Chapter 4
“You Gotta Read It With Awake in You”: Marginalized High School Readers, Engagement, Agency, and Reading as Performance

Mellinee Lesley

As members of a homeroom reading tutoring group in an urban high school, six sophomore and junior students explored possible texts to read. Following is an excerpt from a transcript of the first reading tutoring session of the adolescent literacy group described in this study.

Mellinee:	Ms. S just printed this [poem bearing the title of the book it is published in] off of the Internet, “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.”
Lisa:	We gonna read this?
Mellinee:	We can read whatever you want, Lisa. What do you want to read? But this is Tupac Shakur's book of poetry. Have y'all read that?
Mando:	Are we, are we gonna read that?
Keonte:	I wanna read that. I done read the book.
Mellinee:	We can find it. We can get it online. And we can, we can get that one. We just want to know what you-all want to read. And, what all do you feel about that book?
Tara:	These all your books?
Mellinee:	Yeah, I'll share. I'm happy to share. So what do you-all think? [Group discussing quietly, passing around books.]
Keonte:	I wanna read this.
Mellinee:	Okay, so what do y'all think?
Shawna:	I like a lot of these books.
Mellinee:	Do they all sound good? Well, we can work our way through them. We've got a lot of time.
Tara:	I wanna read this book.
Keonte:	I wanna read this one.
Shawna:	I like that one and that one and the Hollis Woods.
Tara:	I wanna read all of 'em.
Mellinee:	Okay, well let's talk about this. Do you want to read them all together, or do you want to read different books?
Keonte:	I wanna read the one Lisa's [inaudible word]. [Laughing]
Shawna:	I wanna read 1, 2, 3, 4 books.
Mellinee:	Okay, well, let's choose. Let's take a vote.

A great deal has been written about struggling, at-risk, reluctant, marginalized, and resistant adolescent readers' lack of engagement with texts as a significant obstacle in their reading comprehension (Irvin, Buehl, & Klemp, 2006; Lenters, 2006; Tovani, 2000). In fact, research pertaining to adolescent literacy is fundamentally concerned with finding ways to foster comprehension through student engagement with school-based texts (Alvermann, 2001; Alvermann & Heron, 2001). The beginning vignette in this chapter, however, captures a different portrayal of marginalized, academically at-risk adolescents as fully engaged, enthusiastic readers.

As in other work that has examined the connections between self-selection of texts, self-regulation, and engagement for struggling adolescent readers (e.g., Tovani, 2000), the riddle of engagement for these students resided in their interpretive authority or ability to claim knowledge about a text afforded them within the tutorial setting. Selecting the texts to be read as a group of identified struggling high school readers was only the beginning. Through a yearlong endeavor of reading together with adult mentors, these students revealed that engagement with reading is not a dichotomous process of all or nothing (“I'm a reader” or “I'm not a reader”) or school-sanctioned texts versus nonschool or authentic texts (e.g., zines or teen-created magazines, websites, video games, graffiti). Rather, engagement involves a complex and contingent weaving together of definitions of literacy, agency, and reading identity within the context of multifaceted purposes for literacy. In this manner, adolescent engagement with texts is fluid and often mercurial in nature. Moje (2002) describes this phenomenon as a derivative of youth culture.

Translating such authentic practices of youth-driven literacies into classroom settings, however, is problematic. Guzzetti and Gamboa (2004) argue that simply adding new types of assignments such as zine projects for adolescents is not the seemingly axiomatic solution to translating youth literacies into classroom practice in the hope of fostering engagement with texts. Rather, a greater understanding of the complexities of adolescent engagement with print-based texts is needed. Based on their at-risk status for academic failure, the students involved in this study were all participants in the Communities in Schools (CIS) program, which is the nation's largest drop-out prevention program.

As an externally funded agency created to promote student success, CIS defines at-risk status based on a student's probability for dropping out of high school. Risk factors include the following:

failure of two or more classes
having not been promoted to the next grade level
pregnancy or teen parenthood
homelessness
eligibility for free lunch
eligibility for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
failure of a state-required standardized test
being on academic probation
currently in a family crisis
having an incarcerated parent

The high school in which this study took place is located in a low socioeconomic community composed of a predominantly minority population in a city in the southwestern United States. At the time of the study, the student body of the high school consisted of 48% African American students, 46% Latino students, and 4% white students. Seventy-nine percent of the student body was eligible to receive free or reduced-cost lunch. The school was also identified as a low-performing campus based on state-mandated standardized test scores. The reading group sessions occurred once a week.

Lesley, M. (2009). “You Gotta Read It With Awake in You”: Marginalized High School Readers, Engagement, Agency, and Reading as Performance. In J.C. Richards, & C.A. Lassonde (Eds.), Literacy Tutoring That Works (pp. 46-55). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Chapter 4 “You Gotta Read It With Awake in You”: Marginalized High School Readers, Engagement, Agency, and Reading as Performance

Mellinee Lesley

Chapter 4
“You Gotta Read It With Awake in You”: Marginalized High School Readers, Engagement, Agency, and Reading as Performance