Wichita State University: Electronic Journals Hosted by University Libraries
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Ragged Schools: Educational Opportunities for Destitute Children in 19th century England
Get PDFBeginning in the 1750s the industrial revolution changed the way in which many citizens lived in Britain. Before the Revolution, eighty percent of citizens lived in rural areas. However, due to agricultural advancements which allowed more food to be grown by less people this changed. As fewer people were needed on the farms, many migrated from their rural homes to the developing urban areas to look for jobs in factories and mines. The cities where these factories were located were rapidly built and little planning went into their design. This new urban working class lived in overpopulated, unsanitary parts of the cities and were also not guaranteed work once they moved to the city. Industrialization had its ups and downs and, therefore, so did the job market. Workers were constantly dealing with fluctuating employment. For those who could not find any work, they often resorted to begging, lying, and stealing as an alternative. Sadly, this was not a cross bared solely by the adults of the working class; many children also learned this way of life as well
Teaching MacGyver to Write
Get PDFWhen I started my career, I was positive I would be flawless and effective. English was really one of the only things I loved and was good at, so my students would easily pick it up as I taught.Sounds pretty on paper, doesn\u27t it
Jazz, Drama, and a Librarian: Advocating Against Book Censorship in Public Schools
Get PDFEach year, books are challenged and/or banned from public school libraries across the country and most recently there has been an increased number of books with diverse characters banned from public schools. Removing books from public schools restricts students\u27 abilities to read and reflect upon these texts. Students have a right to access books depicting characters and events that they can relate to and characters and events that they can learn from. These books can become "mirrors" to the reader or "windows" to the world around the reader. Administrators, teachers, librarians, students, parents, and community members should advocate for access to books of all types for all students
Implementing Vocabutoons in the English Language Arts Classroom: Drawing Their Way to Success
Get PDFAlthough vocabulary acquisition remains a critical to literacy development, teachers infrequently devote classroom time to vocabulary exercises. In this article, the author demonstrates the use of "vocabutoons" as an instructional activity which draws upon students\u27 multiple literacies,in particular, visual literacy,in order to foster vocabulary development. Tooning is based upon the belief that "[p]roficient readers visualize what they read as they construct meaning from a text" (Onofrey & Leikam 682). Representative artwork created by English Education majors enrolled in a young adult literature course at a university in the Midwest will be featured to highlight the tooning process
Un-Banning the Huckleberry
Get PDFOver the course of history, various groups have challenged, banned, and burned texts out of fear and the desire to control the thoughts and beliefs of a populace. Dictatorial regimes such as Hitler\u27s Nazi-controlled Germany used "bonfires [to] \u27cleanse\u27 the German spirit of the \u27un-German\u27 influence of communist, pacifist, and, above all, Jewish thought" (Merveldt 524). Modern religious fundamentalism seeks to control a populace either through fear and indoctrination like the ultra-conservative, nearly-literal witch hunt of J.K. Rowling\u27s Harry Potter series when religious leaders of various Protestant denominations feared that the hit young adult book series would teach impressionable minds actual witchcraft. One of the most famous and still frequently taught banned books is Mark Twain\u27s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this paper the argument is made for the teaching of banned books by a case-analysis of Twain\u27s text that considers the historical context, positive and negative aspects of the text, the harm of censorship, the value of free speech, and how frequently-challenged texts promote critical thinking for students
Butts in Bleachers
Get PDFNote: This spoken word poem was written and presented by Brooke Johnson at the October 2015 KATE Storytelling Conference
Supporting Students and Their Emerging Sense of Self (with poetry by Phan)
No full textAs a newly minted teacher, I have begun to look back with fresh appreciation for my year of student teaching and the many people who helped shape and inform my ideas about education. Among those who left their impression on me is one student, Phan, who expanded my vision for the English classroom as a safe place to express and reflect. From this student I learned that a teacher can support by listening without judgment even when she or he does not fully understand
Mark Twain, the Dialogic Imagination, and the American Classroom
Get PDFMark Twain is often read as a provincial realist or naturalist whose works are disseminated in simplified versions as children\u27s stories or seen as humorous social criticism of the southern United States and its dialects. This article focuses on two of Twain\u27s novels,A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u27s Court (1889) and No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger (published posthumously with various titles),in order to focus on the more modern, less provincial, novelistic aspects of Twain\u27s writing. The theories of Mikhail Bakhtin provide the background for a characterization of the novelistic nature of these works in an effort to re-focus Twain criticism away from realist or naturalist analysis and toward semiotic and structural considerations. This essay functions as an introductory-level presentation of Bakhtinian analysis and Twain criticism, as well as a reimagining of the role of Twain\u27s writings in the classroom, especially in light of recent controversies surrounding the language used in works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Of paramount importance to this argument are the temporal, spatial, formal and thematic coordinates of the two books, and the assertion that they conform to Bakhtin\u27s conception of the novel and how it radically differs from other forms