Activists and Writers: Student Expression in a Social Action Literacy Project

This article centers the stories of two eighth grade students in the context of a social action literacy project. Their teacher designed curriculum that scaffolded opportunities for them to address English language arts standards while speaking out for social change. The students’ responses to the project reveal their civic literacy practices, as they articulated complex political understandings through the application of reading, writing, and speaking skills and met related standards. The students and teacher’s experiences in the project also call for an expanded view of language use in standards-based literacy instruction so to support students’ civic engagement. Ultimately, the study of the project illustrates how English language arts curricula can reflect multiple paradigms, and the paper ends with related recommendations for teachers committed to both students’ literacy practices and civic expression.