE the summer prior. Publishing, however, was not as rewarding as the introductions to amazing people in the field, collaborating with the editors and copy editors (some became my job search references).

Journals: I have only just begun looking at calls for manuscripts from journals. I highly recommend you become a reviewer so that you can understand the blind review process for different journals firsthand. Your tone and care for the writers is essential, and the editors of the journals recognize your prompt review and thoughtful work in this role. This is part of establishing your professional identity. Also, read the journals and do genre studies of various journal articles within the volumes that are accepted. Note the ones that align to your research interests and writing style; there is much diversity in how journal contributors craft their manuscripts, so there has to be space for your voice and craft (at least I am hoping so as I begin to submit). And, I am also looking for gaps in the published research as I establish my research agenda. Finally, is there a colleague you admire or want to work with? Why not reach out and suggest a collaboration?

Other Blogs: Another great way to build professional relationships, meet teachers, be a part of the conversation, and develop your writing identity is to offer to write guest blog posts on colleagues’ blogs; these are not typically peer-reviewed (except Writers Who Care, see below), but you will develop a range of writing and can feel what it is like to write for different audiences; also, these pieces can be revised and/or expanded into journal articles, chapters, even books. Again, the audience for some blogs is actually much greater than some journals, so this is about impact.

Creative Writing: Participate in writing challenges like my 5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge and Slice of Life writing challenge to stay connected with practicing teachers.

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