Intertextuality and "Successful" Urban Adolescent African American Males: Beyond a Single Reading Test

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: African American Male Students and Notions of Self and Success

Abstract

Findings from this paper are comprised from a larger study consisting of nine adolescent African American males at a single-gender urban middle school participating in semi-structured interviews using Photo Elicitation methods to reflect on their school literacy experiences. The aims of this paper are two-fold. First, it describes the literacy experiences of “successful” urban adolescent African American males in one English Language Arts classroom. Second, it explicates how these students perceived these literacy experiences across subgroups and ultimately what it enabled them to do as human beings, moving past the single story of “failure”. This paper seeks to build on the many affective and educationally meaningful benefits of empowering students with print and non-print texts using theories of intertextuality.

Author

• Yolanda Stewart, Columbus City Schools