Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom

Name: Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom
Author: Linda Christensen

by Linda Christensen

A teacher's toolkit for stories that talk back.

For you if

you want school to teach kids to question the story, not recite it.

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Christensen taught high school English in Portland for decades, and this is her classroom notebook: how to teach writing, reading and discussion so students see how stories about race, class and gender are made. She shows lessons that start with kids' own lives and push out to history, and student work that proves why it works. It is practical, specific and warm, and it treats a class as a place to ask who tells the story.

Where This Book Lives

Themes: community curiosity education race and identity

Pass with note. Rooted in a US high-school classroom, and openly political in aim, so it will not suit everyone; some lessons need adapting for other ages or settings. Published by Rethinking Schools, an educator-run nonprofit press. Christensen has no documented concerns. DoCR tie: the container-first, story-first approach. Close relatives: Teaching to Transgress, Other People's Children (suggested 10-23), Lives on the Boundary (suggested 10-22) and Teaching for Black Lives (suggested 11-02).

Same pattern, different era

Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.

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