Multiliteracies has gained significant favor in the past two decades due to the increased popularity of technology. Educators are not only finding new and exciting ways to make content relatable to students by including their digital lives in the classroom, but now the digital experience of teens is the topic of classroom conversations. The inclusion of students' online identities has certain advantages, as many students may find the bridge between academic work and their out-of-school lives advantageous to their learning. However, educators need to give careful consideration of how to safely include students' digital identities into the classroom, as these online lives are often carefully crafted for their networking platforms and are not necessarily intended for analog, classroom spaces. Throughout this article, the author explores the ways in which teachers incorporate teens' online identities and troubles the notion that teachers can safely include these identities without co-opting their out-of-school online practices.
English education candidates deserve time and support to consider how school and community coexist and to think deeply about where they want to be English teachers. This study used multiple case study analysis to better understand participants’ negotiation of sense of belonging (SOB) in rural schools and communities across experiences: a rural-intensive practicum course, a student teaching semester, and/or contracted teaching jobs in rural schools. In looking over time and across experiences, this paper builds an understanding of how English teachers develop (or do not develop) rural SOB. Data include written reflections and auto-photography that represent practicum students’ understanding of their placement community and rural English classroom (all names of people and places are pseudonyms). We follow those who accepted rural student teaching placements and/or chose rural schools for their first teaching position, adding interviews into our corpus. We describe participants’ interactions with space, curriculum, and people as they negotiate a rural SOB. We offer insight into what English teachers foreground and where they experience tensions as they position themselves (and others) in rural schools and communities.
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