Browsing by Subject "literacy"
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Item Arts for Academic Achievement: A Brief Review of Research on Readers' Theatre and Tableau in Literacy Instruction(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2007-09) Willcutt, JenniferThis review of the literature seeks to identify and summarize scientific research on the use and effectiveness of Readers’ Theatre and Tableau in literacy education. These programs integrate theatre activities into the classroom and are intended to enhance literacy skills. This review will also define key terms, address the use of drama techniques in the context of current standards- and evidence-based educational practices and policies, including Reading First, and discuss the nature of the relationship between the use of drama techniques in the classroom and literacy achievement.Item Connect [Winter 2016](University of Minnesota: College of Education and Human Development, 2015-12) University of Minnesota: College of Education and Human DevelopmentMultiple pathways to teaching: Four future teachers talk about their programs through CEHD. Read to me! Volunteers like Louise Botko and her dog, Fury, make a difference. Keeping kids in school: Dropout prevention model Check & Connect turns 25. Peacemaking, one playground at a time: Cooperative learning pioneers David and Roger Johnson.Item Critical Literacy in Neighborhood Bridges: An Exploratory Study(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2010-05) Ingram, Debra; Lewis, Cynthia; Erasmus, Yvette; Ewing Flynn, Jill; Janowiec, AbigailThis report describes and examines the meaning and use of critical literacy in The Children’s Theatre Company’s Neighborhood Bridges (Bridges) program. Critical literacy is an orientation to reading that includes an understanding of how texts (oral stories, books, media) position readers (listeners/viewers), how readers position texts, and how texts are positioned within social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Critical literacy is central to the philosophy of Bridges, which involves elementary and middle school students in storytelling and creative drama. An important goal of the program is to develop in children the capacity to analyze and challenge dominant social and cultural storylines as they create new storylines through imaginative retellings and reenactments.Item Effects of Data-Based Writing Instruction on the Reading Outcomes of Elementary Students with Writing Difficulties(2023) Shanahan, EmmaDifficulties in writing can emerge as early as preschool, and often coincide with developing difficulties in reading (Berninger et al., 1997; Graham & Santangelo, 2014; Graham et al., 2020), as reading and writing are fundamentally connected skills (e.g., Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000). Writing instruction in general has had positive effects on reading outcomes of students across grade levels (Graham & Hebert, 2011). However, more research is needed to examine whether writing instruction can support the reading skills of elementary students with writing difficulties (Graham, 2020). Data-based instruction (DBI) in writing, which includes research-based writing instruction activities, frequent progress monitoring using curriculum-based measures (CBM) in writing, and data-based decision-making (DBDM) to individualize instruction, has been found to have promising effects on the writing outcomes of students with significant writing difficulties (McMaster et al., 2020), and may similarly support reading. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine whether DBI in writing can play a positive role in the foundational reading development of elementary students who benefit from intensive writing support. The current study used data from one cohort of participants in a multi-cohort randomized control trial evaluating the effects of DBI professional development on teachers’ use of DBI in writing and students’ writing outcomes. Participants in this study included 42 teachers (19 treatment, 23 control) and their 105 students with significant writing difficulties in Grades 1 to 5 (46 treatment, 59 control). Treatment teachers implemented writing instruction, collected CBM-writing data, and engaged in DBDM with fidelity while receiving ongoing, collaborative support via learning modules and twice-monthly coaching. Treatment students received an average of 37.3 hours of DBI in writing across 20 weeks of study participation. Depending on teachers’ assessment of students’ needs, teachers typically targeted spelling, but also taught handwriting and/or text generation. Pretest correlations indicated that the two reading outcomes, letter sound knowledge and decodable word reading, as measured by FastBridge Letter Sounds correct letter sounds per minute (LS CLSPM) and Decodable Words correct words per minute (DW CWPM), were associated with writing skills spanning from spelling to written expression. Hierarchical linear models controlling for the effect of teacher intercept indicated that DBI in writing did not have a positive effect on LS CLSPM. DBI did, however, have a significant positive effect on log-transformed DW CWPM after controlling for log-transformed pretest scores, meaning that DBI in writing had the strongest effect on the reading of students with higher initial decoding skills. Future research should investigate the effects of more specific letter sound writing interventions on letter sound knowledge and examine whether and why Matthew effects (Stanovich, 1986) may occur in DBI. Implications for teachers’ integration of reading and writing interventions as well as next steps for system-level writing assessment are discussed.Item Global Literacy Through Mandarin Immersion and STEM: Minnesota Mandarin Immersion Collaborative Year 1(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2010) Dretzke, Beverly; Rickers, Susan; Wahlstrom, Kyla; Werner, JessicaIn 2009, a 5-year Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to the Minnesota Mandarin Immersion Collaborative (MMIC) for the project Global Literacy Through Mandarin Immersion and STEM. The grant supports immersion instruction in Mandarin Chinese that begins at the kindergarten level and the development of a curriculum that has a content focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The schools in the MMIC will add a grade level each year, with the intent of creating the capacity to continue Chinese immersion to grades 7-12. The MMIC has contracted with the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota to serve as the evaluator of the project. This year 1 evaluation report presents enrollment and retention data as well as the results of a teacher survey, teacher interviews, principal interviews, and a parent survey.Item Global Literacy Through Mandarin Immersion and STEM: Minnesota Mandarin Immersion Collaborative Year 2(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2011) Dretzke, Beverly; Rickers, Susan; Wahlstrom, KylaIn 2009, a 5-year Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to the Minnesota Mandarin Immersion Collaborative (MMIC) for the project Global Literacy Through Mandarin Immersion and STEM. The grant supports immersion instruction in Mandarin Chinese that begins at the kindergarten level and the development of a curriculum that has a content focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The schools in the MMIC will add a grade level each year, with the intent of creating the capacity to continue Chinese immersion to grades 7-12. The MMIC has contracted with the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota to serve as the external evaluator of the project. This report presents CAREI’s evaluation of the second year of the grant-funded project. The report includes enrollment and retention data as well as the results of principal interviews, teacher interviews, and a parent survey.Item “I get it that you're worried about my school, but this is my education.” Connected literacies and critical pedagogies in anti-racist youth organizing(2019-08) Rombalski, AbigailIn the past half a decade, many youth in urban high schools have witnessed the raised racial and political consciousness of a nation on screens, in schools, and on the streets. Many students of color have already seen or felt school or state-sanctioned surveillance, violence, and segregation. Some white students in urban schools have begun to see their worlds differently and to ask how they, too, are implicated. In newly formed solidarities, urban youth have raised their voices to talk, to walk, to march, to meet, and to thrive in the streets, working collectively—and sometimes separately—towards a just future. Using an alternative format, this dissertation is structured as three separate but related papers. The first paper works to define youth activist pedagogies. The second paper explores the literacies of youth activists through the frames of connected literacies; freedom, struggle, and dialogism; and whiteness as property (Harris, 1993). The third paper examines youth-adult relationships and responsive participant observation within engaged research. As a whole, this dissertation examines the connected literacies and critical pedagogies of youth activists in urban schools, a unique group whose knowledges and activities are largely unknown or underutilized by teachers and schools. Through a two-year, youth-informed critical ethnographic study, informed by asset-based and participatory action research, I documented pedagogical and literacy activities of youth across interracial anti-racist youth groups in two urban high schools in the upper Midwest United States. The overall research questions of the study asked: How did interracial anti-racist youth groups frame literacies and learning; how did they learn; and how were literacies and learning connected to liberation? This study was youth-informed and connected across school, community, and digital space. I refused the dominant deficit discourses of urban education and youth, in order to see the strengths that were not only possible, but that already existed in youth knowledge, inquiry, and capacity. Interracial youth activists, led by BIPOC youth, mobilized throughout a major urban area, learning and leading in overlapping racial justice, arts, education, and Black liberation networks and activities. Critical race theories helped to illuminate the ways that activist youth pressed against racism while submerged within it. Across all three papers, and despite challenges, youth activists created ripple effects of consciousness raising and social change throughout themselves, their schools, and the city. Implications of this research suggest pedagogies, practices, and positioning to amplify youth-centered education in literacies for liberation.Item The Integration of Technology in the Teaching of Literacy: A Study of Teacher Learning(2016-05) Allen, KathrynLiteracy and technology have historically informed and transformed each other. This mutual interaction creates cultural shifts that redefine what it means to be literate, and also impact the ways in which literacy is taught in contemporary classrooms. Literacy teaching and learning has been the focus of much study during the past 50 years (Dressman, 2007), and we have a reliable knowledge base regarding how teachers learn to effectively teach literacy (Dillon, O’Brien, Sato, & Kelly, 2011; Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, & Bransford, 2005; National Research Council, 2001). We also have a growing knowledge base regarding contemporary literacy (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). However, there is a pressing need for research to examine and portray how teachers learn to teach in contemporary contexts and how teachers’ understandings of literacy develop through practice (Curwood, 2014; Schmidt-Crawford, Tai, Wang, & Jin, 2016). The purpose of this study was to better understand how teachers learned to teach literacy through the use of technology, and how teacher conceptions of literacy developed and were enacted in elementary classrooms. Using embedded case study methodology (Yin, 2014), I examined ways in which elementary teachers learned to integrate technology for literacy instruction. In addition, I explored specific learning processes that teachers used to support the integration of technology for literacy instruction. In this study I also sought to understand how teacher conceptions of literacy developed through the situated practice of everyday teaching and learning. Social cultural and social cognitive understandings formed the theoretical framework undergirding my study, particularly as interpreted through a communities of practice lens (Wenger, 1998). Qualitative methods (Patton, 2002) were employed to collect data at three levels of inquiry: school context level, grade level team, and individual teacher. Analysis indicated that teachers learned to integrate technology for literacy instruction in both formal and informal modes, including through district professional development offerings, learning in community, and learning in and through the act of teaching. Communities of practice frameworks revealed that processes of legitimate peripheral participation, reification, negotiated meaning, identity formation and locality were helpful ways of understanding the critical processes involved in shifting into contemporary literacy practices. In addition, social cognitive processes of modeling, self-efficacy, goal setting, and visioning assisted teachers in enacting new understandings of literacy. Findings generated from data analysis indicated that teacher conceptions of literacy shifted in response to reflection on practice, and often in response to student reactions to technology integration. This study offers practical insight into how teachers learn to teach in contemporary literacy contexts, and presents suggestions for school leaders, teacher educators, teachers, and researchers as society continues to reimagine the meaning of literacy.Item Latino Community Engagement through Family Literacy Programming(Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota, 2016) Sianghio, KathleenThis project was completed as part of the 2015-2016 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with Carver County. In response to changing demographics in Carver County, Eastern Carver County School District and County Public Health Department staff were looking for ways to better engage with the growing Latino population in the county. The goal of this project was to determine barriers that prevented Latino families from participating in a family literacy program for those with children aged 0-5 offered by Independent School District 112. Project leads Jennifer Anderson from Carver County Public Health and Jackie Johnston from Eastern Carver County School District worked with a master of public health student to identify the primary barriers to participation, which included lack of time, lack of transportation, and confusion about the purpose and organizational structure of the program. The student's final report and presentation are available.Item Leadership for Literacy Grant, 2002: Final Evaluation(University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2002) Wahlstrom, Kyla; Sheldon, Timothy; Center for Applied Research and Educational ImprovementThe Leadership for Literacy Grant, competitively awarded to Minnesota School District 622, has had a goal of building leadership for literacy through the design and implementation of professional learning communities. Grant resources provided for a set of activities, which were designed to foster a collaborative culture in the district among teachers and staff.Item Literacy Microsystems of Children Ages Birth to Four: A Strength Approach(2017-12) Schleisman Scalia, LeannAbstract The purpose of the study was to ascertain which human, material, and experiential resources supporting emergent literacy of children were present in the microsystems of some low-income families with children under the age of four. This mixed methods study used naturalistic inquiry as the primary strategic approach. Methods included home visits and conversations with parents; the Infant-Toddler Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment was used to assess the home environment. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory was the theoretical framework; social constructivism was included in the discussion of findings and recommendations for action. The research questions addressed are 1) what do parents consider as human and material resources of their family that will support the literacy development of their young children 2) what resources, both human and material, are present in the microsystem of the very young child that the as supportive of literacy development in young children and 3) what resources, both human and material, are present in the microsystem of the very young child that may not be included in the literature yet could be supportive of literacy development in young children. Results challenged some stereotype images of low-income families related to literacy activities. Another finding was that while parents were actively engaged in communication with their young children they did not usually make the connection between developing literacy skills and a variety of family activities.Item Mobilizing Love in Literacy Classrooms: Connection, Resistance, and Pedagogy(2017-06) Crampton, AnneThat love has something to do with teaching and learning is a claim that finds its way into numerous, overlapping, and contending theoretical frameworks, including arguments from critical, progressive, psychoanalytic, feminist, and post-structural traditions. However, to date there is very little critical empirical research that seeks to better understand and make solid this claim, to link it to everyday classroom actions and interactions. This multi-site critical ethnographic study asks how love is mobilized in an exploration of powerful, sometimes difficult, moments of connection and learning in two English-Social Studies classrooms--one in a large city high school, and the other in a small charter middle school--with teachers who sought to challenge educational inequities through a critical literacy curriculum and critical instructional practices. Using mediated and critical discourse analysis to examine classroom actions and interactions, the study looks at how students affect and are affected by their social “others” in meaningful and complicated ways. A theory of “cosmopolitan desire” is offered to describe the affective experience of connecting across difference. The study also frames students’ aesthetic and resistant projects as expressions of armed love (Freire, 2006); these demands for self and community are necessary rejections of oppressive and damaging discourses, fueled by the desire to envision a more just social reality. Finally, the study explores practices of pedagogical love, finding instantiations of dialogic (Freire, 1996) and nurturing relationships (Noddings, 2013), as well as demonstrations of radical inclusion and love (Greenstein, 2016; hooks, 2003). This work has implications for how we might realize and better understand the stakes in the vague schooling goal of “getting along,” bearing in mind the ongoing conundrum in hoping that through public education, “youth [will] accomplish what we haven't been able to accomplish--to establish rich, vibrant, and cooperative interracial relationships, contexts, communities, and projects” (Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997, p. 248). It also makes plain the scale of a teacher’s labor, and considers how to make academic literacy productions meaningful, and potentially transformative.Item Mutually Humble Collaboration in College Literacy Courses: Same Papers, Dialogical Responses(2017-05) Bouchard, DonAbstract Each fall, first-year college students enter required composition courses with the expectation that they will learn the necessary skills to write competently for their collegiate careers. Quickly, students who survive and thrive discover that complex factors such as experience, academic cultural etiquette, self-regulation, and relationships with professors and classmates combine to set them on paths of success or failure. I examined the literacy induction experiences of college composition students at a private Christian college in the Midwestern United States through a constant comparative analysis framework utilized in a grounded theory research (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, 2008; and Charmaz, 2007.) Through surveys, interviews, and observations in three composition classrooms, I used social cognitive and sociocultural frameworks to focus on participants’ and their professors’ actions and perceptions. Using data from the interviews and observations in a positive deviance selection process (Pascale, Sternin & Sternin, 2010), I narrowed my focus to four participants whose narratives revealed grit (Duckworth, 2016), growth mindset (Dweck, 2015), and evidence of mutually humble collaboration (MHC), the theory that emerged from this study, which serves as the super framework over the themes I examine. My findings indicate that professors and students facing literacy challenges who engage in mutually humble collaboration establish dialogical relationships (Freire, 2009) that foster passion and perseverance leading to success. In this study I address the pragmatic question of how sociocultural concepts such as scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978), and the dialogical relationship ending the oppressor - oppressed cycle described by Freire (2009) may be initiated. Keywords: mutually humble collaboration, grit, literacyItem Neighborhood Bridges: 2010-2011 Evaluation Report(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2011-07) Ingram, DebraNeighborhood Bridges is a nationally recognized literacy program using storytelling and creative drama to help children develop their critical literacy skills and to transform them into storytellers of their own lives. In 2010-2011, students in twenty-five classrooms from eleven schools in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area participated in The Children’s Theatre Company’s Neighborhood Bridges (Bridges) program. The Children’s Theatre Company contracted with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) to evaluate Bridges in these classrooms. The purpose of the evaluation was to measure the quality of Bridges implementation and assess student learning in the areas of writing; knowledge and skills in theatre; retelling and dramatization; and critical literacy. Highlights from the results of the evaluation study are discussed below.Item Neighborhood Bridges: 2012-2013 Evaluation Report(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2013-07) Ingram, DebraNeighborhood Bridges is a nationally recognized literacy program using storytelling and creative drama to help children develop their critical literacy skills and to transform them into storytellers of their own lives. In 2012-2013, a total of 640 students in grades three through six from twenty-three classrooms in eleven schools across the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area participated in the Neighborhood Bridges (Bridges) program of The Children’s Theatre Company (CTC). This report presents the results of an evaluation of the Bridges program. CTC contracted with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) to conduct the study. The purpose of the evaluation was to measure the quality of Bridges implementation and assess student learning in the areas of writing; knowledge and skills in theatre; retelling and dramatization and critical literacy.Item On Becoming the Peace Elephant Warrior Princess: Reclaiming Indigenous Rights to Spirituality, Creativity and Orality for the Vitality of Mbòg Bàsàa(2019-11) Quillien, VeronicaAs a Bàsàa woman, learning about the developmental stages of a girl in traditional Bàsàa society allowed me to recognize the subtle and imaginative abilities I inherited from my mother. And I set out on a quest to explore the positive aspects of my tradition in response to Bot Ba Ndjock’s (1970) reflection and inquiry about the future of Bàsàa women. Her remarks: “Will future generations be proud of the 20th century Bàsàa woman ‘evolved, emancipated, liberated’, being deliberately raised with back turned on the positive aspects of traditional culture?” With these lessons, it was my intention to use Mbòg, the social knowledge of the Bàsàa people, to answer the research question “What has been my process reclaiming my language and culture?” To organize a dissertation content honoring Mbòg, I structured this decolonizing dissertation to prepare my ceremony by clearly articulating a Bàsàa research process—the basis of Mbòg as a research paradigm. The work of Bàsàa scholars who investigated Mbòg as social knowledge (Mboui, 1967), Mbòg as traditional education system (Bot Ba Ndjock, 1970), Mbòg as a linguistic act (Mayi Matip, 1984) and Mbòg as creation (Biya, 1987) helped me think about how to compose Mbòg as a Bàsàa research paradigm. To unveil my process reclaiming my language and culture, I began with my spiritual journey. I utilized two traditional tools (wood and clay) and two contemporary tools (comic and zine) to represent Mbòg. The next journey was my creative process. I first selected the traditional fables I wanted to reclaim. Then, I sought the support of my parents, cousins and friends to determine how to revitalize the fables into multilingual (Bàsàa, English and French versions) and multimodal (illustrations, coloring book, and animations) formats. My final journey with orality ended at the language and art camp, Vac’Art. In this intergenerational and intercultural context in Yaoundé, I used my camera as a research tool to document the processes the Bàsàa and non-Bàsàa teaching artists used to train children/youth in arts-based methods (dance, theater, ceramic, music and cooking). For this reclamation journey, I was predisposed to perform the practices that kept my Ancestors in harmony. I wanted to respond to Bot Ba Ndjock (1970) and let her know that the 21st century Bàsàa woman ‘evolved, emancipated, liberated’ is still proud of her traditional education. Through this journey of re-membering, I figured out ways to massively transmit our social knowledge, Mbòg, so that generations of Bàsàa girls remain proud. Bòg, the root of Mbòg, reminds us that within this circle of life, order is a dynamically active harmony. Given our educational context, I have been asked if Mbòg is a philosophy or a pedagogy? As an Indigenous educational researcher at the intersection of language, literacy and culture, I offer bòg as a resource pedagogy, a gift from my Ancestors.Item Project AIM 2009-2010 Evaluation Report(Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2011-02) Ingram, DebraDuring the 2009‐2010 school year, Project AIM, a program of the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago, worked with over nine hundred fifth through eighth grade students in five schools. Project AIM teaching artists collaborated with classroom teachers in these schools to develop residencies that offered students instruction in arts, literacy and/or math. Each residency included thirteen sessions in which the artist provided instruction in the classroom in collaboration with the classroom teacher. In addition to the residencies, Project AIM facilitated the development of learning communities within each school. Project AIM also convened the artists each month for professional development sessions focused on topics such as the emotional and social development of middle grades students and integrating instruction in math and visual art. This report summarizes the results of an evaluation study of Project AIM during the 2009‐2010 school yearItem Redefining the Word Gap from a Cumulative Risk Perspective(2018-06) Lease-Johnson, ErinIn 1995, Betty Hart and Todd Risley published findings that young children from low-income backgrounds will hear 32 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by the time they turn four years old. Historically, this “word gap” has solely been identified as a function of socioeconomic status – or more specifically, family income. Multiple studies across a variety of developmental domains, however, have demonstrated that the accumulation of multiple risk factors in early childhood is a stronger predictor of adverse outcomes than any single predictor alone. The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between cumulative risk factors and early home language environments, particularly the rate of adult-child language interactions. The sample included 113 infants and toddlers ranging from 1 month to 44 months of age (M = 23, SD = 9.41) as well as their primary caregivers. Participants completed a demographic survey and a daylong audio recording of their home language environment using LENA technology – which automatically aggregates the total number of adult words spoken to the child (AWC) and the number of conversational turns (CT) between the child and an adult. The findings support that the accumulation of risk factors beyond income accounts for a significantly greater proportion of variance than income alone. Moreover, when combining poverty into the aggregated risk score, the greatest difference in AWC and CT scores occurs between zero and four risk factors. Implications for future directions are discussed.Item Relationships among evangelical college students’ worldviews and their anthropogenic climate change literacy.(2016-08) Light, JoelResearch is warranted on how a student’s worldview relates to his/her anthropogenic climate change knowledge, belief, and acceptance of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). ACC is the one of the most challenging issues today. In the U.S., evangelicals are the most resistant accepting the scientific evidence for ACC. Why some evangelicals accept ACC and why many do not is not well understood. The study focused the environmental, religious, economic, political, and epistemological areas of participant’s worldview. Differences emerged between study participants through qualitative analysis of participant responses to the study’s instruments. The data suggests the strong possibility that religious beliefs are at the core of evangelical worldviews. The data showed that specific religious beliefs largely influence whether a person accepts or resists ACC. Certain religious beliefs such as social justice and creation care seemed to be the best potential avenues for solidifying acceptance of ACC and encouraging climate action. The data showed that when religious beliefs are shown to be connected and consistent with ACC impacts and action, evangelicals are more likely to engage in the ACC conversation and movement. Beliefs such as these may be the starting point for the ACC conversation with a member of the evangelical culture.Item Undeterred and Unmanaged: Actualizing Social Justice, Critical Literacy, and Detracking Efforts in Suburban Classrooms(2022-05) Tholen Hatten, RachelWhile there’s a significant body of literature written by researchers who delineate the shifting definitions of literacy in the 21st century and the ways students perform literacy events that are culturally relevant to their lives in school and in out-of-school contexts, much of this research is situated in urban contexts. There is a need for research in the ways that culturally relevant pedagogy and critical literacy efforts are actualized in suburban contexts--if, in fact, they can be or should be. This dissertation examines what happens when secondary English teachers in one suburban high school design and implement a detracked, social justice English class for all sophomore students, and explores the impact of such a class on students years later. The development of the course and three students who were enrolled in the class were the focus of the research, a qualitative case study aimed at discovering insights that can be shared with future and current teachers related to the ways that we can productively take up matters of power, privilege, and culture in literacy classrooms with students that might have a lasting impact. To begin, I tell the story of the creation and implementation of a detracked sophomore English class that centers on a social justice curriculum, rich with texts that challenge the social constructions of race, class, and gender. I then explore in greater depth how three students who were enrolled in the class years ago articulate the impact, if any, of this class on their developing understanding of these critical issues when they were in high school. Finally, I discuss the ways these focal students articulate the need for critical education in K-12 settings from their now-adult perspectives. Findings reveal resistance to detracked courses, especially those taught through a social justice curricular framework, is predictable and responsive to current political contexts. Further, students who were enrolled in the course can articulate the ways in which units that explored cultural conflict, stereotyping, and systems of power, led them to come to a greater understanding of themselves, their own racial identity, and of the ways systemic power intersects with elements of identity. Focal students shared their memories of the course and how it connected to work they took up as undergraduate students, and the ways that it continues to shape their adult perspectives today. The teachers engaged in creating and implementing this course, as well as the students who participated in it, contribute to the important calls for culturally relevant pedagogy and critical literacy in suburban classroom spaces, even in the face of great difficulty.