Writing a Better Future: The Social Work of Poetry in Urban Learning and Teaching

• In Event: 63.084 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-18 - Urban Education Across Settings and Contexts

Abstract

This study explores the post-high school lives and literacies of a group of student poets who attended an alternative high school where they embraced writing as a life skill. Using mixed qualitative methods this research takes a longitudinal approach and explores participants’ memories of the poetry class that they reported as having a positive impact on their lives and the evolution of these young-adults as writers and the functions of literacy in their post-high school lives. My work argues that for students who have experienced educational injustices, positive literacy‐learning spaces have the potential help students develop agentive identities and to be armed with literacy as a life skill or social tool.

Author

• Logan Alexis Manning, The University of Texas - San Antonio