Language, Literacy, and Community

Abstract

This entry presents a case for understanding the factors that support or constrain the development of students' language and literacy in K–12 schooling. Two separate studies illustrate ways that particular classroom communities draw on students' language and literacy beliefs and practices from outside of school. Best practice samples from an elementary school in Texas and a high school in Colorado serve to endorse the importance of providing culturally relevant mentor texts to young and adolescent readers and writers. The samples provide evidence that teachers who practice a humanizing pedagogy with culturally relevant mentor texts are instrumental in fostering healthy educational orientations among language and literacy learners, which in turn results in their academic resiliency (Fránquiz & Salazar, 2004) against all odds.