How Students Use Their Cultural and Linguistic Knowledge to Transform Literacy Goals

Abstract

Black and Latinx youth frequently are asked to complete school tasks and activities without much focus on the knowledge and experiences they draw from to make sense of what they are being asked to do. Using culturally sustaining pedagogy as a framework, this work provides a clear example of the interactions, engagement, and learning that unfolded in a 9th grade English Language Arts classroom as broader goals of one lesson emerged through students sharing their lived experiences and concomitant understandings of the social world. This work provides a clear case for how to support the fullness of youths' identities as dynamic beings and provides evidence for how this does not detract from the goals of school activities, In fact, it enriches them and makes them meaningful.