Silences:Kamler (1994); Queer Youth: Blackburn (2003); Boys and Reading: Martino (2001)

Here's the link to Lauren Hill's amazing Doo Wop ode to gender

Gender and Genre in Early Writing
Two and a half years is certainly "prolonged engagement" during which to follow Peter and Zoe through five classrooms. Her data was well triangulated as well, and Kamler used an interesting and traceable Hallidayian analysis. Her results, though, were chilling: "free choice" was really an "April Fool's" kind -- none at all. I was struck at the damage that was done from the not-teaching -- no substantive feedback, and nothing that encouraged or moved the kids beyond the stuck or outgrown place where each was in their thinking as people in the midst of constructing their identity, and as young writers who needed real apprenticeships. Although she didn't say, I wonder if the classrooms were in a school or district where "process writing" had been mandated.
Check out p. 14 in Halliday's Linguistics and the Teacher -- social justice through linguistics.

Exploring Literacy Performances and Power Dynamics at The Loft
Maybe one of the big take-away points here is that in whatever (D)iscourse community we are involved -- and Molly Blackburn self identifies as gay, lesbian, and queer (p. 472-473) -- we need to trouble our literacy performances as performances of self in order to make visible power relations so we can work toward a more socially just world. Meeting these youth in their out-of-school site enabled her to see their strengths and not their deficits (p. 487). I had thought that "queer" was synonymous with "gay" -- wrong. Blackburn explains it as broader and more critical. Wikipedia explains queer theory as encompassing all sexuality. Was it a bit disparaging to call the glossarizing of terms "schoolish"? Or am I reading more into this? I sometimes think a call to glossarize tons of terms -- a grass roots effort (!) -- might be a step in the direction of shared understandings and elimination of a lot of rhetorical smoke and mirror work as well as plain ol' misunderstandings.

Boys and Reading: Investigating the Impact of Masculinities on Boys' Reading Preferences and Involvement in Literacy
When I read the words of the participants in Martino's article I was struck with repeated references to activeness and physicality. Their rejection is not of reading per se, but English class "type" reading (whatever that means). I wish he had discussed what that does mean because I am left to surmise that it might mean the literary analysis that commonly occurs in high schools -- Down Under, too, I assume.
Jen made a great point about how the feminized teaching profession no doubt affects some of how things are taught -- but certainly, how school is perceived by these young men. Yeah -- gender is socially constructed -- and Martino is right to call for more culturally relevant literacy teaching for boys. I was kind of surprised not to see any of Rosenblatt's work cited here. She asserted that it was our job to, first, engage the student with whatever it was that was of interest (probably not Playboy -- but everything in it's own time and place) then, respectfully and sensitively, move alongside the student toward a critical literacy, and toward a broader repertoire of readings.