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As a novice teacher, I often journaled about my experiences with the complexities and nuances of teaching pedagogy, administrative conflicts, failure to fit it, and difficulty with student engagement. My writing served as an anchor as I continued to develop, learn, and teach in my own classroom. After my first year in the classroom, I was not sure if I would return due to political and bureaucratic complaints that I had formed over a year working full time in the education system. I felt voiceless, as if my identity as an educator was being erased. When I made the transition to public school in my second year as an English Language Development teacher, I struggled with the same voicelessness I had at the beginning of my career. So, I flipped everything I knew about teaching and engagement and tossed the lesson plan out of the window and shared power with my students. The process of writing and actively engaging with lived experience was something I began to teach my own students and to instill in them as they became advocates and storytellers of their own. This is their story.

Principal preparation program pedagogy and course delivery are critical to principal candidates' preparedness to lead. Research around online program delivery, however, is relatively sparse. This study examined the extent to which university-based educational leadership programs offered fully online (FOL) pathways to the principalship, as well as program geographic locations and institutional characteristics most associated with FOL offerings.

Data were collected through website reviews and coding checks, and then merged with national postsecondary data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, classification tree analysis, and geographic information system (GIS) mapping.

Roughly 43 percent of all reviewed programs offered an FOL pathway to licensure, which suggests substantial growth in FOL offerings over the last 10 years. While a number of factors were deemed important, geographic characteristics were most associated with FOL status. GIS mapping further illustrated findings with a visual landscape of program FOL offerings.

This study considered only programs for which degrees or certificates could be earned without ever visiting campus in-person for classes. Hybrid programs were excluded from the analysis.

Findings make a clear call for more research into online principal preparation program design and course delivery.

This study provides the first overview of fully online university-based principal preparation programs in the United States while also offering a previously unavailable landscape of all programs specifically leading to licensure. It is also the only higher education study to map or investigate factors associated with FOL offerings and raises questions about prior FOL higher education research.

This chapter describes the curriculum for one nine-week unit called “The United States of America and Native America.” This unit was part of a two-year course for students in grades 11 and 12 at a small, independent school in the Southwest. The school began as a US government–sponsored boarding school in the nineteenth century, tasked with assimilating Indigenous children into white US culture. Over the past century the school's mission has evolved significantly. During the nineteenth century, efforts were made to locate and recruit students in far-flung rural (mostly Hispanic) communities in New Mexico without access to a local high school. This effort has since expanded to offering a college preparatory education to local populations, who are less likely to enjoy private school or college educations, and to international students. This chapter gathers research about “decolonizing education” (Brayboy & Lomawaima, 2018; Jacob, 2018; Fryberg & Markus, 2007; and Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014) and considers the extent to which the curriculum is effective for students who identify as Indigenous.

This chapter documents a commitment to culturally responsive teaching through the implementation of multimodal text sets in English language arts teacher education. Using a communities of inquiry framework inspired by justice-driven approaches to literacy learning, preservice teachers at New Mexico State University designed curriculum and instruction that considered the importance of students' digital literacies to meaning-making and communication. Through the presentation of a course unit that explores how multimodal text sets inspire literacy learning that is culturally relevant for students whose racial, linguistic, and cultural identities are often absent in mainstream school curricula, this chapter highlights the notion that digital literacies are accessible to and supportive of the minority serving educational institutions of New Mexico. Preservice teachers first considered what topics sparked their curiosity or inspired them to step into learning before exploring topics to which their future students will be drawn to investigate in language arts. Integrating two frameworks for creating text sets, preservice teachers then selected a targeted, canonical text around which to build their sets and supported it with multimodal scaffolding texts. Following the work and reflections of one focal student, this chapter offers unit descriptions, snapshots, and implications of personalized literacy experiences with creating inquiry-based, multimodal text sets in a secondary methods course.

We need a locally relevant curriculum because it is engaging and leverages community knowledge strengths. However, new teachers are not always aware of the resources available to make a locally relevant curriculum. Here in New Mexico, Los Alamos is a location with many resources detailing its purpose and existence. These resources coupled with so much notoriety inside and outside the state make Los Alamos a place that lends itself to culturally relevant instruction. Specifically, graphic novels provide a unique medium for students and teachers alike to start learning about the city that started the Atomic Age: Los Alamos and begin applying that knowledge more broadly. I, being a student and a teacher from New Mexico, offer my own understanding of a locally relevant curriculum utilizing three graphic novels about Los Alamos, its people, and its stories.

This chapter explores the challenges and opportunities of using multiliteracies pedagogy and multimodality in a nontraditional English language arts classroom. The paper highlights the dynamic and contemporary nature of the multiliteracies pedagogy and multimodal literacy practices proposed by the New London Group (1996). This paper makes connections through the analysis of scholarship and practice and provides solutions for educators to promote learning that is meaningful, engaging, and relevant to students. The focus is on promoting literacy instruction that values students' creativity, language, and culture to cultivate analysis, inquiry, and agency.

In the process of obtaining my degree in the Dual License Program at the University of New Mexico, I have been asked numerous times to reflect on past educational experiences so I may then relate those experiences to my teaching style in the classroom. Reflecting on these positive and negative experiences, I was able to focus on which experiences I can replicate or revise to provide the most meaningful experiences for my students. Having chosen English language arts as my concentration field for teaching, I have focused primarily on how I can use my former experiences in past English classes to create positive educational experiences for my students. This process included reflecting on books that mattered to me, books I saw myself in, and then creating similar literacy experiences for my future students and how I can turn those experiences into a culturally relevant teaching pedagogy.

Six New Mexican teachers are featured in their own words and classrooms. Using transcribed interviews and classroom photos, each K-12 teacher shares their perspectives about curriculum and pedagogy with a focus on the students and content of New Mexico. Common themes include social-emotional learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, critical and embedded literacy, place-based curriculum, and teaching for New Mexican Indigenous and Hispanic populations.

New Mexico (NM) students live complex intersectional lives; thus, drama is a tool that grants students the keys to understanding social justice, resistance, and, most importantly, healing. For drama to be used as a social justice tool, elements of the outside world need to be brought into the classroom. The following uses Teatro Campesino as a radical educational framework that recenters the lost voices of NM students. The intersectional nature of NM students presents a unique opportunity for teachers where drama and Teatro Campesino thrive as its aides in dismantling the education system as a way to provide more equity in the classroom. The classroom space should celebrate and discuss all social locations and struggles. But the space has been hostile, and taboo subjects such as mental health and suicide are supposed to be left at the door, but this is not possible. Using drama, specifically as a learning tool and aspect of the classroom grants students the opportunity to learn more about themselves and others through a safe space. NM youth are susceptible to a lot, including, but not limited to historical trauma, high levels of stress, and a variety of commitments that extend well beyond the classroom. Because of these added aspects of student life, being a K–12 student in New Mexico is different from where the majority of the curriculum comes from. Thus, using Teatro Campesino and the musical Dear Evan Hansen is not only appropriate to bring into the classroom but also critical for equity to prevail.