Dr. Leah Panther is an associate professor of literacy education in the Tift School of Education at Mercer University at the Atlanta campus since 2018. She has taught preschool through higher education across urban, suburban, rural, and international school settings. Her experiences with teaching, teacher leadership, non-profits, and research center on literacy instruction in urban educational contexts to support culturally and linguistically diverse adolescents. Her work has been published in The Reading Teacher, Teachers College Record, and The Journal of Family Strengths.
A classroom researcher spent a year studying the instruction of a teacher who pairs multimodal te... more A classroom researcher spent a year studying the instruction of a teacher who pairs multimodal texts with Shakespeare to disrupt the canon.
Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-... more Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-worked in collaborative conversations and place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their local Georgia communities. By examining the process of "looking for it," as one youth researcher puts it, this article explores three inquiry practices Georgia youth use to identify and sustain community language and literacy practices: personal storytelling, walking histories, and breaking bread. These community literacies resulted in youth having a stronger sense of self and community and understanding the relationship between them. Additionally, the practices spurred critical thinking, historical inquiry, and socioemotional learning. Community exploration through community literacies created the foundation for place-based language, literacy, and history research to take root and flourish. KEYWORDS place-based learning; community collaboration; community literacies I want to see people understand that educations not something that's boxed in, not something that you can all put in a book. You have to go out there and look for it.-Naiser, 15 aiser, a self-selected pseudonym, defines education as "not something that's boxed in" or "you can all put in a book", rather, at the heart of her advice is moving beyond the traditional four walls of a text, classroom, and school building. This advice comes from two years as a youth co-researcher in the Linguistic Justice Collaboration (LJC); a collaborative whose mission is to identify, design, and sustain the languages, literacy practices, and histories of Georgia's diverse geographical and cultural communities. This work means putting teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-into collaborative conversations and place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their communities. Within this article, we explore how eight different LJC projects have gone "looking for it", as Naiser puts it, and what youth have taught us about identifying and sustaining community language and literacy practices in our middle and high school English classrooms.
For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of lite... more For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of literacy. Memes are compact units of cultural transmission, a multimodal design that imitates society and culture (Dawkins, 2006; New London Group, 1996). Memes’ intertextual layers of images, words, and design reflects popular culture and society, thus reading a meme is a complex meaning making process that demands language, literacy skills, and connections to global issues and themes (Duff & Zappa-Hollman, 2013). Further, memes are composed by creators who leverage design to “package a message for a target culture” (Beskow, Kumar, & Carley, 2020, p. 2) which, when examined, can raise sociopolitical consciousness (Brikich & Barko, 2013). This presentation reports the findings from a mixed methods multiple case study of a virtual critical memetic analysis intervention used with adolescents to support comprehension and meaning making. The interventions focused on the, “ability to engage with and question all parts of the meme (re)production and consumption cycle” (Harvey & Palese, 2018). Findings include the elements of the intervention that supported students’ meaning making from memes and how meme composition is an act of resistance for youth during a time of social isolation and racial unrest (Arlington, 2018)
This paper recounts how a group of faculty members in an urban teacher education program at a res... more This paper recounts how a group of faculty members in an urban teacher education program at a research university in the Midwestern United States is attempting to restructure teacher preparation using Hollins’ theory of teaching as an interpretive process (TIP) (Hollins, 2011, 2015). Organized into three sections, we first present a conceptual frame articulating our understanding of TIP (Hollins, 2011, 2015) in contrast to traditional models; second, an account of our struggles as teacher educators and scholars of teacher education to reconstruct our conceptions of teaching and learning to teach in light of TIP, including a description of a tool we have utilized to help teacher candidates understand and internalize TIP; and fourth, implications of our work with thoughts on moving forward.
Lupus erythematosus panniculitis is a rare variant of lupus erythematosus. We present the case of... more Lupus erythematosus panniculitis is a rare variant of lupus erythematosus. We present the case of a young man with ulcerative colitis treated with mesalazine and a history of recurrent painful and indurated lesions on his face. A diagnosis of lupus profundus was made taking in account the clinical manifestations and the histological and immunofluorescence findings. An excellent initial response and stabilization of the dermatosis was achieved with a combined treatment with antimalarial drugs and systemic corticosteroids.
This article explores a bi/multilingual second-grade classroom as students explore the stories of... more This article explores a bi/multilingual second-grade classroom as students explore the stories of their names, a literacy practice that sustains the Latinx students' heritage language and grows their literacy voices. My mother used to tell me the story of how as a little girl she always loved my name, and she knew that Alicia was going to be the name she gave her firstborn daughter. Knowing this story always helped me love my name, even though growing up, my first name was mispronounced by everyone, especially by teachers. I remember my fifth-grade teacher calling me by my middle name, Diana, because she said "it sounded normal." At first, I felt that correcting those that mispronounced my name was not that big of a deal, but it was. It was important because it was my identity, it was my mom's story. (Alicia Dacosta; all names are pseudonyms)
A classroom researcher spent a year studying the instruction of a teacher who pairs multimodal te... more A classroom researcher spent a year studying the instruction of a teacher who pairs multimodal texts with Shakespeare to disrupt the canon.
Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-... more Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-worked in collaborative conversations and place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their local Georgia communities. By examining the process of "looking for it," as one youth researcher puts it, this article explores three inquiry practices Georgia youth use to identify and sustain community language and literacy practices: personal storytelling, walking histories, and breaking bread. These community literacies resulted in youth having a stronger sense of self and community and understanding the relationship between them. Additionally, the practices spurred critical thinking, historical inquiry, and socioemotional learning. Community exploration through community literacies created the foundation for place-based language, literacy, and history research to take root and flourish. KEYWORDS place-based learning; community collaboration; community literacies I want to see people understand that educations not something that's boxed in, not something that you can all put in a book. You have to go out there and look for it.-Naiser, 15 aiser, a self-selected pseudonym, defines education as "not something that's boxed in" or "you can all put in a book", rather, at the heart of her advice is moving beyond the traditional four walls of a text, classroom, and school building. This advice comes from two years as a youth co-researcher in the Linguistic Justice Collaboration (LJC); a collaborative whose mission is to identify, design, and sustain the languages, literacy practices, and histories of Georgia's diverse geographical and cultural communities. This work means putting teachers, researchers, and community members-including youth-into collaborative conversations and place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their communities. Within this article, we explore how eight different LJC projects have gone "looking for it", as Naiser puts it, and what youth have taught us about identifying and sustaining community language and literacy practices in our middle and high school English classrooms.
For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of lite... more For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of literacy. Memes are compact units of cultural transmission, a multimodal design that imitates society and culture (Dawkins, 2006; New London Group, 1996). Memes’ intertextual layers of images, words, and design reflects popular culture and society, thus reading a meme is a complex meaning making process that demands language, literacy skills, and connections to global issues and themes (Duff & Zappa-Hollman, 2013). Further, memes are composed by creators who leverage design to “package a message for a target culture” (Beskow, Kumar, & Carley, 2020, p. 2) which, when examined, can raise sociopolitical consciousness (Brikich & Barko, 2013). This presentation reports the findings from a mixed methods multiple case study of a virtual critical memetic analysis intervention used with adolescents to support comprehension and meaning making. The interventions focused on the, “ability to engage with and question all parts of the meme (re)production and consumption cycle” (Harvey & Palese, 2018). Findings include the elements of the intervention that supported students’ meaning making from memes and how meme composition is an act of resistance for youth during a time of social isolation and racial unrest (Arlington, 2018)
This paper recounts how a group of faculty members in an urban teacher education program at a res... more This paper recounts how a group of faculty members in an urban teacher education program at a research university in the Midwestern United States is attempting to restructure teacher preparation using Hollins’ theory of teaching as an interpretive process (TIP) (Hollins, 2011, 2015). Organized into three sections, we first present a conceptual frame articulating our understanding of TIP (Hollins, 2011, 2015) in contrast to traditional models; second, an account of our struggles as teacher educators and scholars of teacher education to reconstruct our conceptions of teaching and learning to teach in light of TIP, including a description of a tool we have utilized to help teacher candidates understand and internalize TIP; and fourth, implications of our work with thoughts on moving forward.
Lupus erythematosus panniculitis is a rare variant of lupus erythematosus. We present the case of... more Lupus erythematosus panniculitis is a rare variant of lupus erythematosus. We present the case of a young man with ulcerative colitis treated with mesalazine and a history of recurrent painful and indurated lesions on his face. A diagnosis of lupus profundus was made taking in account the clinical manifestations and the histological and immunofluorescence findings. An excellent initial response and stabilization of the dermatosis was achieved with a combined treatment with antimalarial drugs and systemic corticosteroids.
This article explores a bi/multilingual second-grade classroom as students explore the stories of... more This article explores a bi/multilingual second-grade classroom as students explore the stories of their names, a literacy practice that sustains the Latinx students' heritage language and grows their literacy voices. My mother used to tell me the story of how as a little girl she always loved my name, and she knew that Alicia was going to be the name she gave her firstborn daughter. Knowing this story always helped me love my name, even though growing up, my first name was mispronounced by everyone, especially by teachers. I remember my fifth-grade teacher calling me by my middle name, Diana, because she said "it sounded normal." At first, I felt that correcting those that mispronounced my name was not that big of a deal, but it was. It was important because it was my identity, it was my mom's story. (Alicia Dacosta; all names are pseudonyms)
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