ABSTRACT
American author and editor George William Curtis is quoted in Bartlett (1919) as saying “while we read history we make history.” I would venture the same could be claimed for what we write. This chapter, written from my perspective on adolescents’ changing literacies in currently changing times, will one day be history, but for the present at least, it frames possibilities for reaching/ teaching young people in a way that attempts to make sense of who they are, where we’ve been as a field, and where we might be headed if we take them and their changing literacies into account. Toward addressing this purpose, I have divided the chapter into three sections:
• a brief description of adolescent literacy as it is presently reflected in major research reports, practitioner journals, and policy mandates
• an equally brief tracing of the social and cultural constructions of adolescence and adolescents that have played a role in bringing us to the point we are at, pedagogically speaking
• a more extended look at what is missing or taken for granted in those constructions that might serve as guideposts in how we reach/teach adolescents as literate beings with their own agendas for learning and communicating.
