Linda Christensenhas taught high school language arts in Portland, Oregon for almost 40 years. She is the Director of the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis & Clark College. She currently co-teaches an 11th-grade language arts class at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, with Dianne Leahy. She is the author of Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word and Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom, both published by Rethinking Schools.