Encouraging Activism in Secondary English : Reading and Writing for Social Justice

This book presents research-backed social justice teaching strategies that secondary English teachers can implement to encourage their students to think critically and take action on issues that matter to them. It includes canonical and young adult literature, and other potential classroom texts including media, film, and historical documents.

Encouraging Activism in Secondary English: Reading and Writing for Social Justice outlines a framework to encourage social justice teaching in the secondary English classroom by providing teachers with valuable materials for designing a curriculum that fosters social justice and strategies that can be taught to encourage reading and writing that empower students to take action on social issues that matter to them. Each chapter focuses on a potential anchor text, along with possible pairings, and offers specific suggestions for ways to teach and create potential activities and assignments that foster social justice. Anchor texts include works such as The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, Night by Elie Wiesel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and 1984 by George Orwell. The chapters include information about historical and contemporary social movements such as the Occupy Movement, protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Greta Thunberg’s climate crisis movement. Each chapter then offers specific suggestions for helping students to engage in critical inquiry, discussions, and reflection on their own experiences while reading.