One-on-one Interactions

By Author: Arsenalo
Total Articles: 115
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Through their photos and writings these urban youth revealed how their perspectives on writing tasks and literacy practices both influence and are impacted by an array of individuals. These include more and different people than many teachers might have known in our own adolescent lives, such as school support staff, new and unexpected friends, and younger students. Accompanying the Cartier Replica following reflection, Recce's image of a security guard and one of his teachers illustrated the constructive role of these relationships:

"Another Great Teacher"
When I look at this picture I see two different lives: I see a happy security guard, Michelle, and I see Mrs. Miller.... For people who know Mrs. Miller, this is not the teacher we've seen over the years at [our school]. She's usually happy all the time.... Students who have graduated still come back to get advice from her. [It] would be a shame to see a good teacher like Mrs. Miller all of a sudden quit. I feel this can affect students because that'll be another great teacher we would have lost along ...
... with her support, honesty and friendship.

Again, connections with an extended network of adults in schools might both support youth engagement with writing tasks and serve as writing topics students are willing to explore.

Reece was also aware of the impact he and his peers were having on each other, their survival, and their literacy achievement. With the following paragraph he described a picture of Elvis sitting in a classroom (see Figure 3), "throwing" what many would suspect was a gang sign:

"Friendship"
This is one of my only best friends besides Markus. We always said that we were going to build a dynasty and nothing could break us up. And with the recent problems Elvis is having, we try to be there for him and one another if we have a problem. So the symbol Elvis is showing in this picture means a lot to us. We don't want to lose another friend to death, streets, or jail.

Instead this sign was a triangle representing the trinity of Elvis, Reece, and a third friend, Markus— who was another of the TSE participants. Reece and Markus were still in high school, pursuing that elusive diploma, and on Cartier Replica Watches track for entering college the next year. By asking Reece about the role of his peers in his school engagement—and enabling him to illustrate this role—we were able to help him think more deeply and write in more detail about these influences.

Finally, one of the means through which we came to build relationships with participants was individual conferences. These most often began with discussions of the images youth believed related to the project-guiding questions. Through these interactions, it became increasingly clear that — at least for these young women and men, many of whom had not experienced much writing task success — writing instruction and composition are largely independent affairs. While we had learned through our own schooling and teaching experiences that most classroom instruction should be whole-group and teacher-directed, our students found the greatest writing success through these one-on-one moments. But even this fact was complicated: While our one-on-one interactions around youths' images promoted their writing achievement, these young adults also longed to share their work with broader audiences.