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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W
Fall 2023
WANTED: Teachers Teaching
by Daniel Moreno, NCLR Editorial Assistant
North Carolina Literature
In addition to reading Jane Haladay’s essay in the feature section of this issue, link to the instructor’s Service Learning assignment and Reflection Essay assignment.
DANIEL MORENO is working on his master’s degree in English at ECU where he served as an Editorial Assistant for NCLR from fall 2022 through summer 2023.
One of NCLR’s latest initiatives is to actively solicit more pedagogical content – focused, of course, on North Carolina literature. In 2022, North Carolina Humanities included ECU among its Community Research grant recipients for the NCLR Editor’s “Teaching North Carolina Literature” proposal. The goal of this project is to create what Carolina K-12 Director Christie Norris calls a “professional community of support” in which educators can contribute and have access to a collection of teaching materials focused on North Carolina Literature. The NCLR editorial staff and collaborators recognize the value of literature as a method of discussing difficult subjects such as race, sexuality, religion, politics, family discord, and more by approaching it through the lens of another person’s story. And literature that is set in a place that students recognize and relate to can connect students to the literary subject matter as well as evoke a sense of pride in them for their state. “I love witnessing my students’ delight,” Editor Margaret D. Bauer reports, “when I introduce them to a novel set in their home town – even a tiny place like Lumberton ( Jill McCorkle) or Chinquapin (Randall Kenan) – in my own North Carolina literature classes. ‘These are internationally known writers,’ I tell them.” With this grant funding, NCLR’s editorial staff and teaching and content expert collaborators have been engaging since summer 2022 with writer-teachers who have employed North Carolina literary texts in their various classrooms, from K-12 through college, toward determining how best to share their experiences – and their course materials – with other teachers. According to Bauer, this new targeted effort toward receiving pedagogical submissions expands NCLR’s mission “to preserve and promote the state’s rich literary history” across the state and beyond. In the following paragraphs, you will read about the projects brought to fruition during the grant period. To start, we call your attention to the essay by UNC Pembroke Professor Jane Haladay in this issue’s special feature section on Native American Literature of North Carolina. It is rare that NCLR includes the same content in both the print and online issues, but we’re making an exception this year to include Dr. Haladay’s Randall