This paper describes a case study of how a middle school literacy coach and a science teacher attempted to improve disciplinary literacy teaching in a sixth‐grade science class. The collaborative inquiry exposed the disciplinary knowledge gap of the literacy coach (a former language arts teacher) and the science teacher's limited knowledge of literacy instruction. These shared disciplinary knowledge gaps necessitated the co‐construction of collaborative practices to ameliorate the tension and improve disciplinary literacy instruction. Through a recognition of individual knowledge and the use of responsive disciplinary teaching, the participants created collaborative symbiosis. To improve disciplinary literacy teaching, schools should recognize teacher disciplinary knowledge and expand participation in discipline‐specific collaborative inquiry.

In 2008, Moje pondered responsive literacy teaching to what end, before arguing that disciplinary literacy should provide the answer in secondary school classrooms. Since then, research into literacy within school disciplines has foregrounded the reading, writing, and reasoning of experts within disciplines while backgrounding (or ignoring) worthy problems and student dignity. Using the case study of Neema, a 16‐year‐old Tanzanian student, the authors seek to humanize and pragmatize the answer to Moje’s question, suggesting that disciplinary literacies and responsive pedagogy should be the means to a vital end: the elevated consciousness of students. Only when teaching supports how students develop greater consciousness of their presence in the world and of their inherent worth can teaching be considered responsive.

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Given today's social and political milieu, disciplinary writing in secondary schools must address systemic violence and the increased disconnection amongst youth from self and communities. The chapter will illuminate ways writing pedagogy in secondary school disciplines—with its privileging of dominant writing genres and narrow conceptions of disciplinary literacies—perpetuate youth disconnection. Then, it proposes disciplinary writing—grounded in principles of nonviolent communication and critical consciousness—can support a literacy of being where youth unlearn culturally-conditioned, deleterious narratives of self and become a source of peace and justice within communities. Secondary school writing can cultivate agentive spaces for youth to awaken to the sources of societal, communal, and personal violence and rewrite themselves with greater compassion, authenticity, and personal power.

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