Pure Manaʻo

  Source: Garcia, A. & Dutro, E. (2018). Electing to heal: Trauma, healing, and politics in the classrooms. English Education, 50 (4), 375-383.  What is Sacred: As teacher educators, we have to find a way to navigate in the dark spaces of fear and pain that crease the fabric of our work, noting the intersections between our disciplinary commitments, theoretical traditions, and democracy. What does it mean to do teacher education and study literacy in a democratic society in which the lives of many are continually disenfranchised? We need to locate the political in our work, and l ocate ourselves within it . We need to find places to highlight how classrooms are spaces of inclusion and oppression, are spaces that value and actively resist diverse identities, histories, and knowledges. This is a moment that can and must be harnessed for change, for coalition building, for electing to heal  (p. 382). Connection to current/future work: More training on "trauma-informed pedagogy&q

  Source:  Worlds, M. & Miller, H. (2019). Miles Morales: Spider-Man  and reimagining the canon for racial justice. English Journal, 108 (4), 43-50.  Gist: The authors argue that racial hierarchies and oppression in the English classroom will continue as long as teachers continue to hold the literary canon as the standard for what must be taught. They conclude that "reimagining the canon with books like Miles Morales: Spider-Man can begin to splinter the racial hierarchy that reigns over English curricula.  What is sacred: When left unchallenged, the canon is a weapon of the colonial project, which perpetuates Eurocentrism and violence against people of color (Durand and Jimenez-Garcia) English language arts classrooms must be sites to name, challenge, and ultimately dismantle oppressive systems.   Connection to current/future work: The EDSE 428, which is my secondary English/language arts methods course, was able to have conversations around  this article as a way to talk the