In this article, I focus on the critical literacies of Black and Latinx youth participating in a youth participatory action research project, as well as the pedagogies that engaged those literacies. Critical ethnographic study of the Youth Equity Agents' literacy practices revealed that they enacted a practice of reading school, wherein they…

The authors describe and analyze the strengths and challenges of a 10-year summer writing program that provides out-of-school academic support for adolescent writers who are not yet college and career ready. The two-week program takes place at the university where faculty and school district English language arts teachers work with approximately…

Current scholarship suggests that many youths identify with hip-hop, especially youths of color. Study of this artistic form has been suggested as a means of helping youths acquire and become fluent in literacy practices. This article explores how the use of a hip-hop literacies curriculum addressed the literacy skills of urban ninth-grade English…

This article discusses the viability of reading culturally relevant literature aloud to urban middle school youth. The findings from a research study are shared and guidelines for implementing a culturally sensitive read aloud program in your own middle school or high school classroom are discussed. Anecdotes from students involved in the study…

Through a multimodal media production literacy intervention in an extended-day program, culturally and linguistically diverse youth developed valuable information and communication technology literacies, including: (1) Specific how-to skills useful in future academic, professional, social, and civic contexts; (2) Abilities to critically interpret…

In this article, the authors discuss the potential for emancipatory pedagogies, which include practices like the use of digital tools and popular culture, to undo deficit constructions of Black and Latino males and their literacy practices. They discuss why such practices are not more readily available and visible in traditional urban school…

In response to a thirty-year pattern of elevated high school dropout rates and a multi-generational disengagement from traditional school-based literacy practices among urban community members, the project on which this article reports asked a group of city students to document photographically what they perceived as the purposes of, impediments…

Analyzes popular culture as it relates to the expression of universal human values, namely the desire and struggle for freedom from tyranny and oppression. Examines popular culture as the everyday social experience of marginalized students as they confront, make sense of, and contend with social institutions such as schools, the mass media,…

Recent studies undertaken with sociocultural perspectives on literacy offer a framework through which to explore poetry in youth's lives. This article draws upon works within New Literacy Studies to provide a glimpse of urban high school youth's experiences in a unique program called Poetry for the People (P4P). It identifies some ways in which…

Using the framework of social literacies studies, this article illustrates the central role of pleasure as both the motivation for and result of rap composition. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with four young adults who are part of a rap collective, the author identifies three key sources of pleasure in composition: (1) Discourse…

Many deep-rooted problems in urban areas of the United States--including crime, poverty, and poor health--correlate with illiteracy. The statistics reported by organizations such as the National Alliance for Urban Literacy Coalitions are telling. Urban citizens who cannot read sufficiently are at a clear disadvantage in life. They are more likely…