Equity & Access

Working Toward Equity

Authors: Linda Friedrich, Carol Tateishi, Tom Malarkey, Elizabeth Radin Simons, and Marty Williams Summary: What is equity? What does it mean to work for equity in schools? What does it mean to make equity central to our work as teachers and researchers? With a focus on inquiry, Working Toward Equity...

Opening the Classroom Door: Inviting Parents and Preparing to Work Together in Classrooms

Author: Lynne Yermanock Strieb Summary: In this chapter from her book, Inviting Families into the Classroom: Learning from a Life in Teaching, Streib draws on an extensive archive of documents (e.g., letters from parents, class newsletters, and detailed accounts of student-family interactions) accrued over a 30-year teaching career as a...

Con Respeto, I am Not Richard Rodriguez

Author: Norma Mota-Altman Summary: Bilingual teacher Norma Mota–Altman recounts her experience as a Spanish–speaking child in school and explains why “English only” policies exact too high a price from English learners and their families. In telling her story, she brings a human face to critical terms such as “funds of...

Our Grandparents’ Civil Rights Era: Family Letters Bring History to Life

Author: Willow McCormick Summary: What happens when teachers asks elementary students to conduct research about relatively recent history? In this article, a writing project teacher offers a wonderful model for integrating authentic writing and social studies instruction. By exchanging letters with grandparents, her students build a deeper, personal connection to...

Courageous Conversations: Meeting the Needs of Racially and Linguistically Diverse Students

Author: South Coast Writing Project Summary: Although conversations about race and diversity are not easy, they can allow teacher leaders to examine and interrogate their beliefs and practices to determine the direction of their teaching and of their writing project sites. This article describes how the South Coast Writing Project...

Mike Rose on Integrating Science and Language Arts in First Grade Using a Culturally Relevant Lens

Author: Mike Rose Summary: Rose offers an in-depth portrait of a Writing Project teacher integrating the study of science and language arts in her first-grade Baltimore classroom, all while advancing and honoring the cultural knowledge and understanding of her thirty African American students. This chapter, “Baltimore, Maryland” from Rose’s Possible...

Place-Conscious Education with the Nebraska Writing Project: A NWP Radio Series

Summary: Since the mid-1990s, the Nebraska Writing Project has been investigating place-conscious education and designing curricula and partnerships with place-conscious goals in mind. This seven-part audio series, created in 2020 out of their work with the National Parks Service partnership, provides an introduction to place-conscious education and delves into several...

Green(ing) English: Voices Howling in the Wilderness?

Author: Heather Bruce Summary: Noting that “in literature and language arts classes at the secondary level, where we do not hesitate to study the impact of ethical mores in human lives, where we do not hesitate to teach respect for life, we have fairly well ignored our impact on the...

The Family Writing Project: No More Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Author: Arthur Kelly Summary: Describing the family writing project that he developed and led, Arthur Kelly explains that such programs offer families the rare opportunity to come together and create a community of writers: “As in National Writing Project summer institutes, participants in family writing projects discuss ideas and issues...

Teaching Reading: A Semester of Inquiry

Author: Antero Garcia Summary: Acknowledging that, in these early years of the digital age, “literacies are changing . . . a lot,” Antero Garcia notes that this “is a resource of a specific moment.” Student projects, blog posts, discussions, and more from Garcia’s course “Teaching Reading,” in which he and...