Writing For and Sharing With a Community
The youth of our project consistently described and illustrated how they would be more motivated to write if they could share their efforts with the younger members of their communities for whom they are often responsible. City high school students frequently adopt caretaking roles for children out of necessity (to supplement the support provided by adults), the desire to find success in their own lives, and the longing to spare these youngsters the isolation these teens encounter.
In the photographs they took and the reflections they drafted, these young adults shared a resignation about their inabilities to engage with school literacy activities. But they expressed hope that they could serve Cartier Replica Watches as mentors for their young family members, interrupting the cycle of school failure. Teachers might encourage students to ask about the literacy achievement of the children who share their homes and neighborhoods—and we might learn more about the importance of these inquiries if we call on youth to depict these with both photographs and writings.
The children our high school students encounter via their numerous part-time jobs also comprise an authentic audience for adolescents’ writings and photographs. Markus’s image of a middle school-aged boy at a recreation center where he worked was accompanied by the following reflection:
“Trying to Be LeBron”
[T]his picture…shows that your education can take you further than a basketball. Every day I watch kids come to the recreation center and pretend to are basketball players such as LeBron James…thinking that this can be the way to riches and fame…. I tell them every day that school is more important than trying to be LeBron. I tell them to be you, and that education is the key to success instead of basketball.
While Markus played regularly with these children, he also urged them to consider the value of school and to pursue their academic responsibilities with the same verve they were committing to hoops. He suggested that these younger students might be a legitimate audience for his writing efforts, and that image-driven writing about his hopes for these early adolescents’ futures might be emphasized in our English classrooms.
The audiences for whom our high school students write also might include the broad range of adults who influence their lives, relationships to school, and literacy choices. Amanda photographed her grandmother at the local breakfast/lunch counter she managed and where Amanda worked. She described the role her grandmother played in her life and schooling—someone about and for whom we might ask young women and men to write:
“The Glue in My Life”
Without my grandma I would not be a senior in high school. I would not be at school every day trying to complete all of my assignments. I wouldn’t be filing for financial aid or even scouting for colleges. My grandma Cartier Replica is the glue in my life…. She tells me that I should just suck it up and go on even if sometimes I think I can’t and I will come out on top.
Amanda’s grandmother encouraged her literacy achievement, recognized Amanda for her English class accomplishments, and “sweated the details” when it came to completing English homework, a financial aid application, or writing a college essay.
Each of the TSE projects included public exhibitions of youths’ photographs and writings. Adolescents have shared their efforts in gallery spaces packed with friends, family, school personnel, and members of the community. Sharing their work with broader audiences—often of people these adolescents barely know, such as the photographers and preservice teachers who assisted us on those many Saturdays—has created important moments for them, as members of society, artists, writers, and social critics. But, of course, these writing, revision, and sharing activities—and, perhaps more important, the inclusion of youths’ lives—often do not fit neatly into our high school schedules.
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