Understanding the importance of ethos in composing the “everyday” new literacies classroom

James Nahachewsky


This article examines the impact of a senior English teacher’s ethos in composing, with her students, a new literacies classroom.  This is a paradigm case where ever-changing technical stuff and a new ethos are encouraged in the literacy events of the classroom context.  Utilizing a metaphor of ‘classroom as text’, we better understand the importance of the teacher’s own literacies, and her role as co-author of new, situated classroom literacies.  In this case, language and literacy teaching becomes tangential through multi-textual readings and compositions that enact an ellipsis where certain previously privileged texts and approaches are omitted.  In this way, through a reciprocal relationship, the teacher fosters rather than defines her students’ emergent literacies and critical thinking development.  In turn, the students influence their teacher’s conceptions of what it means to be literate; what textual readings and compositions are meaningful to their situated language learning in digital times.

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