ABSTRACT
The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sent a shock around the world. In St. Louis, area schools were closed for several weeks because the community was militarized. Literacy teachers have contemplated how literacy teachers might create space within the reading and writing curriculum for children to inquire into and respond to the many issues involved in the Ferguson case (e.g. racism, peace, bullying, poverty). This chapter focuses on how teacher-education students and the author collaboratively created a racialized reading of the texts and narratives circulating in the aftermath of Brown's shooting. The chapter documente's the author's attempts to re-center the dialogue on racialized violence just months after Brown was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson. R. Milner pointed out that while discussing race and racism has become more accepted in teacher-education classrooms; discussing racialized violence has not. Yet her class was, literally, situated in middle of a community that had exploded after the murder of Brown.
