How do school communities create environments that fully prepare both English learners and dual-language learners for colleges and careers? This valuable book profiles six high-performing high schools that had a singular focus on improving the educational outcomes of English learners. The authors use these case studies to identify a comprehensive set of design elements and shared values that were key factors in yielding extraordinary results. These include a school-wide language development framework that integrates content, analytical practices, and language learning; a broad and dynamic view of assessment practices; intensive social-emotional support for students and their families; and mission-driven staff and leadership that maximize learning opportunities across classrooms. The practices employed in these schools are not only essential for English learners’ success but, as the performance data shows, they also benefit all students. “This is my kind of change book: clear and deep; causes one to think; and inspires the reader to what may be possible on a wide scale.” —From the foreword by Michael Fullan, professor emeritus, University of Toronto “The schools featured in this set of beautifully drawn case studies reveal how they managed to beat the odds for their students—and there is much to learn by looking closely at what made them so effective.” —Lilly Wong Fillmore, professor, University of California, Berkeley “This book is a rich resource for all educators driven to ensure that all multilingual learners are ready for college and career.” —Angélica Infante-Green, deputy commissioner, New York State Education Department

With this practical book, you’ll learn effective ways to engage students in reading and writing by teaching them narrative nonfiction. By engaging adolescents in narrative, literary, or creative nonfiction, they can cultivate a greater understanding of themselves, the world around them, and what it means to feel empathy for others. This book will guide you to first structure a reading unit around a narrative nonfiction text, and then develop lessons and activities for students to craft their own personal essays. Topics include: Engaging your students in the reading of a nonfiction narrative with collaborative chapter notes, empathy check-ins, and a mini-research paper to deepen students’ understanding; Helping your students identify meaningful life events, recount their experiences creatively, and construct effective opening and closing lines for their personal essays; Encouraging your students to use dialogue, outside research, and a clear plot structure to make their narrative nonfiction more compelling and polished. The strategies in this book are supplemented by examples of student work and snapshots from the author’s own classroom. The book also includes interviews with narrative nonfiction writers MK Asante and Johanna Bear. The appendices offer additional tips for using narrative nonfiction in English class, text and online resources for teaching narrative nonfiction, and a correlation chart between the activities in this book and the Common Core Standards.

Youth spoken word poetry groups are on the rise in the United States, offering safe spaces for young people to write and perform. These diverse groups encourage members to share their lived experiences, decry injustices, and imagine a better future. At a time when students may find writing in school alienating and formulaic, composing in these poetry groups can be refreshingly relevant and exciting. Listen to the Poet investigates two Arizona spoken word poetry groups -- a community group and a high school club -- that are both part of the same youth organization. Exploring the writing lives and poetry of several members, Wendy R. Williams takes readers inside a writing workshop and poetry slam and reveals that schools have much to learn about writing, performance, community, and authorship from groups like these and from youth writers themselves.