ABSTRACT
These two quotes suggest that literacy development extends beyond cognitive domains that focus on learning how to read text, that is, “educational texts, visual, printed and electronically mediated, [which] typically seem and claim to speak in one voice, for all possible perspectives and with competence and comprehensiveness” (Freebody, 2003, p. 180). Du Bois (2001) suggested that the development of African
Americans is connected to larger goals of humanity and that wisdom is required to move beyond things that are momentarily popular to develop full human power. Upchurch (1996), a once troubled African American teenager who spent his teenage years in and out of the criminal justice system after quitting school while in the fourth grade, suggests that his literacy development led to a reconstruction of self. He refers to the reconstruction as a “deniggerization” process that occurred after he read the words and ideas of authors, playwrights, and poets who taught him endless lessons that permeated his soul. He was then able to peel away painful layers of filth that covered him. He asserted that the layers of filth accumulated because of his feelings of invisibility connected to his upbringing in the Philadelphia ghetto where his identity was shaped. Later in his autobiographical text, he states:
The major goal of this chapter is to discuss how students’ identities and subjectivities interplay with their literacy development. The discussion centers on the identity/subjectivity of African American adolescents, particularly the ones living in impoverished communities in the United States and attending low-achieving schools. The discussion is anchored by a case study of teacher professional development conducted over a 19-month period in one of Chicago’s lowest performing schools where I supported one seventh-and one eighth-grade teacher to honor students’ adolescent and cultural identities as part of the literacy instruction they provided. Many of the students were in need of developing the human power Du Bois said needs to be developed and the social, intellectual, and psychological development that was missing in Upchurch’s life. These teachers share how their students’ literacy behaviors shifted and how their own beliefs about literacy instruction changed when they made pedagogical shifts that honored their students’ identities. Before proceeding with details from the qualitative case study, I share the rationale for honoring the identities of adolescents, particularly students of color, and the potential this honoring has on their literacy development and life outcomes.
