Teacher Inquiry
Teaching Writing
Teach What You Love—Chapter 5 from When Challenge Brings Change: How Teacher Breakthroughs Transform the Classroom
Summary:
In 2023, the National Writing Project copublished When Challenge Brings Change: How Teacher Breakthroughs Transform the Classroom. In this collection of compelling narratives, high-school and college teachers show us how they have taken on issues such as faculty and student relationships; struggles over personal identity in the classroom; the joys and complexities of working with emergent bilinguals, developing writers, and first-year college students; and the forever question of how to engage students.
“My breakthrough revealed to me how centering joy is an asset-based approach to classroom instruction, a way to celebrate and amplify the linguistic, navigational, familial, and aspirational wealth that students from historically marginalized groups possess. When I sustain a focus on centering joy, I am also implementing a trauma-informed approach to instructional design, allowing laughter and natural curiosity to heal the wounds of traditional academia’s overly assimilative process, a process that favors objectivity and competition, a process that cultivates fear.”
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