ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author builds on the previous chapters by explaining the roles that race and racism play in the traditional and state-sanctioned ELA curriculum. Furthermore, he will illustrate his experiences as a secondary ELA teacher, particularly how he deconstructed and (re)constructed his curriculum to center the experiences and knowledge of Black youth and youth of color. Also, he will discuss how he implemented the reading and workshop model during his first year of teaching and how he had to reconceptualize the reading and writing workshop because it didn’t center the experiences of marginalized youth. Although this model comes from a sociocultural theorization of literacy and writing, he found the model to be problematic because it operated from a Eurocentric way of existing and being, and it still privileged the traditional literary canon. In addition, conversations of race and racism were absent. In the remainder of the chapter, the author delineates how he married the reading and workshop model with Critical Race English Education, which assisted him in the development of a Critical Race English Education workshop model.
