Additionally, we are also aware that public education has not lived up to its fullpotential—as a great equalizer, a leveler of the playing field—for the very peoplewho need it the most. Urban public schools that serve a large demographic oflow-income students of color are often on the chopping block when it comes toreceiving adequate funding to renovate facilities, modernize technology, replaceoutdated books, hire teachers early, and ensure that all students have access to afull-time staff of nurses, therapists, and counselors.

On the one hand, students will receive encouragement from variouspeople to engage critically in their literacy practices inside and outside schools asthey better understand their agency, resolve, and resilience. On the other hand,students will be encouraged to generate counternarratives regarding the reproduc-tion of power asymmetries and deficit stereotypes applied to many Black youth.This latter point is important to attend to, given the reality that some communityprograms, like schools, are steeped in monolithic norms, inequities, and racism.It becomes important, then, for students as well as teachers and researchers tothink deeply about how, what, when, and why Black youth participate in literacy

ccording to Kinloch (2011), literacy research hasgradually shifted from focusing on schools as primary units and sites of study toliteracy practices across multiple sociopolitical contexts, including families, homes,and other nonschool environments. The rapid development of digital commu-nication and online social networking has also produced new literacies and newforms of expression (Banks, 2011; Kress, 2010; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). Theways adolescents and adults, particularly those with racialized identities, engage inliteracy practices across diverse contexts disrupt deficit narratives that have longpositioned them as at risk, struggling, and underprepared.

dditionally,culturally responsive and/or relevant teaching inEnglish language arts classrooms has been height-ened to deconstruct biases and create safe spaces formarginalized Black girls. With culturally inclusiveand supportive classroom libraries and activitiesthat employ the CFT model, English language artseducators can empower Black girls’ voices and ac-tions to be enslaved no more

Inother words, if we only prepare Black youth tobe critical of the ways that mainstream mediaoutlets uphold white supremacy and negativelycharacterize them, we miss an opportunity to il-lustrate the role that youth-produced media canplay in working toward social change. With thisin mind, it is important for educators to explorehow a critical media literacy pedagogy can sup-port youth in using new media genres to produceand distribute their own countermedia texts. Production and distributioncomponents of critical media pedagogy go hand in hand and involve prepar-ing youth to be agents of change by producing “counter-knowledge throughthe manipulation of media tools” (Morrell, 2008, p. 158)

Weagree with Morrell (2008) that it is critical foreducators to prepare all youth “to critique thesemaster media narratives [and provide youthwith] the skills to use new media technology astools in the struggle for social and educationaljustice” (p. 158). As critical English educators, wefeel a particular responsibility to equip teacherswith transformative tools that work toward heal-ing Black youth and supporting them in speakingback to and against racial violence

As emerging researchers, the students were in-troduced to the five steps of critical praxis andunpacked each of the steps as it applied to the iden-tified problem. For Step 2, I shared two kinds ofresearch: (1) the knowledge that we already possessand know from our own experience, and (2) theknowledge that is gained from formal research inthe exterior world by seeking articles, books, news-papers, magazines, and peer-reviewed online sites.

Educational policy has placed teachersin a precarious corner of needing to address the ongoing needs and ques-tions in their classrooms while also navigating worries that administrators,parents, and observers may see these efforts as indoctrination.

Far more expan-sive than developing students’ emotional skills, English educators and thechildren, youth, and families with whom they work must help remake andrepair the world.

Although this is an issue that affects students and teach-ers in all content areas, it is the oppressive and symbolically violent use ofthe essentials of our discipline—words, rhetoric, and modes of communica-tion—that sticks to us most in the ongoing aftermath of the election

I wroteabout the importance of 1) holding time and space—whether in classrooms, community centers, or online—to support youth literacies, and 2) listening to andvaluing the perspectives of youth writers (see Haddix,Everson & Hodge, 2015

Her statementis significant because it acknowledges thatthere are some writing practices that areexpected, valued, and legitimized in schoolcontexts, while there are others that remaininvisible and are deemed less importan

f I had to choose one strategy as the centerpiece of myteaching, it would be the read-around. It provides boththe writing text for my classroom and the social textwhere our lives intersect and we deepen our connectionsand understandings across lines of race, class, gender,nationality, and sexual orientation

This kind of work takes time. We can’t race througha half-dozen novels. I’m forced to make difficult choicesabout what I include and what I leave out

But Iwas the one who had applied, pulled together a résuméwith the help of my colleagues, and apparently answeredtheir questions in the right way No one who gave me theaward even watched me teach.