English Teachers Chat

Since January, students and I explored Reynold’s and Kendi’s remixed version of Stamped . If you told me in January that it would take two months to complete Stamped , I wouldn’t believe you. Of course, there were snow days and February break that impeded our time with the text, but even accounting for that, Stamped remained an exploration, one that exceeded my expectations each step of the way. As you make your way through the text, you might consider the following: Taking Your Time: Unlike other books like The Glass Menagerie or The House on Mango Street , Stamped required students to unpack their emotions and learn about the many diverse people in the text. I started to look at the Afterword of Stamped as my benchmark. At the end of the text when Reynolds addresses the readers about Angela Davis, James Baldwin and W.E.B DuBois, what will my students think at that moment? I didn’t want students simply to see a list of names. I want those names to mean something. The end result? Lots...

I'm two weeks into teaching Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds, and I won't lie, it's some of the most invigorating work of my career. Now for some transparency before we move on: I do teach at an affluent school district with a largely white population, and I have exactly zero students who are Black. That said, I still have quite a few BIPOC students. It's for this, and so many other reasons, my 9th grade team decided to utilized Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You , and it's nothing short of some of the most important work of my career. I'll start with the biggest challenge: slowing it down. Whole class texts are not my strong suit. In a given year, I might have 4 or 5 whole class texts, 4 or 5 book club units and countless amount of independent books. And when I get into whole class texts, I try not to labor them. The days of 5 or 6 weeks in a book seems antiquated. And yet (YET!), Stamped deserves our time. We need to take it slow to unpack oursel...

When I say Anti-Racist books, what do you think? Does you mind go to Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be An Antiracist  or Tiffany Jewell's This Book is Anti-Racist . Great! What else? Anti-Racist texts are topping the charts of every best seller list. Take a look at the New York Times  Combined Print & E-Book Non-Fiction chart for the week of 6/22/20. This is a wonderful first step. Anti-racist texts occupy nine out of the 10 best selling books. But as educators (or even people just reading this random blog post from an ELA teacher in Chappaqua), is that enough?  Short answer: No.  Taking a look at the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction chart for the same week, and you'll see the problem. Anti-racist fiction is largely ignored. This is a problem. It needs fixing. Only two books on here are what I would categorize anti-racist. What's happening to our anti-racist fiction?  1. Are black writers not writing?  2. Are white publishe...