In one of my roles as the co-editor of the New Voices column for English Journal, I regularly have space in a print publication to discuss how particular issues or topics in language arts instruction at the secondary level affect or are affected by early career teachers. There are several upcoming calls that would be appropriate for writers from this community to address, so I thought I’d better pass along the calls here. If these interest you, and you’d like to submit a manuscript, or ask any questions whatsoever, please do. Take a look. It’s my job to help you get published, not to keep it from happening. In addition, you don’t need to be an early career teacher in order to write with me — you just need to be relevant to early career teachers.
You can find more upcoming calls, or more information about requirements, at EJ’s website. If you’re interested, I’d need to hear from you by the postmark deadline on these calls. But I’ve got some additional time flexibility, so if you’re interested but need a little extra time, I can make that work, too.:
Postmark Deadline: January 15, 2007
Publication Date: September 2007
As
our vision of what counts as texts enlarges, educators are increasingly
interested in not only meanings but also representations. We find a
variety of ways of labeling our interests in this broader area of
meaning-making—multimodal literacy, media literacy, new literacies,
multiliteracies—each with slightly different meanings and uses. For
this issue, we are not interested in pinning down a particular
definition or set of assumptions and approaches. Instead, we are
interested in knowing what you do to help students recognize new
textual media, understand how texts are created, and think critically
about how representation influences meaning and value. We invite you to
consider the following questions or create your own. In all cases, we
are interested in the research and/or theory that support your practice.
In
what ways have you expanded the texts you include in class? What roles
do graphic novels, video and film, blogs, sound files, visual art
(graphic design), or other texts play in instruction? How do you help
students understand why certain texts have been valued and others
dismissed? In what ways do you engender understanding of media
production and consumerism? What multimodal representations do you
encourage students to use and critique? What projects or demonstrations
do you use to create and assess students’ multiple literacies? How do
you employ and/or critique digital technologies? How do you address
ethics?Postmark Deadline: March 15, 2007
Publication Date: November 2007
To transform
is to change substance and form, or to re-create by reconceiving,
resituating, reimagining. Because teachers are always in the midst of
change, we know that not all change is transformative. True
transformation results in changed perspectives and practices, even new
paradigms. For this issue, we invite you to write about transformations
in teaching English language arts in the past, present, and future,
with an emphasis on how and why such transformations are significant in
the twenty-first century. We also seek manuscripts that show how you
help students use the English language arts to transform their world.
How
has the profession been transformed by historical moments, such as the
formation of NCTE in 1911, the Dartmouth Seminar in 1966, or the
English Coalition Conference in 1987, and what is the current
significance of such a historical event? How have the provisions and
implications of NCLB affected English language arts curriculum and
instruction? In what ways have those changes been transformative, or
how could they be? In an era of high-stakes testing, how are we
teaching beyond tests to help adolescents deal with the challenges of
being teenagers in difficult times or learn lessons that will help them
live productive lives after graduation? What are English language arts
teachers doing to address achievement gaps experienced because of
differences in gender, race, class, and language? How is teaching for
social change or justice a transformative approach? How have you used
technology to transform your teaching and students’ learning? What
transformations are essential, and how can we make them?
