Christensen demonstrates how she draws on students' lives and the world to teach poetry, essays, narratives, and critical literacy skills. Teaching for Joy and Justice reveals what happens when a teacher treats all students as intellectuals, instead of intellectually challenged. Part autobiography, part curriculum guide, part critique of today's numbing standardized mandates, this book sings with hope-born of Christensen's more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and teacher educator.