Literacy and Learning in Times of Crisis : Emergent Teaching Through Emergencies

In this collection, Literacy and Learning in Times of Crisis: Emergent Teaching Through Emergencies, the contributors offer insights from theoretical, historical, and pedagogical lenses and these critical insights emerge out of their academic, scholarly, and personal experiences of teaching during crises. In some cases, authors have taught while battling COVID, and others have done so while addressing and acknowledging school-based violence. While some teach the analysis of the discourse of crisis, others critique the missteps of policy-making during calamity. More so, some authors examine the finesse of micro-teaching at emotional levels; others find the means to develop macro-structures of programmatic curriculum. Literacy and Learning in Times of Crisis highlights the educational decision making that educators have used to cope with the dilemmas that they and their students have faced at the turn of the millennium. Specifically, contributors to this collection offer a broad range of experiences, expertise, and engagement with pedagogy during emergencies that we currently face but also frame issues of emergencies that will inevitably challenge educators in the future.

Co-editors Sara P. Alvarez, Yana Kuchirko, Mark McBeth, Meghmala Tarafdar, and Missy Watson bring varying expertise and knowledge about pedagogy to their editorial efforts on this collection. All are faculty members of the City University of New York, instructing a wide diversity of students at CUNY’s many campuses. In the largest public university in the nation, they have each supported students’ learning through dire national emergency events, such as 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, highly publicized police violence as well as other large-and-small-scale crises.