•  
  •  
 

Author Biographies

Dr. Amy Carpenter Ford is a professor of English Education at Central Michigan University. Dr. Ford’s teaching and research agenda focuses on preparing teachers to provide equitable, inclusive, and engaging learning experiences in English Language Arts for K-12 students. A former English teacher at a multitethnic urban high school, Amy loves working with aspiring and practicing teachers as well as children and youth in schools.

Maria Kioussis is a graduate student at Central Michigan University's Master of Arts in English Composition and Communication. Committed to promoting equity and social justice in schools, she strives to implement culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies in her classroom at the multiethnic high school where she teaches 9th and 10th grade inclusion classes and works closely with youth in after-school and extracurricular programs.

Abstract

In this article we describe how an English teacher at a multiethnic, suburban high school adapted the National Writing Project’s innovative argument writing program, the College, Career, and Community Writing Program, to be culturally relevant and sustaining for students in her 10th grade English Language Arts classroom. Building on the C3WP’s roots in critical pedagogy and emphasis on engaging multiple perspectives, we explore the program’s potential in multiethnic classrooms as part of a culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy. Specifically, we recount how the teacher employed tools from three mini-units (“Coming to Terms with Evidence,” ”Coming to Terms with Opposing Viewpoints,” and “Making Moves with Evidence”) and generated two text sets: a teacher-selected set of non-fiction texts and a student-curated multimedia text set comprised of argument in their everyday lives. By analyzing this C3WP implementation through the lenses of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, we illuminate considerations for facilitating dialogue across multiple perspectives, creating text sets for students in multiethnic classrooms, and sustaining the heritage and youth language and literacy practices of communities of color that promote a more equitable, inclusive, and socially just democracy that values diversity.

Publication Date

4-2019

Download

Share

COinS