Teaching ELA for CHANGE
What is Teaching ELA for CHANGE?
Teaching ELA for CHANGE means supporting students as they Challenge injustice to Help make a difference in the world by Asking and answering tough questions and Noticing ways to Get involved and Engaged in making the world a better place.
Teaching ELA for CHANGE helps secondary English language arts teachers bring critical literacy pedagogy into their classrooms. Here you’ll find practical suggestions for putting theory into practice, ready-to-use lesson ideas, actionable strategies, and honest reflections from years of teaching and research. My goal is to support you as you design engaging ELA experiences that support your students in changing the world.
About Dan Stockwell
A former high school English Language Arts teacher, Dan Stockwell, PhD, is an assistant professor of English Education at California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB). His research examines how secondary ELA teachers can enact critical literacy pedagogy—even within increasingly restrictive educational contexts.
This work grows out of concern over ongoing encroachments on teacher professionalism and autonomy, as well as mounting efforts to ban books and censor classroom discourse focused on social justice. Through teaching, research, and collaboration with educators, Dan seeks to advance critical literacy pedagogy and support teachers in engaging students as critical readers, writers, and thinkers capable of changing the world to make it more just.
Created for secondary ELA teachers, this space offers practical, research-informed ideas that can be used immediately in the classroom. You’ll find strategies for putting theory into practice, detailed lesson plans, classroom-ready approaches, and professional learning resources—all designed to help you and your students use literacy as a tool for understanding and changing the world.
Dan has published peer-reviewed work in English Journal, English Education, and California English. His book, Teaching for CHANGE in the ELA Classroom: Integrating Social Justice and Critical Literacy for Grades 9–12, was published by Routledge in 2025.
In addition to publishing, Dan presents at national, regional, state, and local conferences for secondary ELA teachers and has led a professional development webinar for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Dan also offers professional development workshops and webinars for secondary ELA teachers. Reach out to schedule a session.