Will Summers has been farming since 2007 when he interned for a small community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm in Austin, Texas. His agricultural experience since then has primarily been with nonprofit organizations where he has cultivated vegetables, kept chickens, milked goats, and introduced young people to the wonders of farming and…

This "Conversation Currents" features JoBeth Allen and Valerie Kinloch discussing their thoughts and experiences working with families and communities. Allen bases her comments on the belief that programs have to be adaptable to many different constituencies and demographics, and so must be recreated every year with every teacher and…

This column features two prominent literacy scholars, Catherine Compton-Lilly and Eve Gregory. They discuss their recent research studies in various contexts and describe the reciprocal relationships between school, home, and community literacy practices.

Two literacy leaders acknowledge the challenges of teaching LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues in the classroom. While children come from a variety of family structures, it is necessary to acknowledge that a gay individual was once a child sitting in a classroom. An argument against marginalization and an advocacy for inclusion of…

This Conversation Currents features Chef Kevin Gillespie, owner of Atlanta restaurant Gunshow, contestant on Bravo's "Top Chef Las Vegas" in 2009, and food activist for various organizations. He shares his journey to becoming a chef, ways to integrate healthy foods in schools, and the role of literacy in nutrition.

Millions of children participate in both Qur'anic schooling and public schooling. For the majority, this double schooling entails learning (in) two different non-native languages. Seeking to understand the double-schooling experiences of Muslim children for whom the language of literacy in both of their schools is not their native language, Moore…

A year after the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, Lehman and Logan have a virtual conversation with Jocelyne Trouillot, author and publisher of Haitian Creole children's books, founder of the Haiti section of the International Board on Books for Young People, and head of the Universite Caraibe in Port-au-Prince. They discuss the…

In this article, Boldt considers decisions teachers must make about the value of children's writing as a form of play in primary classrooms. She offers a brief history of the framing of this question at 1966 Dartmouth Conference on English, focusing particularly on the perspective of Jimmy Britton. She highlights the relationship between Britton's…

In an increasingly globalized world, in which demographics suggest that the U. S. population is becoming increasingly diverse, educational institutions are focusing almost exclusively on "learning outcomes" and generally ignoring "learning incomes"--i.e., what students bring with them when they come to school. To mitigate this trend, the author…

Language arts educators who teach Latino English language learners know that part of their job is to help students learn to distinguish between the vernacular varieties of Spanish (or Mandarin, or Portuguese, or Swahili), English they use at home, and the school varieties of language expected in the classroom and in other professional and…

The outgoing editorial team of Language Arts reflect on their insights about writing a manuscript for submission to a journal. They focus on patterns in the suggestions of reviewers and in their editorial letters over a five year period of time. They then discuss the range of decisions to consider related to planning and writing a draft,…

A teacher recounts her experiences especially those related to the pressure caused by the need to adhere to the standards and tests as set by the various programs that affect their teaching and welfare of their students. It is important to evaluate the current conditions of the educators and take action to improve the situation.

The parameters set by official stories tend to be more oriented towards a social or political agenda and the children and their families can oppose these parameters in order to implement the alternative discourses based on their own experiences. Currently, it is seen that with regards to the official stories and the alternative discourses, change…

Kindergarten teachers could help educators and researchers by creating opportunities and experiences in classroom settings to offer literacy learning. Children, however, learn literacy when immersed in classroom environments that support natural literacy experiences throughout the day.

Critical lessons that share a transactional view of early literacy development are synthesized. A transactional view of reading and writing means that literacy as a meaning construction process, and that within a given literacy event, both the text and the reader are changed.