• Is student access to cellphones now viewed as a right? 
• How does cellphone addiction impact school culture & community? 
• How do issues of school safety create positive or negative relationships with cellphones?
• Did COVID-19 impact student engagement? If so, how can educators use digital tools & social media to reimagine student learning? 

• Promote curriculum and instruction that broaden definitions of writing to include visual, aural, and multimodal compositions and to include a wider variety of purposes for writing (e.g., writing to discover, writing for change, writing to learn, writing to reflect).
  • Digital tools are perfect for this! For example, in Batchelor's article " Using Linked Text Sets to Promote Advocacy and Agency Through a Critical Lens," pre-service teachers use Padlet to present their linked text sets for self-reflection. This is a fantastic idea for ELA lessons because it incorporates visual, aural, and multimodal compositions to enhance student thinking about a particular area of student interest and inquiry research. Check out this example: https://padlet.com/stephetm/blacklivesmatter-sg1kudvws75y. 
• Advocate for writing instruction that is process- (rather than product-) oriented and that invites students to become writers who (1) write for authentic purposes and (2) make authentic choices about processes and products.
  • The Antiracist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez is a great resource for secondary ELA educators who are looking to disrupt their traditional practice. This book provides several methods of writing instruction through workshop that values the process rather than the product. Chavez emphasizes the importance of writing in community and how fostering an environment of love can help student writing significantly. Chavez's work asks: How can we humanize writing? 
• Make writing a collective responsibility and a collaborative activity across faculty and academic departments by fostering writing-across-the-curriculum and writing support programs, such as writing centers, writing groups, and peer coaching, for student writers and writing teachers.
  • I think that even within secondary ELA departments there is not enough collaboration centered on student writing. This problem is worsened by attention to standardized test scores rather than the process of writing itself. When ELA teachers do not work together to ensure that writing curriculum isn't repetitive, we do a great disservice to our students. I think the most common thing that I hear from students is that their ELA courses do not help them grow as writers. Students had higher expectations for their English teachers; however, they were met with worksheets, boring & repetitive lectures, and redundant testing practice. So, how can we secondary ELA educators improve our writing curriculum to challenge students to experiment with writing and experience new growth? Is it possible to teach to the test while simultaneously encouraging students to disrupt the writing status quo? The answer: Yes! 
• Recognize and value the cultural and linguistic assets writers bring to their texts by highlighting published writing and student writing reflecting diverse perspectives, voices, experiences, and linguistic practices.
  • YA Literature, Student Blogs, and Multi-Genre/Multimodal Projects are all great tools to accomplish this task
  • I aim to have a diverse library designed to provide mirrors, windows, & sliding glass doors for all students. More specifically, I hope to have a huge selection of YA texts for students to read independently. Also, I think that YA novels make great mentor texts for students who need inspiration when writing personal narratives. YA centers on the adolescent experience! And unfortunately, not many high school curriculums teach YA. Teaching YA is so important because 1) students may be unfamiliar with the YA genre, 2) students may have only been exposed to canonical classics that do not reflect their lived experiences, 3) the writing of YA texts is accessible to teens and provides them with a more palatable mentor text when compared to academic articles, classics, or historical nonfiction texts. 
  • Also, as many YA novels provide a positive representation of translanguaging, I hope that bilingual/multilingual students can use these books to compose their own linguistically diverse writing. Moreover, sharing student writing like this with the class and the school community can work to disrupt "racist and linguistic barriers and inequities for students whose writing does not easily assimilate to dominant norms" (Chavez, 2021).

Walter: "We have decided to move into our house because my father—my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money." (Hansberry, 1997)