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The students chosen to participate in these case studies are fifth, sixth, and seventh graders, ages 11—13, at a small public school ("Jefferson School") in a large city in the eastern part of the United States. (The names of all people and places in this study were changed, to protect the anonymity of participants.) Jefferson School serves a student population that reflects the neighborhood in which it is situated: approximately 65% are African American, 20% European American, 10% Latino/a, and 5% Asian American. The school population is largely poor and Breitling Replica working class, although it includes a minority of middle class to upper middle class students. Students are admitted to the school by lottery, although siblings are automatically admitted. Jefferson School serves approximately 200 students in grades K-8, and there are nine "homeroom" teachers in addition to support staff and student teachers.

I know the students and the families chosen for this study well. Six of the student participants I taught for two years ...
... (John, Koe, Cameron, Orlando, Lee, and Christina), and the other four students (Mark, Jessica, David, and Matthew) for one year. In the case of two of the students (Mark and Jessica), I had also taught an older sibling in years past. In addition to the interviews, I kept in touch with these participants and the school by sending periodic postcards as well as spending a full week volunteering at the school in January of 2006 and two weeks in June of 2007. The interviews were conducted between January and June of 2006.

For this study, I chose to interview seven boys and three girls, to focus somewhat more on boys and the greater difficulty I found in encouraging boys to read while I was their teacher. The 10 students were chosen in discussion Breitling Replica Watches with their current homeroom teachers ("Alice" and "Randy") to roughly represent a range of reading engagement, or how avid or reluctant these students were as readers, according to their teachers, found in the cohort group of students aged 11—13 at Jefferson School. Please see Table 1 for a list and additional characteristics of study participants.