Critical Studyin' for Critical Encounters: Preparing Reading Teachers for Growth Through Crisis

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Identity Exploration Through Critical Moments of Pedagogical Interaction in the Content Area

Abstract

This presentation shares findings from preservice teachers about the ways in which they worked through moments of crisis during and after interacting with and teaching African American and Latino elementary readers in an afterschool program. Participants took a semester-long elementary literacy methods course influenced by the Black Studies intellectual tradition of Critical Studyin’. The findings suggest that preservice teachers can wrestle with the complexities of effective literacy teaching for African American and Latino readers in ways that lay the foundation for teaching in culturally relevant ways. This is important because it can continue the momentum among literacy teacher educators to teach in critical, culture-centered ways, as well as the liberatory dreams of literacy embedded in communities of color.

Author

• Melanie M. Acosta, The University of Alabama