Introduction

In the Introduction, we offer a model of how teachers, literacy coaches, writing project sites, and university scholars may create literacy communities within or beyond their classrooms as a means of creating more equitable learning for ethnically and linguistically diverse adolescent students to imagine, investigate, and articulate their future selves. While the literacy community described in this book uses reading and writing to connect Latina girls to science-related careers, we want to emphasize the way this book can serve as a model for literacy teachers and researchers to create communities of practice for underserved students in connection to any discipline or content area. This project values literacy as a point of access into disciplines too often made inaccessible for girls. It also provides a model for building communities of practice to support young women as they encounter gender barriers in school, the workplace, and their communities.