Borderzones in Adolescents’ Literacy Practices

This article examines how a teacher drew on her urban students’ outside-school literacies to inform teaching and learning in a reading/language arts classroom. The following findings are discussed: curricular invitations the teacher offered to students; the teacher’s curriculum development process; the relationships between the genres of students’ outside-school literacies and those of the school; and the subject positionings taken up by the students and the teacher in the classroom. The article demonstrates how teachers may affirm the out-of-school literacies of urban students and connect these literacies to the formal curriculum, thereby enhancing students’ in-school literacy engagement and success.