Chapter 8: Finding a Light in the Night: An Opportunity for the Arts to Illuminate the Way

One issue that is central to our profession as English language arts teachers and teacher educators is the problem of primacy. With insufficient time to prepare new teachers for every possible contingency, we have to ask questions. What is most important for new English teachers to know? What preparatory experiences will be most useful to them as they create their own paths? How do we conceive of and develop practices that allow them to leverage their strengths and, in succession, build the capabilities of their own students? If one of our main goals is to democratize classrooms and develop agency in high school students who often think of education as something that is done to them rather than with them, we must seek to model cooperative, collaborative, and creative ways of being and knowing in teacher education courses. Integrating artistic practices and the dialogue those practices inspire is one way to remove the instructor as the locus of expertise and, instead, to share ownership over what transpires in the classroom—including what counts as knowledge and what work products result from our deliberations—with our students.