Mary Frances (Molly) Buckley-Marudas | Cleveland State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Mary Frances (Molly) Buckley-Marudas

English journal, Mar 1, 2024

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Jul 22, 2015

Understanding what happens when teachers embrace digital media for literacy learning is critical ... more Understanding what happens when teachers embrace digital media for literacy learning is critical to realizing the potential of learning in the digital era. This article examines some of the ways that a high school teacher and his students leverage digital technologies for literacy learning in their humanities classrooms. The author introduces the concept of layering as essential not only to understanding the possibilities of digital media in classrooms but also to harnessing digital technologies for literacy learning. The article is organized around three key aspects—multiple texts, collaborative texts, and simultaneous texts—that are central to the author's conceptualization of layering. Whereas the near-constant stimulation and text density associated with learning environments that are saturated with digital media, networked devices, and always-on technologies are often understood as interferences to what is often considered “real” learning, the author argues that they are fundamental components of the learning environment.

English Journal, 2018

This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece o... more This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece of work in school that wasn’t tied to a grade. Students’ responses to this invitation are examined in an effort to revise some of the typical approaches to teaching writing.

English Journal, Mar 1, 2019

After attending a performance of Macbeth with ninth graders who questioned the director’s casting... more After attending a performance of Macbeth with ninth graders who questioned the director’s casting decisions, the authors revisited their assumptions about race and teaching the play.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education Journal, Jun 1, 2020

English Journal, Nov 1, 2015

The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling ti... more The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling tiles were missing. The stage was a mere eight inches off the ground and some sections didn't meet at the same height.A closer look revealed much more. The audience of more than 90 students was engrossed. Some students arrived with what seemed to be an expectation of boredom but had shifted their bodies toward the stage, where student actors were performing monologues. All of the performances focused on issues of human rights, but there was a range of topics, tone, and style. At one point, Manna was on stage performing a monologue from Aja's play Footprints Aren't the Only Thing Left Behind in Zimbabwe. Aja stood tensely in the back of the room, mouthing the words that Manna spoke: "They don't even use it! They got that food lookin like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts in dat hospital's cavernous chapel. See, they care more about the food they're getting then the medical care of the people." Manna enacted Aja's stage directions: "Brings his left hand up to his waist then shakes it to all of the syllables in the next sentence. Then brings both of his hands to his sides." These student-created performances broke through many of the unspoken, yet accepted, assumptions about research, engagement, creativity, and creation in high school.IntroductionThe research unit is a well-established component of the high school English curriculum. In most classrooms the culminating project of this unit is a paper that asks students to report their research in writing. In most cases, this paper is expected to adhere to a specific structure, style, and format. Teachers have long expressed their discontent with the rigidity of the traditional research paper, yet it remains a fixture in most schools. As early as the 1980s when Ken Macrorie introduced the I-Search paper, teachers have called for alternative ways to engage students in research and argued that ELA teachers should be able to develop the required skills in more authentic and intellectually stimulating ways.According to the NCTE/IRA (http://www .ncte.org/standards/ncte-i ra) Standards for English Language Arts, students are expected to "Conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems" (Standard 7) and "Use a variety of technological and information resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge" (Standard 8). If the intent of the research paper is to ensure that students demonstrate these skills, we believe there are meaningful alternatives to the research paper.In this article, we, a university adolescent literacy professor (Molly) and a high school humanities teacher (Joshua), offer a dynamic and multifaceted alternative to the research paper. We offer playwriting as research. We believe that playwriting, as designed and enacted in the following account, is a powerful way to teach the research project. Our approach is unique in that students are required to represent their research not only in writing but also in dramatic performance. Thus, research is not an end in itself, but rather works in the service of rich learning about human rights.Starting with the premise that playwriting and other arts-based literacies are complex representations of research, we contend that creating opportunities for students to use rigorous research processes in the service of a creative production has implications for deepening students' capacities as researchers and integrating the arts into classrooms that are increasingly limited by test-driven pedagogies. This article presents our analysis of what happened when Joshua asked his students to conduct research on a human rights issue and represent their research in a five-scene play. We argue that asking students to enact, instead of simply report, research has implications for fostering critical inquiry and engaging students in research that matters. …

Multicultural learning and teaching, Apr 12, 2016

This inquiry into the digital discussion forums tied to two English classes in an urban public hi... more This inquiry into the digital discussion forums tied to two English classes in an urban public high school examines the potential of new media to honor the multicultural composition of classrooms and support teachers to design culturally sustaining pedagogies. Given the increasing significance of digital media as well as the growing diversity of our classrooms, it is critical that educational researchers, practitioners, and policymakers think about the ways in which new media could support multicultural teaching and learning. This work draws on socio-cultural constructions of literacy, resource pedagogies, and critical literacy frameworks. The author uses case study methodologies to understand how digital media, specifically networked technologies, support secondary level students as they wrestle with complex issues related to race, language, and culture. This article offers three central ideas that emerged from an analysis of student participants' interactions across the networked spaces that were linked to the intellectual work of their English classes. This work has implications for educators at all levels who are committed to addressing issues related to race, language, class, and other identities that are salient in all classrooms. The author puts forth a pedagogical approach for sustaining multiculturalism in the context of rigorous academic work. This approach intentionally draws on digital media to cultivate culturally responsive education.

English Leadership Quarterly

7 introduction in the Wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, th... more 7 introduction in the Wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, the United States witnessed a surge in youth activism, civic engagement, and political participation related to gun violence and gun laws. Fueled by anger, loss, and grief, young people from Parkland sparked a nationwide movement: they took to the streets, met with elected officials, initiated petitions, and prompted a town hall aired on national television. On March 24, 2018, hundreds of thousands of youth gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the youth-led March for Our Lives. On the same day, hundreds of thousands more marched in 800 other cities across the country.

Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies

Structured Abstract Purpose – To examine the results of requiring a book review podcast project w... more Structured Abstract Purpose – To examine the results of requiring a book review podcast project within an Adolescent and Young Adult Literature (YAL) course in a teacher education program. This inquiry pays special attention to the ways in which sound can be used to elicit and evoke listener emotion, and enrich and expand pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) technological repertoires as they move forward as teachers in this digital era. Design – This inquiry into PSTs’ experiences creating and publishing a book review podcast as an explicit part of their teacher preparation program draws on critical literacy traditions and critical inquiry-based pedagogies. The research design included collection of book review podcasts, written reflections from PSTs after completing the podcasts, written peer feedback, and ethnographic field notes. The author uses qualitative methods including critical incident and descriptive review analyses to gain insight into how PSTs engaged an invitation to write, record, and publish a book review podcast. The work is grounded in a conceptual framework around socio-cultural constructions of literacy, new media ecologies, and arts-based literacies. Findings – In order to create an engaging book review podcast, PSTs must be supported to think about the value and purpose of the sonic as part of the whole composition and provided challenging, sustained opportunities to experiment with different sonic elements as part of their composing processes. Although used in different ways, sound was a critical variable in podcast production. Sound played a vital role in engaging listeners by drawing on and manipulating elements such as pausing, voice inflection, intonation, and music that are not characteristic of the typical book reviews. Despite PSTs’ engagement with and interest in learning how to use and compose with these additional elements, many found this activity to be time consuming and difficult; having no previous exposure to this technology. The nature of this assignment and the novelty of the podcasting platform also shifted some of the typical discourse patterns in online discussion boards from that of academic dialogue, to a heightened sense of encouragement and commendation. Practical Implications – This inquiry contributes to the literature on teacher education, especially literacy education and English education, and has implications for understanding the unique opportunities and challenges of entering the teaching profession in this digital era. For teacher educators willing to commit to supporting and extending PSTs’ digital literacies, including podcasts in particular, a number of recommendations on designing a similar project are included, with a focus on inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogies.

Proceedings of the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting

Proceedings of the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting

The New Educator, 2016

ABSTRACT This inquiry into a course on adolescent literacy education uses a case-study and descri... more ABSTRACT This inquiry into a course on adolescent literacy education uses a case-study and descriptive review analysis to understand how multimodal spaces engage preservice and in-service teachers’ sense making around concepts of race, language, and culture. Drawing on critical feminist and practitioner inquiry frameworks, this article presents what a teaching team learned when designing, enacting, and reflecting on efforts to engage students in hard talk. Three ideas surfaced from the events that occurred before, during, and after a class that occurred in the middle of the course. This study has implications for educators committed to critical pedagogies, multicultural education, and teacher education.

International Journal of Multicultural Education, 2019

Drawing on multimodal, sound-based data, this study examines how high school students harnessed e... more Drawing on multimodal, sound-based data, this study examines how high school students harnessed elements of sound and music for multicultural learning within collaborative research and radio podcasting. Data were collected from a variety of sources, including field notes, final media projects, and audio and video footage of students’ collaborative media production processes and interviews. Findings reveal multivocal and divergent engagements in the sound editing process as well as multimodal struggles in which students leveraged sound to express nuanced views about racism, culture, and privilege. This study has implications for educators teaching multicultural perspectives and critical media literacy studies.

English Journal, 2018

This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece o... more This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece of work in school that wasn’t tied to a grade. Students’ responses to this invitation are examined in an effort to revise some of the typical approaches to teaching writing.

The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling ti... more The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling tiles were missing. The stage was a mere eight inches off the ground and some sections didn't meet at the same height.A closer look revealed much more. The audience of more than 90 students was engrossed. Some students arrived with what seemed to be an expectation of boredom but had shifted their bodies toward the stage, where student actors were performing monologues. All of the performances focused on issues of human rights, but there was a range of topics, tone, and style. At one point, Manna was on stage performing a monologue from Aja's play Footprints Aren't the Only Thing Left Behind in Zimbabwe. Aja stood tensely in the back of the room, mouthing the words that Manna spoke: "They don't even use it! They got that food lookin like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts in dat hospital's cavernous chapel. See, they care more about the food they're getting the...

This manuscript describes an inquiry into preservice teachers’ (PSTs) experiences composing a dig... more This manuscript describes an inquiry into preservice teachers’ (PSTs) experiences composing a digital story around the concept of adolescent literacy as part of an English language arts methods course built on critical literacy and critical inquiry traditions. Part of the assignment was to examine adolescent literacy “in these times,” paying attention to the literacy lives of current adolescents. This inquiry used qualitative methods to gain insight into the ways digital storytelling about literacy might support PSTs to forge new connections with youth. The article reports three key findings about the role and value of including digital storytelling as a required part of an educator preparation program.

The Canadian Journal of Action Research

This article shares insights from the experiences of three high school practitioners and two univ... more This article shares insights from the experiences of three high school practitioners and two university faculty who participated in a school-university-based action research program as a voluntary part of the teachers’ professional development. The three high school practitioners conducted action research projects around questions that stemmed from and were relevant to their own teaching practice. As part of the action research program, the practitioners were paired with university faculty to support the research. Building on practitioner inquiry traditions and critical case study methodologies, this study used qualitative methods to explore the experiences of practitioner action research processes. Drawing on in-person meeting notes and reflective memos, four key ideas emerged: Infrastructure, We are all Partners in Education, Engaging Pathway for Experienced Teachers, and Challenges. Insights gained from this inquiry will have implications for professional practices in the areas...

Participatory Literacy Practices for P-12 Classrooms in the Digital Age

English language arts teachers must tend to the proliferation of easily accessible technological ... more English language arts teachers must tend to the proliferation of easily accessible technological tools and storytelling platforms for the teaching of stories. It is critical that educators teach with and about these spaces in order to develop young people's literacies. This chapter examines an English language arts unit that required students to create an audio podcast to support students in the process of making meaning, sharing ideas, and interpreting texts. The chapter offers insights into the podcasting process for students and teachers, including ideas about technical aspects of production, lessons learned, and recommendations for future practice. The chapter discusses how this project draws on adolescents' participatory literacies and how it developed practicing teachers' participatory literacies and pedagogical approaches.

English journal, Mar 1, 2024

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Jul 22, 2015

Understanding what happens when teachers embrace digital media for literacy learning is critical ... more Understanding what happens when teachers embrace digital media for literacy learning is critical to realizing the potential of learning in the digital era. This article examines some of the ways that a high school teacher and his students leverage digital technologies for literacy learning in their humanities classrooms. The author introduces the concept of layering as essential not only to understanding the possibilities of digital media in classrooms but also to harnessing digital technologies for literacy learning. The article is organized around three key aspects—multiple texts, collaborative texts, and simultaneous texts—that are central to the author's conceptualization of layering. Whereas the near-constant stimulation and text density associated with learning environments that are saturated with digital media, networked devices, and always-on technologies are often understood as interferences to what is often considered “real” learning, the author argues that they are fundamental components of the learning environment.

English Journal, 2018

This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece o... more This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece of work in school that wasn’t tied to a grade. Students’ responses to this invitation are examined in an effort to revise some of the typical approaches to teaching writing.

English Journal, Mar 1, 2019

After attending a performance of Macbeth with ninth graders who questioned the director’s casting... more After attending a performance of Macbeth with ninth graders who questioned the director’s casting decisions, the authors revisited their assumptions about race and teaching the play.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education Journal, Jun 1, 2020

English Journal, Nov 1, 2015

The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling ti... more The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling tiles were missing. The stage was a mere eight inches off the ground and some sections didn't meet at the same height.A closer look revealed much more. The audience of more than 90 students was engrossed. Some students arrived with what seemed to be an expectation of boredom but had shifted their bodies toward the stage, where student actors were performing monologues. All of the performances focused on issues of human rights, but there was a range of topics, tone, and style. At one point, Manna was on stage performing a monologue from Aja's play Footprints Aren't the Only Thing Left Behind in Zimbabwe. Aja stood tensely in the back of the room, mouthing the words that Manna spoke: "They don't even use it! They got that food lookin like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts in dat hospital's cavernous chapel. See, they care more about the food they're getting then the medical care of the people." Manna enacted Aja's stage directions: "Brings his left hand up to his waist then shakes it to all of the syllables in the next sentence. Then brings both of his hands to his sides." These student-created performances broke through many of the unspoken, yet accepted, assumptions about research, engagement, creativity, and creation in high school.IntroductionThe research unit is a well-established component of the high school English curriculum. In most classrooms the culminating project of this unit is a paper that asks students to report their research in writing. In most cases, this paper is expected to adhere to a specific structure, style, and format. Teachers have long expressed their discontent with the rigidity of the traditional research paper, yet it remains a fixture in most schools. As early as the 1980s when Ken Macrorie introduced the I-Search paper, teachers have called for alternative ways to engage students in research and argued that ELA teachers should be able to develop the required skills in more authentic and intellectually stimulating ways.According to the NCTE/IRA (http://www .ncte.org/standards/ncte-i ra) Standards for English Language Arts, students are expected to "Conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems" (Standard 7) and "Use a variety of technological and information resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge" (Standard 8). If the intent of the research paper is to ensure that students demonstrate these skills, we believe there are meaningful alternatives to the research paper.In this article, we, a university adolescent literacy professor (Molly) and a high school humanities teacher (Joshua), offer a dynamic and multifaceted alternative to the research paper. We offer playwriting as research. We believe that playwriting, as designed and enacted in the following account, is a powerful way to teach the research project. Our approach is unique in that students are required to represent their research not only in writing but also in dramatic performance. Thus, research is not an end in itself, but rather works in the service of rich learning about human rights.Starting with the premise that playwriting and other arts-based literacies are complex representations of research, we contend that creating opportunities for students to use rigorous research processes in the service of a creative production has implications for deepening students' capacities as researchers and integrating the arts into classrooms that are increasingly limited by test-driven pedagogies. This article presents our analysis of what happened when Joshua asked his students to conduct research on a human rights issue and represent their research in a five-scene play. We argue that asking students to enact, instead of simply report, research has implications for fostering critical inquiry and engaging students in research that matters. …

Multicultural learning and teaching, Apr 12, 2016

This inquiry into the digital discussion forums tied to two English classes in an urban public hi... more This inquiry into the digital discussion forums tied to two English classes in an urban public high school examines the potential of new media to honor the multicultural composition of classrooms and support teachers to design culturally sustaining pedagogies. Given the increasing significance of digital media as well as the growing diversity of our classrooms, it is critical that educational researchers, practitioners, and policymakers think about the ways in which new media could support multicultural teaching and learning. This work draws on socio-cultural constructions of literacy, resource pedagogies, and critical literacy frameworks. The author uses case study methodologies to understand how digital media, specifically networked technologies, support secondary level students as they wrestle with complex issues related to race, language, and culture. This article offers three central ideas that emerged from an analysis of student participants' interactions across the networked spaces that were linked to the intellectual work of their English classes. This work has implications for educators at all levels who are committed to addressing issues related to race, language, class, and other identities that are salient in all classrooms. The author puts forth a pedagogical approach for sustaining multiculturalism in the context of rigorous academic work. This approach intentionally draws on digital media to cultivate culturally responsive education.

English Leadership Quarterly

7 introduction in the Wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, th... more 7 introduction in the Wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, the United States witnessed a surge in youth activism, civic engagement, and political participation related to gun violence and gun laws. Fueled by anger, loss, and grief, young people from Parkland sparked a nationwide movement: they took to the streets, met with elected officials, initiated petitions, and prompted a town hall aired on national television. On March 24, 2018, hundreds of thousands of youth gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the youth-led March for Our Lives. On the same day, hundreds of thousands more marched in 800 other cities across the country.

Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies

Structured Abstract Purpose – To examine the results of requiring a book review podcast project w... more Structured Abstract Purpose – To examine the results of requiring a book review podcast project within an Adolescent and Young Adult Literature (YAL) course in a teacher education program. This inquiry pays special attention to the ways in which sound can be used to elicit and evoke listener emotion, and enrich and expand pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) technological repertoires as they move forward as teachers in this digital era. Design – This inquiry into PSTs’ experiences creating and publishing a book review podcast as an explicit part of their teacher preparation program draws on critical literacy traditions and critical inquiry-based pedagogies. The research design included collection of book review podcasts, written reflections from PSTs after completing the podcasts, written peer feedback, and ethnographic field notes. The author uses qualitative methods including critical incident and descriptive review analyses to gain insight into how PSTs engaged an invitation to write, record, and publish a book review podcast. The work is grounded in a conceptual framework around socio-cultural constructions of literacy, new media ecologies, and arts-based literacies. Findings – In order to create an engaging book review podcast, PSTs must be supported to think about the value and purpose of the sonic as part of the whole composition and provided challenging, sustained opportunities to experiment with different sonic elements as part of their composing processes. Although used in different ways, sound was a critical variable in podcast production. Sound played a vital role in engaging listeners by drawing on and manipulating elements such as pausing, voice inflection, intonation, and music that are not characteristic of the typical book reviews. Despite PSTs’ engagement with and interest in learning how to use and compose with these additional elements, many found this activity to be time consuming and difficult; having no previous exposure to this technology. The nature of this assignment and the novelty of the podcasting platform also shifted some of the typical discourse patterns in online discussion boards from that of academic dialogue, to a heightened sense of encouragement and commendation. Practical Implications – This inquiry contributes to the literature on teacher education, especially literacy education and English education, and has implications for understanding the unique opportunities and challenges of entering the teaching profession in this digital era. For teacher educators willing to commit to supporting and extending PSTs’ digital literacies, including podcasts in particular, a number of recommendations on designing a similar project are included, with a focus on inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogies.

Proceedings of the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting

Proceedings of the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting

The New Educator, 2016

ABSTRACT This inquiry into a course on adolescent literacy education uses a case-study and descri... more ABSTRACT This inquiry into a course on adolescent literacy education uses a case-study and descriptive review analysis to understand how multimodal spaces engage preservice and in-service teachers’ sense making around concepts of race, language, and culture. Drawing on critical feminist and practitioner inquiry frameworks, this article presents what a teaching team learned when designing, enacting, and reflecting on efforts to engage students in hard talk. Three ideas surfaced from the events that occurred before, during, and after a class that occurred in the middle of the course. This study has implications for educators committed to critical pedagogies, multicultural education, and teacher education.

International Journal of Multicultural Education, 2019

Drawing on multimodal, sound-based data, this study examines how high school students harnessed e... more Drawing on multimodal, sound-based data, this study examines how high school students harnessed elements of sound and music for multicultural learning within collaborative research and radio podcasting. Data were collected from a variety of sources, including field notes, final media projects, and audio and video footage of students’ collaborative media production processes and interviews. Findings reveal multivocal and divergent engagements in the sound editing process as well as multimodal struggles in which students leveraged sound to express nuanced views about racism, culture, and privilege. This study has implications for educators teaching multicultural perspectives and critical media literacy studies.

English Journal, 2018

This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece o... more This article focuses on how adolescent writers took up an invitation to write and share a piece of work in school that wasn’t tied to a grade. Students’ responses to this invitation are examined in an effort to revise some of the typical approaches to teaching writing.

The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling ti... more The paint of the drama studio was peeling in several places and more than a handful of ceiling tiles were missing. The stage was a mere eight inches off the ground and some sections didn't meet at the same height.A closer look revealed much more. The audience of more than 90 students was engrossed. Some students arrived with what seemed to be an expectation of boredom but had shifted their bodies toward the stage, where student actors were performing monologues. All of the performances focused on issues of human rights, but there was a range of topics, tone, and style. At one point, Manna was on stage performing a monologue from Aja's play Footprints Aren't the Only Thing Left Behind in Zimbabwe. Aja stood tensely in the back of the room, mouthing the words that Manna spoke: "They don't even use it! They got that food lookin like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts in dat hospital's cavernous chapel. See, they care more about the food they're getting the...

This manuscript describes an inquiry into preservice teachers’ (PSTs) experiences composing a dig... more This manuscript describes an inquiry into preservice teachers’ (PSTs) experiences composing a digital story around the concept of adolescent literacy as part of an English language arts methods course built on critical literacy and critical inquiry traditions. Part of the assignment was to examine adolescent literacy “in these times,” paying attention to the literacy lives of current adolescents. This inquiry used qualitative methods to gain insight into the ways digital storytelling about literacy might support PSTs to forge new connections with youth. The article reports three key findings about the role and value of including digital storytelling as a required part of an educator preparation program.

The Canadian Journal of Action Research

This article shares insights from the experiences of three high school practitioners and two univ... more This article shares insights from the experiences of three high school practitioners and two university faculty who participated in a school-university-based action research program as a voluntary part of the teachers’ professional development. The three high school practitioners conducted action research projects around questions that stemmed from and were relevant to their own teaching practice. As part of the action research program, the practitioners were paired with university faculty to support the research. Building on practitioner inquiry traditions and critical case study methodologies, this study used qualitative methods to explore the experiences of practitioner action research processes. Drawing on in-person meeting notes and reflective memos, four key ideas emerged: Infrastructure, We are all Partners in Education, Engaging Pathway for Experienced Teachers, and Challenges. Insights gained from this inquiry will have implications for professional practices in the areas...

Participatory Literacy Practices for P-12 Classrooms in the Digital Age

English language arts teachers must tend to the proliferation of easily accessible technological ... more English language arts teachers must tend to the proliferation of easily accessible technological tools and storytelling platforms for the teaching of stories. It is critical that educators teach with and about these spaces in order to develop young people's literacies. This chapter examines an English language arts unit that required students to create an audio podcast to support students in the process of making meaning, sharing ideas, and interpreting texts. The chapter offers insights into the podcasting process for students and teachers, including ideas about technical aspects of production, lessons learned, and recommendations for future practice. The chapter discusses how this project draws on adolescents' participatory literacies and how it developed practicing teachers' participatory literacies and pedagogical approaches.