OJELA Call for Manuscripts Information

Types of Manuscripts Sought

In each issue, we publish a range of information and ideas. Our Call for Manuscript has details on current and future issue's focus. We welcome submissions and inquiries for the following sections of the journal.

Feature Articles

• are often, but not exclusively, concerned with topics designated by the issue theme. Themes for upcoming issues are included in current issues of OJELA and on the OCTELA website.

Classroom Voices

• includes short descriptions of classroom ideas and activities, poetry and literacy vignettes.

OJELA CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

Volume 50.1
Winter/Spring 2010
Deadline: December 15, 2009

Making Story Telling

Stories are everywhere in school - in our language arts classrooms, in the lunchrooms, in the hallways. Teachers tell stories to their students to convey life lessons and encourage appropriate behavior; students tell stories to their teachers to validate a common experience and explain an absence. Teachers tell stories to each other to celebrate a successful lesson or to reflect upon a student's behavior; students tell stories to each other to complain about their teachers and to constitute a sense of community with their peers.

Increasingly, we are learning to use these stories - to read and reread them, to tell and retell them, to analyze and reanalyze them - to our benefit, to learn about teaching, learning, and schooling. Specifically, teachers are learning to use stories as research and are learning to tell stories to learn about heir own pedagogical practices and the structures of their classrooms. Further, teachers are learning to use storytelling as a genre in their classrooms, to teach and use narrative across grade levels for multiple purposes.

For the themed issue, Making Story Telling, we invite stories, stories as research, stories about teaching story, story as pedagogy, stories about students and teachers writing together.

Volume 50.2
Summer/Fall, 2010
Deadline: April 30, 2010

Teaching for the
Long Term

Nancy Sommers says her work as an English teacher and writing program director is “simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting,” consisting of “overlapping deadlines, breathless dashes from meeting to memo, from conference to classroom, each day an unfinished draft.” And, at the end of the day, there’s no way to know if she’s doing it well. She desires “clarity of vision.”

The clarity we seek is complicated as we are increasingly reminded of the state of our profession: a tsunami of retirements in the next 5 years; 50% of beginning educators leaving for more lucrative or less stressful positions; increasing standardization; and the slippery nature of the discipline itself.

Given these realities how do we encourage good English teaching for the long term? Does it make sense to expect clarity of vision in a discipline marked by ambiguity and metaphor?

For the themed issue Teaching English Long Term, we invite voices from a wide spectrum: new, retired, mentors, end-of-career, administrators, curriculum coaches, students. Which classroom practices or institutional environments keep us vested for the long haul? From seating arrangements to pedagogical vision; from school schedules to mentorship programs; from grammar instruction to alternative assessment; how do we build and nurture a community of enthusiastic English teachers?

Questions? Jeff Buchanan • English Dept., Youngstown State University, One University Plaza, Youngstown, Ohio 44555 • jmbuchanan@ysu.edu

Types of Manuscripts Sought In each issue, we publish a range of information and ideas. Our Call for Manuscript has details on current and future issue's focus. We welcome submissions and inquiries for the following sections of the journal. Feature Articles • are often, but not exclusively, concerned with topics designated by the issue theme. Themes for upcoming issues are included in current issues of OJELA and on the OCTELA website. Classroom Voices • includes short descriptions of classroom ideas and activities, poetry and literacy vignettes.
OJELA CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS
Volume 50.1 Winter/Spring 2010 Deadline: December 15, 2009 Making Story Telling		Stories are everywhere in school - in our language arts classrooms, in the lunchrooms, in the hallways. Teachers tell stories to their students to convey life lessons and encourage appropriate behavior; students tell stories to their teachers to validate a common experience and explain an absence. Teachers tell stories to each other to celebrate a successful lesson or to reflect upon a student's behavior; students tell stories to each other to complain about their teachers and to constitute a sense of community with their peers. Increasingly, we are learning to use these stories - to read and reread them, to tell and retell them, to analyze and reanalyze them - to our benefit, to learn about teaching, learning, and schooling. Specifically, teachers are learning to use stories as research and are learning to tell stories to learn about heir own pedagogical practices and the structures of their classrooms. Further, teachers are learning to use storytelling as a genre in their classrooms, to teach and use narrative across grade levels for multiple purposes. For the themed issue, Making Story Telling, we invite stories, stories as research, stories about teaching story, story as pedagogy, stories about students and teachers writing together.

Volume 50.2 Summer/Fall, 2010 Deadline: April 30, 2010 Teaching for the Long Term		Nancy Sommers says her work as an English teacher and writing program director is “simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting,” consisting of “overlapping deadlines, breathless dashes from meeting to memo, from conference to classroom, each day an unfinished draft.” And, at the end of the day, there’s no way to know if she’s doing it well. She desires “clarity of vision.” The clarity we seek is complicated as we are increasingly reminded of the state of our profession: a tsunami of retirements in the next 5 years; 50% of beginning educators leaving for more lucrative or less stressful positions; increasing standardization; and the slippery nature of the discipline itself. Given these realities how do we encourage good English teaching for the long term? Does it make sense to expect clarity of vision in a discipline marked by ambiguity and metaphor? For the themed issue Teaching English Long Term, we invite voices from a wide spectrum: new, retired, mentors, end-of-career, administrators, curriculum coaches, students. Which classroom practices or institutional environments keep us vested for the long haul? From seating arrangements to pedagogical vision; from school schedules to mentorship programs; from grammar instruction to alternative assessment; how do we build and nurture a community of enthusiastic English teachers?
Questions? Jeff Buchanan • English Dept., Youngstown State University, One University Plaza, Youngstown, Ohio 44555 • jmbuchanan@ysu.edu