Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Book Reviews’ Category

Jul 22

Book Review: Power in Pictures: Using Picturebooks to Energize Secondary ELA Instruction

by Alexa Gutter

Introduction

 At a time when reading scores are at historic lows, middle and high school educators may look to increasing rigor with texts that are complex and dense, or actively teaching to state tests. Perhaps it’s a self defeating prophecy: these methods rob the joy from reading, which further discourages students from becoming avid readers. Deborah Dean presents a surprising alternative for the secondary classroom: the picturebook. While this may seem counterintuitive for teachers who are trying to raise the bar, Dean successfully proves through research and narrative that picture books can engage all learners and add a layer of interest to ELA instruction that makes learning stick. Dean, a long time educator at both the secondary level as well as university, has used picturebooks in her teaching practice for most of her career. From this position of expertise, she details learning strategies, tools for engagement, curated book recommendations, and techniques for implementation. 

Structure and Organization 

Power in Pictures is separated into nine chapters, each with a different focus. While the first chapter serves as an introduction to the practice of using picturebooks for ELA instruction, the subsequent chapters expand on how this practice supports different areas of instruction such as engaging English Language Learners or teaching literary elements. 

Each chapter features the front covers of the picturebooks that Dean references, so flipping through the book is a colorful experience. Additionally, the chapters are further divided into sections with their own titles. These features help readers easily find a strategy or book they may want to return to later. Towards the end of each chapter, Dean lists 2-3 principles for that strategy or element, and then provides a brief explanation of each one. This guides educators who are new to using picturebooks and serves as a quick reference for best practices. 

Chapter Highlights

Chapter 1: Dean begins the first chapter by addressing potential reservations about using picturebooks beyond elementary years. She acknowledges that we are conditioned to believe picturebooks are for young children, but through research and her own teaching practices she has set out to prove that is a misconception. Dean has used picture books in the classroom and found it effective. For teachers, that is often enough reason to continue the practice. However, throughout the chapter Dean draws upon the work of many researchers to support her own reasons for using this method. Some of the main reasons she details in this chapter are that picturebooks are efficient, engaging, and accessible. She closes the chapter with the image of her high school aged students rapt and intrigued when she pulls out a picturebook: “Picturebooks make magic,” Dean writes (8). 

In Chapter 3, “Using Picturebooks to Invite Informal Writing,” Dean provides examples of using picturebooks as jumping off points for notebook entries, bellringers, or other daily writing that might occur in an ELA classroom. For example, Dean suggests the books “Crystanthemum” or “My Name is Elizabeth” for an informal writing prompt about students’ names and how they feel about them. She notes that the book she chooses (a feisty vs. a thoughtful protagonist) affects the tone of students’ responses. Informal writing responses seem like a very user-friendly way to implement picturebooks as part of the classroom routine, and the possibilities are endless. 

In Chapter 5, “Using Picturebooks to Teach Reading and Literature,” Dean explores ways to use picturebooks to teach literary elements and reading strategies. For example, she suggests using “The Last Stop on Market Street,” to help students practice making inferences about text. Teachers might ask students about Abuela’s character, prompting them to think about what kind of person she is and how the text supports this. Dean also recommends using “The Important Book,” to help students think about summarizing. She has a multitude of ideas for books that allow students to explore themes, which can be a particularly hard concept for even older students to grasp. 

Read more: Book Review: Power in Pictures: Using Picturebooks to Energize Secondary ELA Instruction

Classroom Connections

One of the book’s strengths is its immediacy. Dean provides many examples of picturebooks and strategies that teachers can try the next day, especially if they have easy access to picturebooks. Dean also describes how she has adjusted prompts or activities for different grade levels. Dean has used picturebooks at all levels. This practice seems particularly appropriate for middle school or for reluctant readers, though Dean would argue that picturebooks are rich texts for deep and complex interpretation even for older high schoolers. Students of multilingual learners may find this text particularly useful given the multimodal approach, and Dean devotes an entire chapter to strategies for English Language Learners. Teachers with reservations about using picturebooks at the secondary level will find reassurance in Dean’s detailed approach. Through examples from her own teaching practice, she shows us how to bring picturebooks into the secondary classroom without sacrificing rigor. 

My Experience

As a teacher in a high performing, achievement focused middle school, I am always wary of strategies that may be viewed as lacking in rigor. However, many of my students are reluctant readers, or simply have trouble finding time to read, so I am always searching for ways to ignite their passion for reading. Students love to be read to, and picturebooks call back a time when reading was fun and free of stress and expectation. I hope to add picturebooks to my instruction next year, as inspiration for writing prompts, ways to introduce thematic concepts, and for exploration of literary elements. 

Recommendation

Power in Pictures is a great read for any ELA teacher who is looking for a new and unexpected approach, one that requires no technology whatsoever. Using picture books can engage secondary learners and ask them to think about reading and writing in new ways. Dean’s approach makes us wonder: can we ask students to rewind? To go back to the kind of reading they used to know and love, this time with heightened skills and understanding? 

Deborah Dean’s book made me want to go to the library and spend hours in the children’s aisle, leafing through beautiful illustrations. Maybe tomorrow I’ll grab one of Dean’s recommended picturebooks and ask my 7th graders to join me on the rug. 

Alexa Gutter (Bio) Alexa Gutter is a graduate student, poet, and 7th Grade English teacher. She teaches at Charles F. Patton Middle School in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Jul 8

Book Review: Pose Wobble Flow

By Haley Master

Why a Second Edition?:

In September of 2015, Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen released the first edition of Pose, Wobble, and Flow, providing a fresh liberatory framework for deconstructing the idea that there is a “best” way to teach. They concluded that first edition by stating “By various measures, we are in a cultural, social crisis today. Radical persecution, the stratification and thinning of the middle class, and salient examples of violence- symbolic and physical- toward nonheterosexual or transgender members of society run rampant today. This is not a hyperbole” (2015, p. 133). They then open this second edition affirming “We take no joy in the accuracy of these predictions, but we could not have imagined the breathtaking scale, scope, and speed with which the social, cultural, and global fabric of the world would unravel” (2026, p. 2).  Garcia and O’Donnell’s methods and pedagogy around teaching are not only, and unfortunately, extremely relevant, but more important than ever. This second edition further expands on the significance and impact it has to ensure that children and young adults from all backgrounds have the same opportunities for success and that educators, parents, and administrators feel empowered by the work they’re doing rather than dehumanized.

Overview:

Adapting the pose, wobble, and flow method of yoga as a pedagogical model, they encourage readers to move through the challenges of teaching rather than striving for impossible perfection. The book presents six different “poses” of teaching in order to guide teachers through the numerous challenges that teachers face in this current climate as well as presenting ways to promote equity, social change, and vulnerable learning. What it means to pose in teaching is to take up a “liberatory stance” toward your practice (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p.7). Garcia and O’Donnell make it very clear that this is not a “foolproof” method to teaching, but rather “touchstones” as a way to guide teachers through different settings (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p.8). The book introduces the idea of wobbling when Teachers will always be presented with unexpected challenges and complex situations that will test their limits and push them into an area of uncomfortability. Garcia and O’Donnell argue that this push is not meant to be a breaking point, but rather a point of transition. That transition and nonlinear process is how teachers strengthen their practice and learn how to move through dynamic circumstances. Garcia and O’Donnell refer to “flow” as “the moments of psychological well-being one experiences in singular moments during the everyday course of teaching”  as well as “the complementary poses together over the span of one’s teaching career” (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p.10). They maintain that the ambiguity of teaching can make it difficult to feel as though you are hitting goals or climbing new peaks in your career. The objective of the “flow” phase as a teacher is to enter a flow state that incorporates both different poses as well as wobbling to be constantly growing as an educator.

Read more: Book Review: Pose Wobble Flow

Key Takeaways:

Garcia and O’Donnell set the foundation for the book with their pose of “teaching for liberation” which is recognizing the inequities, identities, and backgrounds of different students as a way to not only be an active advocate for social change, but to encourage students to recognize those nuances as well. Rather than striving for perfection, they foster the idea that a liberatory pedagogy is a “process of becoming” that requires necessary transformation  in order to move through the challenges that educators will inevitably face. While this may seem like a daunting task, they urge for small but meaningful moments that will work towards a collective shift in the way institutions and classrooms operate. They then highlight the importance of being a “vulnerable learner” which can help “retain a sense of agency in your work and, even on darker days, can consistently infuse it with meaning” (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p.37). The significance of this pose is to encourage teachers to see themselves and their students as continual learners rather than a part of a larger systemic machine. Instead of referring to the individual experience of vulnerability, Garcia and O’Donnell also emphasize that a lot of the challenges that students face are a part of a collective problem that requires vulnerability in order to broach and change. Garcia and O’Donnell’s third pose is a push for literacy for civic engagement and how teachers can both acknowledge the different civic identities of students in their classroom, but also how to purposefully tie those identities into literacy activities and classroom practices. Even though conversations about systemic issues with students can be difficult, it does not go away by choosing to not address them in the classroom. In addition, the ways that active practices around civics will transform students’ and teachers’ lives inside and outside of the classroom are the heart of why this field is so important. 

Pedagogical Tools:

Garcia and O’Donnell added the pose of developing an identity as a writer who teaches as well as a teacher who writes because it “maximizes the learning outcomes of your students” and can be “central to your own professional growth” (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p.98). The value of this pose is so that teachers can both be frequently involved in the practice of writing in a similar way to their students and to the practice of writing instruction. The underline the importance of writing has specifically to BIPOC students and their identity given that it has historically not been something that education systems have encouraged. The act of writing itself is an act of civic engagement. Along with writing, reading and literacy plays a substantial role in what students learn and how they perceive the world. The curation of texts that schools develop and the ways that teachers must wobble around ones that are less accessible for students are essential to nurturing a lifelong passion for reading and literature. An interesting point that they raise is the responsibility teachers have to “help students understand their agency as readers” and to “shift stances and practices based on the texts they encounter” (Garcia and O’Donnell, 2024, p. 128). Teaching and engaging with texts is not a black and white process, but rather a fluid method of meeting students where they are as readers and incorporating recommendations that will expand their horizons and connect with them.

Recommendation:

This book is essential for not only educators, but for parents, administration, caregivers, and leaders who aspire to cultivate a learning environment that encourages and inspires students well after their time spent in the classroom. It breaks down the idea that a teacher is someone with all of the knowledge and students are simply there to absorb what a teacher says. Garcia and O’Donnell approach learning as a nuanced and complex system of shared information where both students and teachers are constantly learning and improving in order to enact change and work towards a better tomorrow. 

Pose, Wobble, and Flow: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literary Instruction, Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell Allen, Teachers College Press, Second Edition, 2024, #6.95, ISBN: 9780807769348

Bio: Haley Master is a West Chester University English M.A student as well as a sales associate for Schiffer Publishing.

Feb 18

Book Review: AI – Enhanced Literacy: Practical Steps for Deepening Reading and Writing Instruction By Lynne R. Dorfman

In AI – Enhanced Literacy: Practical Steps for Deepening Reading and Writing Instruction by Mary Ehrenworth and Philip Seyfried (published on Oct. 6, 2025), teachers will discover how each chapter examines AI’s possibilities to expand literacy instruction and develop our students’ comprehension with digital texts and tools.

Regardless of how you may feel about using AI tools to improve reading and writing instruction, it is a critical skill for today’s literacy teachers. Through both theoretical approaches and practical examples to help you, K-12 teachers will learn more about the powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence to teach students to think critically and engage in reflective practices.

Each chapter examines the limitless potential AI has to expand literacy instruction and make the teacher’s role more interesting and satisfying while also saving valuable time. I know that most veteran teachers need to feel more at ease with current AI tools. Mary and Philip’s book will help you create AI-enhanced spaces in your classroom, use the power and efficiency of AI as a writing coach, and teach students to use AI tools in a thoughtful, critical, and ethical way during your reading and writing instruction block.

The authors of this book are well-suited for the task. Mary Ehrenworth, EdD, co-led a think tank on global literacy at Teachers College, Columbia University, for 20 years. Presently, Mary works nationally and globally to empower teachers and students through critical literacies and collaborative inquiry. Her most recent research fields are AI and literacy and vocabulary acquisition. Her co-author, Philip Seyfried, spent over a decade in the classroom as an English Language Arts teacher. He is presently a doctoral student in curriculum and teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research focuses on digital literacy and artificial intelligence in education.

Well-defined headings in each chapter and the myriad figures in this book make it easy to navigate. Key information can be found in figures like Figure 1.5 (Effective Prompt Strategies for Educational AI), Figure 3.1 (AI Collaboration in the Writing Process), Figure 4.2 (Digital Comprehension Strategies), and Figure 4.3 (AI Tools for Readers). While it’s best to read the book slowly and carefully, it provides an absorbing introduction to the topic that is accessible and not intimidating. It is a satisfying read that will help you say, “Okay. I can do this. I am ready for more!”

I loved their practical advice such as “Rereading is a superpower” (p. 93) and digital reading is challenging but look at your curriculum for places “…you might insert some attention to digital reading practices” (p. 110). In addition, this book takes a good look at five different ways that classroom teachers can add AI-powered translation tools to the tool set they already use to help deepen the learning of their multilingual students.

Chapter 6 addresses the building and use of text sets to increase reader engagement and help them make meaningful connections while improving accessibility in our curriculum. Included is a figure that displays an AI-generated diverse text set for teaching The Giver by Lois Lowry and a figure that gives practical strategies for incorporating AI-suggested texts such as linking the literature with other subjects or pairing texts with related podcasts and other multimodal forms of expression and related STEM resources when applicable. The authors explore the use as auditory support as a powerful way to orient your students to new topics and texts. This strategy is useful K-12 and beyond! Figure 6.5 provides a useful guide for co-curating text sets with AI.

Using AI tools to improve reading and writing instruction can feel overwhelming, but it is a critical skill for today’s literacy teachers. This powerful book invites educators to engage in inquiries around AI in the classroom: to explore, think, and grapple together about new digital visions for literacy learning. I was hesitant to think about AI use for myself and in the classroom, but I have slowly changed my mind as I have read, experimented, and attended helpful presentations at conferences. Ehrenworth and Seyfried have helped me think more about digital versions for literacy learning and imagine the possibilities! I recommend it as a good place to start — a must-read!

Jan 20

WCWP Book Review by Lynne R. Dorfman

Teaching in Uncertain Times: Strategies for Reclaiming Agency and Impact on Students’ Learning by Laura Robb is refreshing, practical, and hopeful! Robb’s book, available this July from Routledge Publishers, is filled with doable suggestions to support students’ academic learning and social wellbeing and varied needs. Throughout the book, she encourages collaboration and interaction with colleagues to build a strong learning community built on trust. Robb talks about the importance of finding time to reteach and plan interventions by utilizing flexible grouping designs and providing additional practice for those students who need it. She urges educators to become learners alongside their students and tasks us with developing an ongoing habit of time allotted to reading professional books and articles – a critical aspect of being the best teacher you can be and helping all students to thrive!

Robb asks us to take risks and try new teaching strategies or routines or refining something we already are using. I absolutely love her remarks about students’ self-evaluations. How simple yet brilliant to ask students to provide feedback on two questions: What worked? and What can be improved? She discusses ideas for K-1 and beyond in formats that make good sense! Cross-curricular projects are addressed for middle grades to boost engagement, critical thinking, and retention while developing the work force skills students will need later – collaboration, communication, adaptability. Her suggestion for professional study with other schools in the district or in the state can do much to deepen our knowledge of teaching practices and support our striving students in new and varied ways.

Independent reading in the content areas is addressed through rich suggestions for recommendations of magazines and award-winning Orbis Pictus and Scott O’Dell books. Robb also includes a description of key websites to support student learning and interests. A bibliography of sources, before-you-move-on reflection, chapter abstracts, and Robb’s own personal classroom stories are a few ways Robb hooks her readers. Robb also addresses ways educators can focus on self-care and ways they can cultivate their students’ wellbeing. Interest surveys, getting-to-know-you conferences, letters of introduction, kidwatching, reteaching lessons, and how to address cognitive overload are discussed in practical ways from kindergarten through middle school grades.

Chapter 4 takes a closer look at formative assessments and mentoring new teachers. Robb includes a great set of questions to gather important information about our students, providing a student information form so that all teachers who interact with a student and are part of a student’s day can provide feedback to help find alternative interventions and teaching/learning ideas. Her mentoring tips in Part II of chapter 4 encourage ongoing collaboration among new teachers and ways to build trust and positive memories.

Chapter 5 addresses lesson planning with six sensible suggestions and then moves into an in-depth look at three strategies to boost students’ reading skills in all subject areas. Examples of planning charts are included as well as effective collaboration strategies to impact active learning. Robb provides tips to support student comprehension of informational texts, including how to construct meaning during and after reading, deepening comprehension and critical analysis of text.

Her final chapter talks about family partnerships that can help to provide funds for supplies, materials, and snacks while also helping teachers to build trust through their communication with family members. Her appendices are ready to use – everything from practical tips on developing successful learning centers to informational text features and structures.

Laura Robb is a teacher-of-teachers. Her voice is encouraging, kind, and reassuring. She offers classroom snapshots to bring her words to life and provides practical examples, useful forms, and doable advice to cheer us on and help us help all our students to thrive and be the best they can be. Thank you, Laura!

Jul 9

A Review of Tricia Ebarvia’s Get Free

by Heidi Fliegelman 

Overview: 

Tricia Ebarvia’s book, Get Free, functions as both an instructional guide and a reflective piece that surrounds the pursuit of equity in education. Across six chapters, the seasoned English Language Arts educator explores what it means to provide a liberatory education for all students. Her combination of anecdotes, research analysis, classroom activities, and student reflections make for a well-rounded, detailed, effective guide. 

Chapter Breakdowns:

In her first two chapters, Ebarvia focuses primarily on identity, unpacking how teacher bias and curriculum bias are ingrained and pervasive in the classroom. This begins with a deep dive into her early understanding of what constituted good literature, and how her understanding has changed as her own learning has progressed (2-3). Ebarvia provides a myriad of strategies and reflection questions for educators throughout these chapters, as well as provides anecdotes from her own teaching experiences, and that of her peers. She mentions bias early, outlining the different types that show up specifically in school settings, and providing privilege checklists and other methods of identifying such ideas in our own practice. 

For instance, Ebarvia discusses the way in which teacher privilege directly affects how comfortable one might be in discussing difficult conversations in the classroom (15). While having more privileges might make some teachers wary of overstepping in talking about a social group they do not belong to (or, worse, feel as though it’s irrelevant), Ebarvia focuses her analysis elsewhere. Through the anecdote from Wolfe-Rocca, Ebarvia prompts reflection on how yes, while sensitive topics should be discussed and brought forth by those who have the privilege to do so, these topics still need to be handled with care, and encourages teachers not to rush into big conversations– they should be planned, intentional, and empathetic, considering “as teachers, we wield tremendous power in our classrooms” (14). This section closes with Ebarvia asking educators to consider the question: “In what ways do you think your own identities might have affected your interactions with your own students?”, keeping with the earlier emphasis on educators understanding the “I who reads” (4). 

From here, Ebarvia moves on to discuss the importance of classroom community in Chapter 2, noting the potential growth that students can access when learning in a positive, safe, brave community. Aside from debunking the more traditional definition of what a “troublemaker” student would be, Ebarvia fills this chapter with tangible, realistic activities and strategies from her own public school classroom. She expands upon more known techniques (name tags, interviews, etc.) to provide opportunities to 1.) get to know students on deeper, more authentic levels, and 2.) support students of various identities, and various comfort levels when it comes to speaking their stories out loud. 

The middle section of the book moves beyond teachers’ experience and understanding of identity, and instead centers on students’ own understanding and support of both their own, and their classmates’, identities. Chapter 3 of Get Free focuses on methods for aiding students’ own understandings of identity, whereas Chapter 4 puts those understandings into action, providing strategies for fostering “critical conversations.” Ebarvia’s various frameworks provide students and teachers alike with tangible frameworks and processes within which everyone can be genuinely seen, heard, and respected. 

For example, in a section regarding the support of LGBTQIA2S+ students, Ebarvia articulates the need for ALL teachers, regardless of content or identity, to understand modern language and definitions regarding sex and gender. After providing resources, she strikingly discusses how she discusses difficult identity-centered topics in her classroom, telling students that “How [they] respond today might be different from how [they] responded in the past or how [they]  might respond in the future” (95). This ideology could be applied to so many topics, with the potential to create those truly brave spaces. With this mindset, students can understand that it is okay to be wrong about something, or to alter their opinion; changing, based on the acquisition of more knowledge and more experience, is not a bad thing. 

Finally, the last two chapters offer an opportunity for expansion, offering strategies that encourage students to analyze such dynamics in their texts and, most importantly, in society at large. Ebarvia dives into biases here, explaining the importance of educators not only identifying them within themselves and their curriculum, but actually teaching students what various biases are, and how to identify them themselves. Extending from her Chapter 5 discussion of “reading against our biases”, Ebarvia’s final chapter urges the use of perspective-taking and perspective bending in order to encourage empathetic, less-biased reading. She continues her work with bias from the first few pages, now bringing students into the fold by asking them to identify dominant narratives, locate trends in how different identities show up as different types of characters, and more. Centering her curriculum around social justice standards serves as a helpful anchor to her work (218). 

Key Take-Aways:

In even the title alone, Get Free, it is evident what Ebarvia’s core message seems to be: it is the duty of educators to use their presence in the classroom in order to guide students to view the world in way that is “more complicated, nuanced, [and] deepened”; good education “is empowering for all […] not necessarily in the same way, but in the ways each student needs” (226). To do this, carrying identity work throughout the year, and doing so extensively, is important; when it is incorporated only in the fall, it is harder to communicate its value. In Get Free, identity work is at the heart of everything, even literary analysis. 

Ebarvia also asserts that changes within the current school systems are necessary in order to make such progress, and that such work is vital and urgent, especially given the current state of the world. In essence, “reimagining education” is needed, but it must truly move beyond “keeping the status quo” (292). Such a goal sounds daunting, even in its most bite-sized presentation. However, through her inclusion of anecdotes, strategies, and student reflection, Ebarvia presents a reality in which successful moves towards these goals are possible. 

Within the brief epilogue, Ebarvia stresses her renewed understanding of the importance of the work she outlines throughout the book. In acknowledging how “the list of things to fight against is relentless,” Ebarvia argues for the persistent pursuit of education for liberation (293). After outlining experiences, reflections, and strategies across her previous chapters, Ebarvia remarks that the strong presence of hate and conflict in the world should not cause one to give up; rather, it should be all the more reason for educators to do all that they can to create more equitable education. 

Text Usefulness:

As a high school teacher, the vast majority of the activities presented in Get Free are tailored to older students, mostly regarding the complexity of information and the critical thinking involved in many of the activities. However, one would imagine that many of the activities throughout, especially those presented in chapters two and three, could be easily adapted to middle school, or even elementary school, understanding of the concepts presented, as the goals of English Language Arts are fairly similar, even as one ages. If this work is indeed as vital as Ebarvia presents, then this book should not just be for high school educators. In fact, if students are expected to be able to maturely handle these conversations, then equity and curiosity needs to be presented as early as possible. For that reason, though focused more heavily on teaching older students, Get Free is an effective tool for educators of any level. 

My Experience: 

My biggest complaints with instructional guides is usually either that the students presented are “textbook students” –flat, overly simplified, inauthentic–  and that the strategies seem unrealistic and/or pretentious. I’m thrilled that neither was the case with this book. Likely because of her real life experience with high school students, pretty much all of the activities presented seem attainable and effective. I already have multiple activities saved for use next fall. My only reservations surround potential community pushback, rather than the actual quality of the strategies. In fact, the only idea that I wish had been more prevalent is her experiences with any backlash, and what her thoughts are on the current climate of educator critiques.

Notably, I also really appreciate the use of anecdotes, for a variety of reasons. For one, though not a new concept, it is indeed much easier to understand and remember a concept when it is posed as a story. The variety and frequency of stories throughout the book made it easy to want to keep reading– something I find quite difficult with most textbooks. In addition, the use of anecdotes presented Ebarvia in a more human way. It is easy for textbook / instructional guide authors to come across as all-knowing, inaccessible, or even pretentious. Even with the inclusion of stories, authors sometimes –understandably – only choose their most shining moments. However, even in communicating her successes, Ebarvia is not gloating. Instead, she presents her worries, her struggles, her concerns, and her intentions. She even acknowledges what successes were born out of previous failures, a brave thing to do when presenting oneself in a position of authority. Reading Ebarvia’s book made me feel as though I was chatting with a department mentor, a welcome experience any time. 

Overall, Ebarvia’s work offers a realistic insight regarding the current state of public education. To combat many current issues, Ebarvia provides strategies and activities for engaging students in meaningful, productive discussion, leading to the creation of a more authentic, effective schooling experience. 

Heidi Fliegelman (she/her) is a high school English Language Arts teacher, an English graduate student at West Chester University, and a theatrical teaching artist and director in the PA area.  Heidi’s work has been included in Voices from the Middle, English Journal, TEDxUniversityofDelaware 2021, and the National Council of Teachers of English. Having the opportunity to foster spaces of creativity, curiosity, and empathy is her favorite part about pursuing education.

May 1

1 Comment

Book Review: Educating for Empathy by Nicole Mirra

Written by Jennifer Archie, Stephanie Collins, and Kelly Metzler

Nicole Mirra’s 2018 book Educating for Empathy seeks to answer driving questions about the role of empathy in our classrooms, specifically English classrooms, on the quest to develop participatory and civically engaged students. Throughout the text, Mirra returns to these questions: “What role (if any) should schools play in fostering empathy for students? What, for that matter, is empathy? And what kinds of educational practices can reverse the empathy deficit and produce compassionate, democratically engaged young adults?” (3). 

In order to establish the need for teaching critical civic empathy, Mirra needs first to define how she uses the term “empathy.” She offers readers the standard idea that empathy allows us to see from another’s perspective, but also that one can move “beyond oneself and into the perspective of another person” (4). This process, she suggests, happens naturally in English classrooms, where students can use their imaginations while reading to move into other times, places, and characters’ experiences. In addition, she also implies that this connected process empowers students to become active critics of the world around them, sparking, perhaps, some activism on their part. She calls this process “critical civic empathy,” and she defines it in this way: “1. It begins from an analysis of the social position, power, and privilege of all parties involved. 2. It focuses on the ways that personal experiences matter in the context of public life. 3. It fosters democratic dialogue and civic action committed to equity and justice” (7). From a teacher’s perspective, this seems like an overwhelmingly important but problematically challenging concept, which is one of the main difficulties with this text. 

Mirra does offer a series of really inspiring philosophical and pedagogical ideas. In particular, her focus on the “power of text for social transformation” (9) is one that most English teachers would applaud. She waxes poetic with language like “teachers and students must engage together in reflection and action aimed at breaking down structures of oppression that ensnare us all” (10). Almost all of the English teachers we know would approve of this message; we want students to feel texts at such an impactful level, and we try to engage students in this type of dialogue. However, there are also a variety of impediments to taking this discussion into the realm of transformative power, especially as it relates to disempowering social and political structures in the world around us, restrictive curriculum, and test-driven pedagogy to name just a few. Mirra also hammers home the idea that individual empathy is not sufficient; collective empathy needs to be developed in order to effect more change in reworking our power structures and fully empowering all voices to be present in the discourse of civic socialization. 

Mirra continues her call to action with her first chapter in which she seeks to explore why reading helps develop empathy, how certain stories get privileged, and how imagining an alternate world view offers students a chance to project a vision of change onto their current society. Mirra cites several studies (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Mar & Oatley, 2008) that suggest frequent readers demonstrate higher empathy ratings than nonreaders. Additionally, while discussing the literary canon (and its controversies), she paraphrases Guillory’s 1993 work stating, “…critics argue that the canon inappropriately privileges particular stories as representative of American culture when, in fact, no single American culture exists; as such, its very existence serves to marginalize stories that deviate from those told by people in positions of power” (20). Most English teachers feel this burden; they need to offer more stories that not only reflect the lives of their students, but also stories that challenge and complicate students’ thinking, especially about power and privilege. 

As evidence of how to combat this challenge, Mirra uses two teacher leaders to demonstrate ways of pushing back against the status quo. The first teacher she recognizes is a 10th grade ELA teacher, Jerica Coffey, teaching in a public charter high school in East Los Angeles. Ms. Coffey works with her students to develop the idea of a warrior-scholar mentality, explaining that “she developed this concept as a way to communicate to students her commitment to a vision of literacy linked to self- and social empowerment” (24). Students embraced this commitment and recognized their voices, taking actions like writing to their state governor about the juvenile justice system. The second teacher, Ashley Englander, also a 10th grade teacher, works at a traditional public high school in East Los Angeles. Ms. Englander serves as a “bridge-builder” between the smaller community of her students and families and the larger community in which they live. She does this by taking traditionally taught texts, like Night by Elie Wiesel, and moving the conversation beyond oppression and resistance during to Holocaust to these same concepts in their lives and communities today, using a research article to “provoke discussion about the role of schools as institutions of either marginalization or empowerment for students” (29). For teachers fostering ideas of empowerment through literacy, these two teacher leaders could serve as exemplars for what challenging the status quo looks like in a high school setting. 

In chapter 2, Mirra stresses the need to develop engaged and thoughtful citizens through the use of structured debate as demonstrated in New York City public middle schools. She presents the idea that making slight changes to the way debate is implemented can “build relational trust and democratic community within classrooms and across schools” and “foster the development of critical civic empathy” (36). Debates possess mutual respect, discourse, and structure, which is seemingly nonexistent in today’s political climate. Our students are constantly exposed to what Mirra refers to as “ferocious verbal sparring” (35) in both formal and informal settings, especially with the presidential election looming. The thought of reimagining the purpose of debate as a trust- and community-building task represents the ability to empathize may seem like a daunting task for today’s educators. 

The chapter goes on to present Mirra’s research exploring how students in the Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) in New York City responded to debate. Overall, participation in debate “benefited students’ academic literacy and critical-thinking skills…, and also their dispositions toward critical consciousness and civic engagement” (38). Ben Honoroff, a colleague of Mirra’s, was able to use the power of debate to give life to a school struggling with low test scores, declining enrollment, and the negative effects of gentrification. It should be noted that Honoroff was able to unify the school using a curriculum called Word Generation to address a high interest debate topic once a week across the entire school. While this curriculum is composed of vocabulary-rich interdisciplinary units, its implementation seems highly unlikely in the traditional public school setting considering the pressure of state testing and strict adherence to common core standards.

Youth participatory action research (YPAR), the central idea of Chapter 3, is defined as “the practice of encouraging young people to develop their own research questions about topics that are meaningful to them and related to issues or challenges they see reflected in their communities” (53). Mirra argues that YPAR can foster empathy by helping young people see their own thoughts, experiences, and voices as valued. Writing shifts from research to YPAR when “the three Ps” are taken into account: “purpose, practice, and positioning” (55). Purpose allows students to challenge the narrative, practice gives students the ability to create their own schooling experience, and positioning shows students as experts of their experiences. Mirra especially notes the benefit of YPAR with students from minoritized communities. She states that “young people who have grown up listening to dominant narratives about their communities- narratives that often highlight problems and risks—often begin to internalize deficit-oriented views of themselves and their peers” (67). The YPAR process seeks to help minoritized students change the narrative through “counter-storytelling grounded in community cultural wealth” (67), allowing them to do something about problems in their communities and not just place blame.

Chapter 4 focuses on the use of technology in and outside of the classroom and is well worth reading. Mirra claims that technology is damaging empathy by taking away both trust and perspective-taking as students are unable to pick up on non-verbal clues and online activity is impacting self-esteem as others post their fake and elaborate lives on social media. As access to technology increases, classroom disputes that either stem from or are further developed outside of school through social media and internet access routinely disrupt our classrooms. 

The second part of this chapter delves into the ways teachers can use technology. Mirra suggests that teachers need to help students “leverage these tools to achieve the kinds of academically oriented, peer-supported, and interest-driven learning outcomes that the tools can facilitate” (84). She adds that this “takes dedicated pedagogy and a mindset change” (84). To support her initial statement that there is a need for more collective empathy, Mirra introduces the idea of Connected Learning vs. the 21st Century Skills, differentiating that the first focuses on a collective advancement whereas the second lends itself to individual advancement. This chapter offers the definitions of each principle within connected learning and suggests ways teachers can incorporate connected learning skills that are meaningful to students and give them a buy-in rather than using technology just to please administration. These principles are useful for all teachers to engage in at every professional level. 

Mirra shifts in Chapter 5 to distinguish between Politics with a capital P and politics with a lowercase p with the former being our traditional view of political parties with elections and the latter encompassing the way our ideas about Politics plays a role in our everyday lives. This chapter strikes a chord as it first challenges the teacher to incorporate and facilitate more conversations within the classroom that allow students to become civically engaged in the community. This is a daunting idea to teachers as it is written in some districts’ handbooks that discussions must not lead into the political realm and stay focused on the curriculum. Mirra then shares a survey conducted with high school English teachers about the purposes of teaching reading. The study revealed that teachers identified college preparation as the first purpose whereas civic duty fell in the middle. Where this chapter becomes worth the read is when Mirra describes her beliefs that “teaching is an act of civic engagement” (100), but it is not enough; she believes we need to participate as private citizens as well. She further defends this by reiterating that every choice we make promotes beliefs, values, and actions and thus is political. Mirra argues that fostering civic empathy must start with our own involvement and teachers should reflect on how we are getting civically engaged in the community. This reflection will help teachers better understand the dynamics in the community that impact their students. 

In her conclusion, Mirra states that her goal in writing was to “demonstrate how the foundational activities of literary analysis…can be transformed into opportunities for encouraging mutual humanization and community social action” (102). However, this book is clearly geared toward the high school level and above. For elementary teachers, more research would be needed to find ways to bring civic empathy and engagement into practice with younger children. Though inspirational in nature, implementation is problematic at the elementary level due to a lack of models for developmentally appropriate activities. Middle school implementation is possible through the use of thoughtfully selected texts and community collaboration, but the high school level offers the easiest pathways to implementation, especially in larger urban settings, due to Mirra’s presentation of research, examples, and resources in those areas. 

« Older Entries