Community

Abstract

Dear JAAL Readers, Community provides the context within which language and literacy develop and thrive. As such, it is no surprise that community shares a root word with communication, from the Latin, communicare, to share. Members of the same community are often interdependent, helping each other reach common goals. They also share features, which, for humans, include attitudes, interests, and beliefs, along with sufficient differences to offer varying contributions to their respective communities. Many kinds of literacy-related communities are invoked in this issue's feature articles and departments. This is why we chose Communities as the theme for this issue, the last one of JAAL Volume 62. The pieces in this issue speak to the shared pursuits and interdependence of communities that are organized around literacy, as well as to the diversity that enriches them. For instance, this issue's commentary, “College Reading and Studying: The Complexity of Academic Literacy Task Demands” by Jodi Patrick Holschuh, describes how reading required of college students differs from the skills that youths bring to college from their previous experiences. She argues for addressing their needs by helping them develop the generative strategies and stamina they need for the ever evolving expectations of their classes, as well as their current and future workplaces. The feature articles, too, situate literacies in communities within a wide array of classroom, digital, and public spaces around the globe. The first piece, “Using Applied Theater Practices in Classrooms to Challenge Religious Discrimination Among Students” by Kiran Vinod Bhatia and Manisha Pathak-Shelat, shows how applied theater practices helped media literacy students in India become more aware of religious discrimination in their communities. In “A Threat or Just a Book? Analyzing Responses to Thirteen Reasons Why in a Discourse Community,” Brooklyn Walter and Ashley S. Boyd delineate the responses of youths and their parents to the reading of a controversial popular novel in a Northwestern U.S. community. Several feature articles offer alternative ideas about locating literacy in classroom communities. “Classics in Their Own ‘Words’: Analytical Remixes in a Land of Essays,” by Jonathan Baize, describes what happened when the student community in an AP Literature course composed multimodal book trailers instead of essays as their summative assessments. In “The Closer the Better? The Perils of an Exclusive Focus on Close Reading,” Meaghan Brewer points to the perils of a steady diet of close reading when contemporary societies demand a more active, generative reading process. Erin Hope Whitney explains how she supported one young woman's reconceptualization of writing in “Reenvisioning Writing Pedagogy and Learning Disabilities Through a Black Girls’ Literacies Framework.” In “Building Bridges From Classrooms to Networked Publics: Helping Students Write for the Audience They Want,” Jayne C. Lammers and Judith H. Van Alstyne explore the results when the teacher of a high school elective course extended the classroom community to online creative writing spaces. “‘I'd Still Prefer to Read the Hard Copy’: Adolescents’ Print and Digital Reading Habits,” a mixed-methods study by Chin Ee Loh and Baoqi Sun that involved thousands of Singaporean youths, shares provocative results about youths’ online and digital reading preferences. Our Text & Resource Review Forum editors suggest texts and resources that will enrich the community of educators who read JAAL, as well as the communities of learners they serve. In “Brownsville and Einstein: Expanding Potential Text Attributions,” a contribution to his Texts and Identities department, Alfred W. Tatum argues for exposing youths to books from a wide range of fields, from football to quantum mechanics, as a way “to nurture their social and scientific consciousness.” “Exploring New Ways of Literacy Instruction Through Practitioner Research” is the latest installment by Josephine Peyton Marsh and Deborah Gonzalez in the Research department they share, in alternating issues, with Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Finally, in “Creating Cultural Sustenance in the Classroom,” M. Kristiina Montero reviews Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, an edited volume by Django Paris and H. Samy Alim, for the Professional Resources department she leads. All three columns invite readers into conversation with the authors and each other. The scholarship on communities of practice suggests that membership in such groups does not just support individuals emotionally and relationally, although in complicated, unsettling times, such support is valuable in and of itself. The benefits of community extend beyond the interpersonal and into the domain of learning, linking both realms in inextricable ways. Similarly, we hope the contents of this issue will help you feel connected to a broad community of like-minded, supportive literacy professionals, and at the same time, promote new learning for you and your students. Best, Kathy and Kelly