Jill Ewing Flynn, professor in the Department of English, contributed to Reckoning With the Whiteness of English Education: Transformative Pedagogies in English Language Arts and Beyond (Teachers College Press, September 2023).

This volume directly confronts persistent iterations of whiteness in English education through advancing antiracist dispositions and practices. Readers will find a variety of practical implementations of teaching and learning in English Language Arts, English literacy and English as a second language. Chapter authors are educators who describe various teaching projects located in K–12 and teacher education contexts. Each chapter includes a dialogic reaction by an acclaimed and experienced scholar to further extend thought around complex themes.

Reckoning With the Whiteness of English Education encourages a more pedagogical view of how to engage teacher and student thought, feeling and action in ways that combat white supremacy in English education across schools and society. Readers will learn how to disrupt the reproduction of white supremacy in curriculum and instruction. 

Flynn’s chapter, “The Power of Writing in a Critical Examination of Whiteness,” provides a commentary on two of the book's chapters by other authors ("An Opportunity to Be Better: Whiteness Pedagogies in English Education" by Samuel Jaye Tanner and "A Voice From an Inner Room: Using Personal Narrative Writing to Strengthen the Racial Competency of White Students" by Paul F. Walsh), making thematic connections among them and raising questions. She argues that scholars who conduct critical examinations of whiteness in English and English education should continue to draw on writing as a tool for reflection, action and change.