For better or worse, English continues to expand as the commonly shared lingua franca throughout the world. With an increasing movement of transnational students—armed with English and flowing across borders—three university professors discuss their pedagogies and ways of knowing as they engage transnational students inside Mexican university classrooms for future teachers of English. Situated at an interior Mexican public university, each of them explores their unique positioning and the ways they taught transnational students. One is a transnational Mexican-American instructor; another is a researcher of transnationalism historically based in the U.S., and the other co-author is a Mexican national who learned English as a second language and has witnessed the rapidly changing population of students in the interior of Mexico. Toward the aim of improving the way transnationals access and experience formal education, they provide recommendations for improving pedagogy and expanding research.

Access to gifted and talented education (referral, identification, and classes) and advanced classes has been challenging for two student groups of color—Black and Hispanic students. More than 10 years of data from the Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection and numerous reports reveal that discrimination is in operation and gravely compromises access for these gifted students of color. In this article, the authors share data on the aforementioned groups’ under-representation, along with desegregation and integration barriers. Our recommendations are guided by equity rather than equality. We call for accountability and deliberate efforts to desegregate and integrate gifted and talented education with excellence and equity fundamental for change. We also draw attention to the Culturally-Responsive Equity-Based Bill of Rights for Gifted Students of Color.

In this article, we describe the campus visit we organized for Latina girls (grades 6–12) that participated in Somos Escritoras/We Are Writers. Somos Escritoras is a creative space that invites Latina girls to explore their lives and examine their worlds through art, writing, and theater. We focus on the writing marathon we designed for our visit and share the ways this activity invited girls to read and write the campus, while re-imagining their stories and authoring their futures. Drawing on figured words, we discuss how a campus visit can support Latina girls in constructing identities as future college students and graduates.

In this review essay, I am going to review a wide array of works that help explore the multiplicity and intersectionality of Arab-American Muslims’ identities and their implications for their child...

The lagging behind of underrepresented minority (URM) students in higher education, and particularly in the STEM fields, is well documented. In this paper we draw on critical race theory in education to frame and present counter-narratives of URM students in STEM fields, to explicate the function of the interactions that occur between these students and their (mostly White) instructors and peers. Focus group interviews with URM students (and staff) at a STEM focused college identify three ways in which White privilege is enacted through these interactions: in group projects; in cheating accusations; and in the grading process. Our participants illuminate particular manifestations of White privilege in STEM classrooms and on campus, and we place these within the context of “colorblind” changes in higher education in the U.S.

Contemporary political and cultural realities make the renegotiating of African American cultural images an urgent matter. A recent movement to improve the position of African Americans in the movie business has produced a new wave of debates. Current movies show a variety of approaches to defining those images. The success of Green Book has been viewed as a major achievement. It offers an oddly cheerful view leading to a happy ending, as strangers become friends. Today’s interracial movies contrast with the scant attention paid to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The challenges of selecting and reading children’s literature about slavery have implications for the kinds of slavery narratives students internalize. Guiding principles for teachers’ critical selection of literature depicting slavery remain increasingly necessary as needed critical discussions of children’s literature with depictions of slavery grow and as broader scholarship of integrating diverse literature expands. In this article, we contribute guiding principles for teachers’ thoughtful selection of children’s slavery literature to support theirs and students’ critical readings of these texts.

This article describes a recent implementation of digital literacies in which high school literature students engaged in literary analysis of a novel using the video game Minecraft. Students who had previously expressed reluctance with reading and dissatisfaction with school experiences used their gaming skills to re-create scenes, respond to textual elements, and actualize authentic textual interactions. Inspired by the injustice of certain students being denied experiential learning in academic communities based on underperforming scores on standardized tests, this article challenges scripted, conventional curricula and suggests all students have the right to personalized relationships with literature. One student who had previously experienced feelings of failure in literacy settings expressed a newfound interest in texts when given the opportunity to enact literacy practices in academic spaces that mirrored his meaning-making in social spaces. This article promotes equity by arguing that engaging students with literature should involve an inclusive approach to curriculum and instruction. As educators we must offer high-interest readings while also providing numerous entry points into those readings for students who may not excel in homogenous environments. Social justice means celebrating students’ diverse literacy practices and leveraging those skills toward achievement, all the while empowering new voices and facilitating new discoveries.