Insert Student Here: Why Content Area Constructions of Literacy Matter for Pre-service Teachers

This article explores content area pre-service teacher beliefs about disciplinary knowledge, perceptions of effective content area teaching, and existing beliefs about how to integrate literacy into the content areas. Ten pre-service teachers across ten secondary content areas were asked to describe three important variables in secondary teaching: 1) the knowledge of their content area, 2) characteristics of a successful content area teacher, and 3) literacy activities that would optimally convey disciplinary knowledge to students. Content area responses to the first two prompts yielded comparatively static, teacher-centered notions of knowledge and teaching. However, responses to the third prompt indicated at least partial resistance to transmission-style teaching and more student-centered pedagogies. The author asserts that content area literacy courses can be a contact zone in which pre-service teachers consider and reconsider how disciplinary epistemology maps onto effective content area literacy instruction

Collaborations with Tribal Elders for Sustainability Education

Environmental sustainability studies are enhanced through local and regional partnerships between academicians and curriculum developers with members of area First Nation communities who have lived sustainably since time immemorial. Recent collaborative efforts between Seattle Pacific University’s School of Education and Snake River-Palouse tribal elder Carrie Jim Schuster have led to the development of a one semester, secondary level integrated history, geography, literature, and science curriculum investigating the indigenous peoples and environment of the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia-Snake River system. Seven core principles of cultural and environmental sustainability are discussed that were formulated through this collaboration involving Northwest tribal elders

Censored Young Adult Sports Novels: Entry Points for Understanding Issues of Identities and Equity

In early 2018, first-year high school student Ny’Shira Lundy challenged the banning of Angie Thomas’s (2017) young adult novel The Hate U Give, which for reasons of vulgarity, was temporarily removed from shelves in Katy, Texas. In February 2018, the more public and privileged National Basketball Association (NBA) players, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, were also challenged, this time by political talk show host Laura Ingraham, who reacted to the players’ unfavorable public comments about the President of the United States. “Must they run their mouths like that?” Ingraham (ingrahamangle, 2018) asked. “Unfortunately, a lot of kids—and some adults—take these ignorant comments seriously. And it’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid a hundred million dollars a year to bounce a ball” (Bonesteel & Bieler, 2018). On social media, the hashtag #ShutUpAndDribble exploded

Valuing Native American tribal elders and stories for sustainability study

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Middle School Journal on January, 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00940771.2016.1102601 This article outlines a framework the authors have used to infuse sustainability study into humanities teaching at the middle school level. Native American tribal elders can act as co-teachers in such classrooms, and the place-based stories that shaped their views of the environment can serve as important classroom texts to investigate sustainable philosophies. Middle school students can learn to read with a sustainable lens and learn to use the narrative wisdom of tribal elders to read across texts for sustainability themes and messages. Respect for Native American culture flourishes in such an environment. Examples of Native American storied resources for sustainability are offered in this article