School's Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice

important issues about teach- ing, learning, and defining literacy.The book assumes that traditional American school-based views of literacy are insufficient to address the needs of all learners.As a former public school teacher, I agree with this assumption.Indeed, few people would argue that all schools adequately serve all of their students.Among the problems with school-based literacy pedagogy is the top-down nature of our edu- cational system, in which decisions about curriculum, materials, and indeed what constitutes literacy are often made by policy-makers and administrators out of touch with diverse student needs.A more specific problem is inconsistency, not only in the availability of materials, but also in teachers' use of them.While teaching in California, I was given an excellent reading program, but only a fraction of the materials and very little instruction in how to use them.Furthermore, I heard no discussion at either the district or the school level about how to integrate students' home literacy practices into use of the program.In education, adherence to tradition has degenerated into an ineffective pattern of pedagogy, and we need to reevaluate not only curriculum and learner needs, but also our ways of defining success in literacy.This new book by Hull and Schultz' performs such a reevalua- tion.In each chapter.School's Out! touches on this need to reflect on schools' routine practices.The editors' aim is to introduce the concept of out-of-school literacy, as well as provide examples of how this theory is being implemented and fostered.These examples provide suggestions for concepts and practices that work, as well as some that have failed, provoking thought about how literacy researchers and practitioners might use the idea of out-of-school literacy in their own work.The four parts of this book form a conversation about current research and programs in out-of-school literacy.In Part I, the editors provide a theoretical frame- work for the topic and illustrate it with six vignettes about people who, for various reasons, have struggled with traditional school-based literacy but find empowerment in their own innovative literacy practices.Parts II, III, and FV incorporate the work of many authors.Part II contains case studies of English language learners' individual literacy practices in Philadelphia and Chicago, while Part III presents adult-youth collaboration in after-school programs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and the