Pedagogical Challenges and Critical Approaches to Teaching Language Arts in Urban Classrooms

• In Event: 15.026 - Division K Poster Session A

Abstract

The 65th anniversary of Brown is ushered in by a highly-segregated school system. Among the challenges facing English Language Arts educators is the struggle to locate and implement curricula that is culturally-affirming. This challenge is bracketed by diminishing ethnoracial diversity in the teacher workforce. Culturally-informed ELA pedagogy can enrich the academic and cultural literacies of Black students and improve the practice of ELA educators. In this paper, the author shares findings from an ELA project with three groups of Black middle school students. Students were exposed to an arts-based, culturally-inclusive curriculum that introduced them to culturally and historically significant literature and arts traditions and situated arts as a counter-narrative to build cultural, aesthetic, and emergent literacies.

Author

• Lasana Kazembe, Indiana University - IUPUI