{"id":13659,"date":"2019-12-02T15:17:54","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T23:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=13659"},"modified":"2019-12-02T15:17:54","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T23:17:54","slug":"learn-marginal-syllabus-2019-20-december-miles-morales-spider-man-and-reimagining-the-canon-for-racial-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/learn-marginal-syllabus-2019-20-december-miles-morales-spider-man-and-reimagining-the-canon-for-racial-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"LEARN Marginal Syllabus 2019-20 (December)\u2014Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Reimagining the Canon for Racial Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Our December text for the <a href=\"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/campaigns\/literacy-equity-remarkable-notes-learn-marginal-syllabus-2019-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2019-20 Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN Marginal Syllabus<\/a> examines how a book, <\/em>Miles Morales: Spider-Man<em>, by Jason Reynolds, exemplifies possibilities for a new type of literary canon. In an <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CodyMillerELA\/status\/1198304391020892160?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">award-winning piece<\/a> written for English Journal, authors Mario Worlds and Henry \u201cCody\u201d Miller argue for the inclusion of this new, non-traditional story in secondary English classrooms in order to open conversations among young readers about racism and the school-to-prison pipeline. Worlds\u2019 and Millers\u2019 writing surfaces the importance of rethinking text selection as a means of critiquing racial hierarchy in the curricular canon and dismantling white supremacy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is the second month of LEARN 2019-20, a Marginal Syllabus co-developed with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwp.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Writing Project (NWP)<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/ncte.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)<\/a>. Each month of the 2019-2020 academic year, we\u2019ll collaboratively read and discuss an article, published in four different NCTE journals, that investigates the intersection of literacy and equity. Refer to <a href=\"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/campaigns\/literacy-equity-remarkable-notes-learn-marginal-syllabus-2019-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the 2019-20 syllabus<\/a> for information on all the annotatable readings, which will go \u201clive\u201d on the first Monday of each month, along with related events hosted by the National Writing Project.<\/p>\n<h4>December Topic: Disrupting the canon with Spider-Man for racial justice<\/h4>\n<blockquote><p>Fortunately, schools, especially English classrooms, can be spaces to challenge these manifestations of White supremacy. Teaching Reynolds\u2019s <em>Miles Morales: Spider-Man<\/em> disrupts canonical wisdom about what \u201ccounts\u201d as a valuable text.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/via.hypothes.is\/https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/EJ1084Mar19Miles.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>&#8220;Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Reimagining the Canon for Racial Justice&#8221;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As part of our close study of this text, guest readers Latrice Ferguson and Christopher Rogers joined the Marginal Syllabus team to talk about the article with this month\u2019s partner authors, Mario Worlds and Henry \u201cCody\u201d Miller.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"725\" height=\"408\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qOyMmTrf_yo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This month we will read together an argument made by Mario Worlds and Henry \u201cCody\u201d Miller for English educators to challenge the racial hierarchy of canonical literacy curricula and teach <em>Miles Morales: Spider-Man<\/em> (Jason Reynolds, 2017). The authors highlight a specific rationale for the inclusion of the book in secondary Language Arts curriculum while taking aim at the way traditional texts most often situate racism in our country\u2019s past and can be approached in school as\u00a0 \u201ctimeless\u201d or \u201cuniversal. In these ways, both texts and schools can fail to support discourse about modern issues facing students of color.<\/p>\n<p>The potential Worlds and Miller see in <em>Miles Morales: Spider-Man<\/em> lies in the ways that Miles\u2019 identity, circumstances, and the \u201crestorying\u201d of Spider-Man collectively takes aim at contemporary inequities among both school and society. This article details how key features of Miles\u2019 story, namely a White teacher portrayed as a villain and the school-to-prison pipeline viewed as a criminal enterprise, support a critical reading of the role schools play in exacerbating social inequality. The authors offer a host of possible text pairings to accompany this superhero story at the same time they highlight the work of educators organizing online employing the hashtag <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/DisruptTexts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#DisruptTexts<\/a>. This reading is a call to action for English teachers to change the texts students encounter in the classroom to dismantle a racial hierarchy schools can perpetuate.<\/p>\n<h4>Join the Annotated Conversation<\/h4>\n<p>We invite you to read \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/via.hypothes.is\/https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/EJ1084Mar19Miles.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Reimagining the Canon for Racial Justice<\/a>,\u201d and annotate the text with your own thoughts, reactions, and questions. Annotations may be added using the web annotation tool <a href=\"https:\/\/web.hypothes.is\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hypothesis<\/a>. To add your own annotations, as well as to respond to others, <a href=\"https:\/\/web.hypothes.is\/start\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sign up for your free account<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Share your annotations as you read or any time throughout the month of December. We also encourage you to use this reading and the opportunity to annotate however the Marginal Syllabus best suits your interests&mdash;organize a study group among colleagues, bring a class you are teaching to participate in this online discussion either publicly or privately, engage as an individual, or connect this text and conversation to other interest-driven activities.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image attribution: Abijithka <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our December text for Marginal Syllabus examines how a book, <\/em>Miles Morales: Spider-Man<em>, by Jason Reynolds, exemplifies possibilities for a new type of literary canon.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":13660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[949],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13662,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659\/revisions\/13662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}