Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 140
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-1-4758-5364-3 • Hardback • April 2021 • $89.00 • (£68.00)
978-1-4758-5365-0 • Paperback • April 2021 • $34.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-4758-5366-7 • eBook • April 2021 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
Alice Hays is an assistant professor of education at California State University, Bakersfield where she works with teacher candidates. As a former secondary English teacher, she sees the importance of co-creating curriculum with educators currently in the classroom in order to support students’ engagement as well as inspiring their own pro-social behavior.
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1: Finding the Passion
Chapter 2: Reading the Novels
Chapter 3: Supporting Activities
Chapter 4: Taking Action
Chapter 5: From the Field
Appendices: Young Adult Novels by issues
Texts on empathy and agency in the classroom have overly saturated the market, but Hays’s contribution is refreshingly based on a useful, pedagogical approach from actual classroom practitioners. Filled with step-by-step directions, graphic organizers, and heads-up alerts for potential tricky spots, Engaging Empathy and Activating Agency might just be the practical guidebook high school teachers have been waiting for. Hays leads readers through classroom implementation, though practitioners should allow abundant time for planning and consideration before putting suggested pedagogies into practice, owing to the importance of the subject material. Although much of the literature review was left out of this text to focus on implementation over theory (a laudatory choice), a thorough works-cited section provides readers with access to the abundance of research undergirding this work. Readers should also avail themselves of the detailed young adult literature summaries in the appendix as both a starting point and a way to expand currently utilized textual choices. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
— Choice Reviews
Engaging Empathy and Activating Agency is a refreshingly vivid account of how teachers can cultivate students’ inquiry stances to act on their worlds and create change. Through tangible and adaptable activities and detailed and scaffolded instruction, Dr. Hays provides a clear path for those of us wishing to engage students with both literature and life. Accompanied by real-life examples, this work shows us both the successes and challenges of curriculum that pushes the boundaries of traditional classroom settings and offers a way forward in our particularly trying times.
— Ashley S. Boyd, assistant professor, English education, Washington State University
In Engaging Empathy and Activating Agency, Alice Hays demonstrates how young adult literature can be utilized by teachers and students to interrogate social issues and build action plans towards addressing those issues. Hays offers a coherent curriculum unit plan and set of resources for secondary English Language Arts teachers to take up and implement in their own classrooms. The important inclusion of teacher and student voices show the impact of uniting literary analysis with a call to social action.
— Stephanie Reid, Assistant Professor in Literacy Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Montana