[Reader-list] Stirring Up Justice: Adolescents reading, writing, and changing the world

[Chintan Girish Modi]

*Stirring Up Justice: Adolescents reading, writing, and changing the world*

* *

By Jessica Singer and Ruth Shagoury



Teaching a diverse population of adolescents to be writers, readers, and
active citizens requires fundamental changes in how we approach curriculum
development, teaching strategies, and student roles in the classroom. Our
goal as educators is to create classrooms where students learn to ask
critical questions, support one another, and work toward positive social
change. These kinds of learning communities form when students are taught
direct skills and strategies and when they are provided with creative
invitations to become educated and actively participating citizens. Literacy
and individual action are at the heart of this curriculum; as Christensen
(2000) wrote, “reading and writing are ultimately political acts” (p.
vi).When the relevance of reading and writing is demystified for students,
they begin to understand its power in their lives.



Jessie Singer (first author) taught adolescent writers at a public urban
high school located in the heart of southeast Portland, Oregon, in the
United States. The high school’s student population is just under 1,400, and
20% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-cost lunch. Jessie’s
students drew from a mostly working class population, with about 25%
speaking a language other than English as their first language. The school’s
student makeup, much like the state of Oregon, is predominately Caucasian
(77%). In her English classes, Jessie works to teach her students literacy
skills so that they may begin to see themselves as serious writers and
readers (e.g., Christensen, 2000; Fletcher, 1993; Harvey, 2002; Zemelman &
Daniels, 1998). Students do not just write to complete tests or to fill
pages; instead, they engage in the pursuit of writing for authentic purposes
and public audiences.For two years (2000–2002), Ruth Shagoury (second
author) from Lewis & Clark College was a resident researcher in Jessie’s
class for one to two

mornings each week. Ruth participated in the activities of the classroom and
assisted in creating the curriculum. She took field notes, interviewed
students, and collected samples of their work. As coresearchers and
coauthors, we (Jessie and Ruth) collaborated on this project with two
ninth-grade classes to study how the creation and completion of a unit on
social activism could become a study of literacy in action. Students were
key informants in this process.



In order to take a close look at students working toward positive change, we
framed research questions to help document our findings and notice patterns
in student outcomes. The following were our research questions:



• How can adolescents use literacy practices to have agency in their world?

• How do students define social activism?

• What teaching practices support a diverse student population to expand
their reading and writing abilities?

• How do we differentiate instruction while keeping high expectations for
all students?



This article describes a high school curriculum that encourages students to
explore issues of activism and progressive social change. We share our work
with a reading and writing community that used skills, creativity, rigor,
and community building to create meaningful and relevant outcomes. The names
of all students in this article are pseudonyms.



(From the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 49:4 December
2005/January 2006)



To download the entire article, visit
http://people.stfx.ca/aorr/538%20Winter%202008/Course%20readings/Stirring%20up%20justice%20Adolescents%20reading,%20writing,%20and%20changing%20the%20world.pdf