As if I needed another reason to love Sydney.

Not only is it one of my favorite cities in the world and where I met my wonderful husband, the Opera House is hosting GRAPHIC next month.

Comic books, illustration, animation, music, multimedia and other new ways of telling stories have not only changed the face of our popular culture, they now define it. Graphic novels and comic art are now a leading source of inspiration for films, television, clothing, designers, musicians and artists the world over. GRAPHIC celebrates this brave new world in a weekend of specially commissioned productions – with musical responses to graphic art and stories, workshops, panels, a film program, a games exhibition and an animation competition.

I’ll be in Australia then with my husband Michael and our eleven year old son, Cole. As part of GRAPHIC, we’re excited to see Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, set to a live score.  According to the Opera House website, percussionist Ben Walsh randomly discovered The Arrival in a book store. He fell in love with the story and thought about how he could create music to accompany it.  Three years later, his musical vision will come to life at the Opera House.

I’ve used The Arrival in undergraduate courses on children’s literature and young adult literature.  As a wordless picture book, it serves as a fabulous way to show pre-service teachers how to “read” images.  We begin by discussing how the size of images correlates to reading speed.  A series of small images, for instance, means that they should be read quickly.  With images that take up the full page, however, they should be read with more attention to how lines, colors, and shapes work together to shape the reader’s meaning making processes.

Shaun Tan will be doing a signing after the show, so of course I’m planning on packing my copy of The Arrival in my suitcase.  I’m trying to figure out how to attend some of the other GRAPHIC events, including talks by Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman, but I’ve already signed up for the 14K City2Surf run that weekend too.  (It goes through Kings Cross, Rushcutters Bay, Double Bay, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Dover Heights and Bondi Beach, with the 2K long Heartbreak Hill in the middle.  Doesn’t that sound like a lovely way to see the city?  Over 76,000 runners think so!  Michael, a cyclist, begs to differ).

I also teach The Graveyard Book, but Gaiman will be reading from a previously unreleased story called The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains. His read alouds are incredible, and at each stop of his nine city tour in 2008, he read a chapter aloud.  I’ve used these read alouds in class, since they’re a great way to introduce readers to Nobody Owens.  Alas, Tan and Gaiman are scheduled at the same time, and The Arrival wins out for now.  But I’ll end with the trailer for The Graveyard Book anyway.

Image Credit: Shaun Tan, The Arrival

“You’re facing ten years in prison and $200,000 in fines.”

I never imagined that I’d hear those words, let alone from an immigration official.  I was born and raised in Wisconsin, a U.S. citizen by birth.  My crime?  I married an Australian.

To the immigration official, my related crimes included not adding my new husband to my house deed or bank accounts, having a pre-nup, and not taking his last name.  (In an effort to keep Michael in the States and out of jail, I went to court to legally add Curwood to my name a year after we got married).

Taken together, the immigration official thought that we had a sham marriage, so he separated us, threatened us with prison and fines, and individually administered the immigration fraud interview.  You’ll be happy to know that I remembered how we met (in Sydney), what Michael had for dinner the night before (fish) and what side of the bed he sleeps on (right).

Luckily, we made it through the immigration process and my husband now holds a U.S. Permanent Resident card in addition to his Australia and New Zealand citizenship and right of abode in the United Kingdom.  (For more details on our experience, here is an 2006 editorial that appeared in my hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette).

I can say that this experience has given me much more insight into the immigration process and empathy for those who attempt to immigrate to a new country, whether legally or illegally, voluntarily or seeking asylum.  When I teach classes on young adult literature, I make sure to address these issues.  Here are three fabulous books that I’ve used recently in undergraduate and graduate classes at the University of Wisconsin – Madison on the topic of immigration: La Línea, Red Glass, and Home of the Brave.

Here, I’ll focus on La Línea and immigration from Mexico.  But definitely check out the other two books, too.  Laura Resau’s Red Glass is a wonderful story, narrated by an American teenager, about the immigration experiences of her friends and family from Central America and Eastern Europe.  And K.A. Applegate’s Home of the Brave, written in free verse, is the story of Kek, a refugee from Sudan who arrives in Minnesota.  Not only must Kek adapt to a new country, language, and culture, he must deal with the past (and the memories) that are rooted in war-torn Sudan.

La Línea, by Ann Jaramillo, focuses on the story of Miguel.  Six years, eleven months, and twelve days ago, his parents left him and his younger sister Elena behind in Mexico in order to seek work in California.  On the day of his fifteenth birthday, Miguel’s father sends for him.  Immediately, Miguel thinks, “I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I was eight.  Could it be true this time, finally?  For once, I didn’t care about a birthday present.  If Papá’s note was true, my real life was finally beginning.  This was day number one.”

At his father’s direction, Miguel enlists the help of a local man, Don Clemente, who arranges for a coyote to take him across the border.  But Elena doesn’t want to be left behind on their abuelita’s rancho, and she follows Miguel on his journey, derailing his plans to cross the border with a coyote.  Soon, they find themselves being questioned and detailed by Mexican immigration officials – and then running for their lives across the desert.  They don’t know who they can trust or what will happen to them.  All they know is that they need to get across la línea at any cost.

Jaramillo, a first-time author, is an English as a Second Language teacher in a middle school in Salinas, California. She says, “More than 95 percent of my students are Mexican in origin.  Their parents work in the fields or packing sheds of the Salinas Valley.  Some of my students were born in the United States; other immigrated in elementary or middle school.”  By drawing from her own experiences and that of her students – and by integrating Spanish words and phrases throughout the book – Jaramillo reinforces the cultural authenticity of La Línea .  The School Library Journal recommends this book for grades five and up, and I can see this book easily used in a middle school or freshman classroom.

In the news recently, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer asserted that most illegal immigrants entering her state are being used to transport drugs across the border.  Following on the heels of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, her remarks were quickly denounced by experts as incorrect and downright racist.  In an Associated Press article published on MSNBC, Sen. Jesus Ramon Valdes, a member of the Mexican Senate’s northern border affairs commission, countered that, “Traditionally, migrants have always been needy, humble people who in good faith go looking for a way to better the lives of their families.”  While politicians may try to depict all Mexican immigrants as drug mules and criminals, La Línea offers readers a more realistic and nuanced perspective on the immigrant experience.

Image Credit: Square Fish Books, cover of La Línea.

Five years ago, I began teaching a digital poetry unit in my 10th grade English classes, in collaboration with my school’s library media specialist, Lora Cowell.  With iPoetry, students engaged in a process of multimodal composition where they integrated still images or video with music, voiceovers, text, and transitions.

In the recent issue of the International Journal of Learning and Media, Damiana Gibbons and I worked together to analyze one student’s digital poem.  Drawing on the work of Glynda Hull, Andrew Burn, and others, Damiana explains (and shows) the process of multimodal microanalysis.  As a graduate student, I’ve come to appreciate when authors explicitly present their methodology and walk the reader through their analytical process.  (In the field of literacy education, Karen Wohlwend’s work is an excellent example!)  In this paper, we tried to do the same.

I’m really grateful that my former student, Tommy Nouansacksy, gave us permission to analyze his work and to use his real name.  Tommy is in college now and an avid consumer and producer of social media.  Intentionally or not, he’s a comedian, an activist, and a role model.  (Case in point: a recent YouTube video where Tommy’s promoting the Trevor Project).

I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who gave us critical, formative, and insightful feedback.  Their comments led to an substantial revision of the theoretical framework and prompted us to draw on more work related to race and sexuality.  I know that reviewing journal articles can be a time-consuming process, but I think that it is an invaluable one.

Tommy’s digital poem is available on the IJLM website, but it skips sometimes.  I’ll share it here too.  In this poem, Tommy is responding to the work of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes to describe his America.

I, Too, Sing America by Tommy Nouansacksy from Jen Scott Curwood on Vimeo.

In a few short days, the fall semester will begin.  I’m really excited to teach a graduate course, Curriculum and Instruction 632: Literature and Literacy.  It’s a required course for the Wisconsin K-12 reading license, and we’ll focus on how to foster adolescent literacy development and critical engagement through the use of young adult literature.

Everyone in class will read the follow YA lit:
Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown.
Collins, S. (2008). The hunger games. New York: Scholastic.
Jaramillo, A. (2008). La linea. New York: Square Fish.
McCormick, P. (2008). Sold. New York: Hyperion.
Peters, J.A. (2006). Luna. New York: Little, Brown.
Selznick, B. (2007). The invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic.
Trueman, T. (2001). Stuck in neutral. New York: Harper.
Yang, G.L. (2006). American-born Chinese. New York: First Second.

I taught many of these books this spring in C&I 431: Young Adult Literature for Schools, but I added in three new books: La Linea, Hunger Games, and Hugo Cabret.  I had a really hard time choosing between the fabulous book Red Glass by Lisa Resau and La Linea; in the end, I went with La Linea but I think that it would be fascinating to teach both to a middle or high school class.

I’ve already blogged about my love for the Hunger Games, but I’m equally enamored with The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which is where the image above is taken from). It alternates between being only-images or only-print, and it’s fascinating to think about how to teach such a text. I’ve asked Danielle Kleijwegt, a UW graduate student and artist who is creating her own graphic novel, to talk to our class about deconstructing images, teaching visual literacy, and strategies for using picture books and graphic novels in the classroom.

Throughout the semester, we’ll have a couple other guest speakers, too. Loren Glasbrenner is a teacher at a middle school in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and he will share his experiences with using literature circles. Also, Kim Stieber-White, a teacher at Evansville Middle School, will talk about her first-hand experience with book challenges and (attempted) censorship with Terry Trueman’s Stuck in Neutral. She also visited C&I 431 class this spring, and my students felt her visit was invaluable. Not only did she share key resources in justifying a book choice – including through the National Council of Teachers of English and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center – she also talked about how the challenge impacted her students and her pedagogy.

In addition to the eight books listed above, students will also participate in literature circles about the Holocaust by reading either the autobiography I Have Lived a Thousand Years or the historical fiction The Book Thief.  We’ll read part of Simone Schweber’s book Making Sense of the Holocaust, and talk about how to approach the Holocaust and other genocides though literature.  Finally, students will give a book talk on a recently published, award-winning book of their choice.

Each week’s young adult literature and required chapters or articles will either focus on a literary theme (such as immigration, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and so on) or a topic (including multiliteracies, new literacies, cultural authenticity, and more).  I really believe that undergraduate and graduate students need hands-on experience in engaging with these texts in innovative ways – and I’ve built in time to participate in literature circles, engage in small group activities, use web 2.0 tools, and much more into the class time.

I used to teach a science fiction course for high school students, and I’m always looking for great young adult science fiction.  My son Cole is now 10, and sci fi and fantasy are genres that really appeal to him too.  He’s worked his way through Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, Rick Riordan’s Lightning Thief series, the Chronicles of Narnia, and many more.

Over the winter, I read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.  It’s the first in a trilogy, and the second book, Catching Fire is due out in September.  I couldn’t put it down, and finished it in a couple days – I then handed it off to Cole and he did the same.  (We also managed to get our hands on Catching Fire before its release, but we promised not to reveal anything!)  The book is narrated by 16 year old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apopcalytic United States.  Following a series of uprisings and disasters, the Capitol seized control.  Originally, there were 13 districts, but when the thirteenth district rebelled and was obliterated, the Capitol designed the Hunger Games as punishment for the remaining 12 districts.

Each year, one boy and one girl from each district is selected for the Hunger Games, a televised event that is set in an outdoor arena.  The winner of the Hunger Games is the only one left alive at the end – it’s a fight to the death where speed and strength are as important as cunning and intelligence.  When Kat’s younger sister, Primrose, is called to be a tribute, Kat immediately volunteers in her place.  Along with the other tribute from her district, Peeta Mellark, Kat then journeys to the Capitol.  Each district is known for its produce or industry, and District 12, located in Appalachia, is known for its coal mining.  Given that background, their Capitol attendants outfit Kat and Peeta in gorgeous flaming costumes.

Soon, Kat and Peeta have caught the attention of the audience – and of the Gamemakers, who manipulate the arena to put them in harm’s way.  The plot is complicated by Peeta’s on-air confession of love for Kat, which leaves the reader (and Kat) wondering if it’s a strategic move or a desperate confession on his part.  But if the Hunger Games leaves only one winner, then either Kat or Peeta must die.  Or can these “star-crossed lovers” outsmart the Gamekeepers and defy the Capitol?  Read it and find out.

When I asked Cole what appealed to him about this book, he noted the alternate reality setting and the action.  For my part, I loved that the book featured a strong female protagonist and that it brought up issues of government control, media bias, and human rights.  But I also find it fascinating how reading a book no longer involves a simple exchange between text and reader.

For instance, he publisher, Scholastic, has created an interactive site that features message boards, videos, and games, and Lionsgate has already acquired the rights to the film.  But what I think is really interesting is how fans themselves have found ways to interact with the characters and plot lines – as well as other fans.  They’ve created unofficial fan forums with discussions, fan art, and much more.  They’ve used YouTube to create cast lists and seek others’ input.  They’ve written hundreds of stories on FanFiction.net, offered feedback on each other’s work, and extended the story in ways the author never imagined.

As an English teacher, I spent years trying to get students to interact with books in this way.  But I learned that books that are too difficult or irrelevant to students’ lives won’t work… worksheets, vocabulary drills, and multiple choice tests won’t work either.  Literacy doesn’t just involve rote memorization or the recall of minute details – it involves truly interacting with the text, the characters, and the themes.  It involves critical thinking, hands-on engagement, and collaboration.  As teachers, we need to create environments in the classroom which allow for this.  Not only does it involve adopting new texts – and The Hunger Games is a great example – it involves cultivating new literacies and designing new affinity spaces.

We hear a lot about how our kids aren’t reading anymore.  Lured by social networking sites and videogames (which we don’t count as “real” reading), educators and parents alike lament how our children and teens don’t pick up books anymore.  Last year, a New York Times article touched on this subject, noting that,

“As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount.”

I wholeheartedly agree that educators need to understand (and teach!) the kind of visually-driven, nonlinear reading that occurs in online spaces.  But I also think that book reading is far from dead: we just need to give kids and teens something good to read.

When I taught high school, many of my students had never encountered a book that they found fascinating, engrossing, or thought-provoking.  It’s not just that they encountered a language arts curriculum that drew heavily from “the classics” – it’s that the texts were taught in a decontextualized, inaccessible way that made them feel unengaged or downright discouraged.

In the class that I’m teaching this semester, my preservice teachers have come up with a number of ways to integrate young adult literature into the curriculum.  Each class, we brainstorm how to teach the novels: pairing them with classics, using documentaries to introduce them, creating space for multimodal composition, and many more.

As Santoli and Wagner (2000) argue,

“Young adult literature can be a vehicle that allows teachers to present the same literary elements found in the classics while engaging adolescent students in stimulating classroom discussions and assignments.  Unlike classic literature, it can foster a desire to read.  Because it: a) employs the literary elements of the classics, b) engages adolescent students in analyzing literature along with themselves and their principles, and c) promotes and encourages lifelong reading habits.  Young adult literature deserves a valued and respected position in secondary language arts classrooms.”

Is that to say that I don’t think that we should teach the classics?  Of course not.  But do you know how many times I had a high school senior in my science fiction elective class exclaim in surprise, “Wow, I loved that book!  That’s the first book I’ve ever read all the way through in high school!”?  Far too many.  While we read Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, we also read Feed and Ender’s Game.

It’s so important that our students be given the opportunity to discovery what kinds of genres and narrative styles that they’re drawn to – the opportunity to become thoroughly engrossed in a character, a plot line, or a setting that they can’t put the book down.  As educators, if we can’t provide books to our students that accomplish that, I think that we need to ask ourselves who our curriculum is serving and who it is alienating – and at what price.

“I am afraid of this city where the lying-down people look like the dead. And the standing-up ones, like the walking dead” (p. 88). Thirteen year old Lakshmi has only known her home, deep in the mountains of Nepal. The harsh sounds of Calcutta disorient her as she tries to make sense of her new life.

She thought that she would work as a maid in the city in order to send money back to her family. Instead, she is sold into prostitution, where she is regularly beaten, drugged, and raped. Lakshmi soon realizes that “you are safe here only if you do not show how frightened you are” (p. 116).

Patricia McCormick’s Sold, a National Book Award finalist, is written in poetic vignettes. Each scene is beautifully crafted – the stark differences between Lakshmi’s quiet life of poverty in Nepal and her forced servitude in the brothel are revealed through McCormick’s rich use of imagery and metaphors.  The language is accessible (and indeed, Hyperion recommends the book for ages 12 and up), but the content is heavy.

In the author’s notes, McCormick writes that, “Each year, nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families — intentionally or unwittingly — to a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India. Worldwide, the U.S. State Department estimates that nearly half a million children are trafficked into the sex trade each year.” While some teachers and administrators may be hesitant to include this book in the curriculum due to the focus on child prostitution, an article in Time Magazine astutely noted that, “While the book is blunt, it is never sensational.”  Instead, Lakshmi narrates her experiences in poetic (yet forceful terms): “Men come. They crush my bones with their weight. They split me open.”

So, how could this book be integrated into the language arts curriculum?  I think that it could be readily used in 8th to 12th grade classes.  While the language is accessible for 5th to 7th graders, I do think that older adolescents could engage in more in-depth discussion and research on this (and other) human rights issues.  Patricia McCormick’s website has ideas for various content teachers, including links to articles in the New York Times and websites that deal with sex trafficking – for any teacher, I think it’s essential to have that background information.  Here are two ideas that came to me as I read through the book for how to integrate this into the classroom:

First, pair Sold with the (incredible) documentary Born into Brothels, also set in the slums of Calcutta.  I think that it would be fascinating to juxtapose McCormick’s rich imagery with the real-life images captured by children.  As a final project, students could take a section of Sold and create a digital story.  Not only would they have to match text with images, they would then read Lakshmi’s words – what better way to engage in perspective taking and multimodal thinking?

Second, use Sold in conjunction with other books (like Kaffir Boy or First They Killed My Father) as a way to talk about human rights issues, including genocide, apartheid, sex trafficking, torture, and slavery.  Most of my middle and high school students could recount details of the Civil War and the Holocaust – but far fewer could identify who Pol Pot was or why we should be concerned about Sudan.  After the second World War, we said “never again” – but human rights violations are happening again and again, around the world.  After reading Sold and other books, students could work through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and then choose a human rights issue to focus on in a research paper.

In a couple days, I’ll discuss this book with my Young Adult Lit class – I’m really excited to hear about their ideas for how to teach Sold and how to integrate (contemporary yet potentially problematic) issues like sex trafficking into the language arts curriculum.

Spring semester begins in less than a week. Much to my delight, I will be teaching an undergraduate course at UW-Madison called Young Adult Literature for Schools. In creating the syllabus, I was eager to draw on books that I have taught and to explore more recently published works.

Throughout the course of the semester, we’ll be reading 20 young adult lit titles. Fifteen of those are required, and the other five are self-selected. In addition, we will read 30+ journal articles, book chapters, and essays that focus on genres, themes, teaching strategies, and literacy theories. Our class will visit the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which is a phenomenal resource on our campus, and meet several of their (also phenomenal) librarians.

We will also have several guest lectures. This includes visits from Simone Schweber, a professor of education and Jewish studies, who will talk about teaching historical fiction, nonfiction, and autobiography that focuses on the Holocaust; a local middle school teacher who will share her experience dealing the censorship of Terry Trueman’s Stuck in Neutral; and other local middle school teachers who will discuss their positive experiences with literature circles.

Looking over the titles below, I can’t wait to get started!

Required Young Adult Literature (Read all 15):

Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown.
Anderson, M.T. (2002). Feed. Cambridge: Candlewick.
Card, O.S. (2002). Ender’s game. New York: Starscape.
Chbosky, Stephen. (1999). Perks of being a wallflower. New York: MTV.
Flinn, A. (2001). Breathing underwater. New York: Harper Collins.
Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the dust. New York: Scholastic.
Hinton, S.E. (1967). The outsiders. New York: Penguin.
Martinez, V. and Scott, S. (2004). Parrot in the oven: Mi vida. New York: Rayo.
McCormick, P. (2008). Sold. New York: Hyperion.
Peters, J.A. (2006). Luna. New York: Little, Brown.
Satrapi, M. (2004). Persepolis: The story of a childhood. New York: Pantheon.
Sis, P. (2007). The wall: Growing up behind the iron curtain. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus I. New York: Pantheon.
Woodson, J. (2000). If you come softly. New York: Putnam.
Trueman, T. (2001). Stuck in neutral. New York: Harper.

Literature Circles (Choose 1):

Bitton-Jackson, L. (1999). I have lived a thousand years. New York: Simon Pulse.
Wiesel, E. (1982). Night. New York: Bantam.
Yolen, J. (2004). The devil’s arithmetic. New York: Puffin
Zusak, M. (2005). The book thief. New York: Knopf.

Optional Young Adult Literature (Choose 3):

Chambers, A. (2007). Postcards from no man’s land. New York: Red Fox.
Cormier, R. (2004). Chocolate war. New York: Knopf.
Farmer, N. (2004). The house of the scorpion. New York: Simon Pulse.
Fleischman, P. (1999). Whirligig. New York: Laurel Leaf..
Gaiman, N. and McKean, D. (2008). The graveyard book. New York: Harper Collins.
Garden, N. (2007). Annie on my mind. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Ihimaera, W. (1987). The whale rider. Auckland: Reed Publishing.
Johnson, A. (2003). First part last. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Myers, W.D. (1998). Fallen angels. New York: Scholastic.
Myers, W.D. and Myers, C. (2001). Monster. New York: Amistad.
Salinger, J.D. (2001). The catcher in the rye. New York: Bay Books.
Wakatsuki Houston, J. and Houston, J.D. (1983). Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Bantam.
Winick, J. (2000). Pedro and me. New York: Henry Holt.
Yang, G.L. (2006). American-born Chinese. New York: First Second.

Book Talk (Choose 1 from the Award Lists Below):

Michael L. Printz Award

National Book Award – Young People’s Literature

Coretta Scott King Book Award

The Alex Award

Margaret A. Edwards Award

This semester, I’m teaching a graduate class called Literacy and Language Development.  Most of my students are elementary teachers, with a few graduate students thrown into the mix.  Today, we spent the class exploring new literacies.  For the first part of class, we went into the computer lab and just took some time to search through what’s out there, from fan fiction and blogs, videogames to machinima, Twitter to Flickr, vi.sualize.us to del.icio.us, nings to wikis. (And while this has some broken links, it lists many Web 2.0 technologies).

Next, we returned to our classroom and spent some time talking about these.  For many of us in academia, Web 2.0 technologies are our world – we tweet, we blog, we link, and this is how we live.  I remember at this year’s Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English conference, William Kist from Kent State gave a keynote on new literacies.  But afterward, many questions from teachers persisted: “But what are new literacies?  If I don’t know how to use these technologies, how can I ever teach them?  And what will happen to print literacy – will that be lost?”

Even though many of my students were unfamiliar with these new technologies and new literacy practices, we were able to talk about the “new ethos” (Lankshear and Knobel) that accompanies them.  We looked critically at their elementary school’s technology practices.  In one school, teachers weren’t required to use the computer lab at all – and if they did, there were completely on their own.  In many other schools, students visited the computer lab once or twice a week and primarily used KidPix.  (My own fourth grade son is learning about online databases and Boolean logic at his school, much to my delight).

Much of the time, we position new literacies as being marked by teacher resistance or antiquated models of schooling – but maybe we need to focus on issues of access and advocacy instead.  At the Games+Learning+Society Conference, we’ll once again offer scholarships for PK-16 teachers to attend.  In talking with some other members of the program committee, I suggested that perhaps we need to include a session on advocacy.  After all, what better time to talk about it than when you have teachers, researchers, and industry experts in the same place?

Lately, it seems like the phrase “21st century skills” is ubiquitous in literacy research. At conferences, we allude to it; in papers, we theorize about it; in the classroom, we worry if our students are acquiring it. But until now, English teachers had very little to go on. That’s why I was so excited to hear that NCTE joined up with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills to create this.


Not only does it identify and describe 21st century skills, it also shows how they can be implemented and measured across K-12 language arts classes.  Personally, I’m interested in hearing how teachers react to the 21st Century Skills Map.  Is it a useful tool?  A way to justify new avenues that they want to explore?  Or just more expectations that they feel ill-equipped to meet?


And if it’s the latter, I want to know this:  What can we (as researchers, educators, and adminstrators) do to change that?