A Seat at the Table: Adolescents Contributing to their Literature By Jason Griffith and Jocelyn Amevuvor

Too often adults plan literacy events for adolescents without consulting them. Write X. Read Y. Think about Z. In reality, they might already be writing A, reading B, and thinking about C. They might even wish that someone else thought it was important. It was important for Phil Bildner to listen to what Elizabeth Acevedo wanted to write about. I listened to Sarah Donovan explain how her seventh graders selected their own reading. and how they liked sharing with her and each other. Adolescents are thinking deeply. Their thoughts are often not shared and under appreciated.

This week, Jason Griffith and a graduate student at Penn State University, Jocelyn Amevuvor, discuss student generated writing. They talk about a couple of projects and provide some wonderful resources. Enjoy.

A Seat at the Table: Adolescents Contributing to their Literature

“I’m so tired of this sensitive generation because all these little teen boys coming up and
talking about, ‘Oh my god, you get cramps? Well, have you have been kicked in the
nuts?’ Like, I don’t care that you were kicked in the nuts. You don’t get kicked in the
nuts for hours a day for like five days a week and every single month.” 

Let's Give Students a Seat at the Table

This quote, in which a middle school girl from Bronx Prep Middle School shares how she describes the extreme and cyclic pain of menstrual cramps to her male classmates, is one of my favorites from the recent winning middle school entry in NPR’s first-ever Student Podcast Challenge, which announced its winners last month. In just four-and-a-half minutes, Bronx Prep’s “Sssh! Periods” effectively challenges the societal taboo around discussing periods and issues related to menstruation. While the student podcasters use experiential anecdotes to well-establish why such a taboo is a specific problem at their middle school, they also go-beyond to explore why the stunted conversation is a problem in broader society. Specifically, this podcast taught me about “period poverty,” or the lack of access to menstrual supplies for low-income women. “Sssh! Periods!” is nothing short of a youth-driven call to action to bring this topic to public light for the benefit of “these little teen boys,” the squeamish aunts, and the teachers policing bathroom access, who are mentioned in the podcast, but also for the rest of its potentially broad audience.

The high school winner, though different in narrative approach, was no less impressive. In “Murderous Mary & the RISE of Erwin,” a student team from Elizabethton High School reclaim and reframe a 100-year-old notorious piece of local lore, the public hanging (via crane) of a circus elephant named Mary after she trampled an abusive handler. The student podcasters draw upon interviews with local politicians, archivists, community members, and citizens to first tell how public pressure, somewhat reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” led to the grisly event, as well as how the execution saddled the town of Erwin with a nasty reputation for decades. However, the student podcasters flip the script by featuring the conservation work of The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, an organization that developed in the historical shadow of Mary’s execution to provide a safe haven for captive elephants to receive care, live out their lives with the companionship of a herd, and raise public awareness about issues related to elephants both in captivity and in the wild.   

NPR reported receiving 6,000 podcast entries featuring 25,000 student participants and will feature standout entries, in addition to the winners, on the radio over the coming weeks. This news establishes NPR’s contest as another great outlet for the authentic tasks and audiences that dynamic teachers seek for their students, but I think the products demonstrate more than that. Both student podcasts showcase effective use of the genre conventions and the hallmarks of good podcasting and quality student journalism, but it’s interesting to consider the audiences for each as well. These two podcast winners aren’t just youth voices speaking to youth audiences, but rather they are youth podcasters speaking to multigenerational and broad-spanning audiences and often framing adult voices to do so, rather than the more typical pattern in YAL of adult writers and podcasters featuring/framing youth. 
​
Saragianides, Petrone, and Lewis (2017) remind us that “reexaming assumptions about adolescence” may impact our teaching and thinking (p. 2), and they also provide us a useful tool in the “Youth Lens” (Petrone, Saragianides, & Lewis, 2015) for critically analyzing how youth are portrayed in literature; however, the NPR student podcast winners are just the latest example demonstrating youth as not just complex literary subject but also as complex literary creator, capable of effectively engaging with audiences beyond just their peers and teachers. Participatory frameworks can lead to youth empowerment (Jennings et al., 2005), but, as teachers, we shouldn’t just be looking for authentic tasks and audiences for our students to participate in, but we should be willing to feature the youth-generated products that emerge from those opportunities in our curriculum. Quality youth-generated literature is worthy of being included alongside the mostly adult authors of our curricula, not just as models for what our own students can produce, but also for critique of literary merit on its own. 

To that end, I’ve been working with Jocelyn Amevuvor, a PhD Candidate at Penn State University, to examine critics’ claim that young writers haven’t had enough life experience to write valuable and compelling memoir. We’ve been examining a decade-long sample of youth memoir as published in The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards’ yearly The Best Teen Writing volumes to showcase some of their national contest winners. 
​
In the next section, Jocelyn highlights the literary value of two recent youth memoirs to demonstrate the curricular value of youth-generated text and media. 

Zooming in on Two Recent Youth Memoirs

Give Students Voice and Let Them Work

Several personal essays from the 2018 edition of The Best Teen Writing exhibit youth speaking to issues that define them. Two essays that do this particularly well are “Under the Shade of the Apple Tree” by Myra Kamal, who was 13 years old when she wrote it, and “Truths I’m Trying to Ignore” by Sophya Giudici-Juarez, who was 17. Both of these youth memoirs present children of immigrant families who are directly affected by larger social issues common in present-day America. 
​
In Kamal’s Under the Shade of the Apple Tree we see, through a youth’s eyes, the ways xenophobia and Islamophobia impact Muslim immigrant families in America. Kamal’s writing demonstrates beautiful symbolism through her father’s apple tree. She explains how he carefully planted and tended to the tree until it bore fruit. When a friend comes to visit, Myra’s family give her some apples to take home, but things take a turn for the worse when her friend’s family finds out her family is Muslim. Myra slows down the moment in which her neighbors come to pick their daughter up and hear Adhan, the call to prayer. She writes: 

“We didn’t know you were Muslim,” the mom explained to my mother. The tension in the air was thick and choppy.
“Yes, we are,” replied my mother with her head held high. (pp. 180-181)

Then, Kamal moves the narrative to the next morning when her family received a letter of complaint regarding her father’s apple tree and a request to tear it down. She takes a moment to reflect on that moment, writing, “However, the sad thing was that I automatically knew the reason for my neighbors’ actions. When did my innocence leave me?” (p. 181). Her reflection demonstrates her youth perspective as she considers the way she has become more keenly aware of the Islamophobic undertones of her neighbors’ actions. This short moment of reflection is a powerful example of the way youths are uniquely situated to convey a present glimpse into a moment that they likely would convey differently if they were an adult looking back.

​Giudici-Juarez also powerfully conveys her feelings as a Latin American immigrant trying to apply for college. Her essay begins at the start of her educational journey, and she uses short vignettes to take us through keystones of her journey. She describes first struggling with English in her American school and her own parents’ embarrassment in being unable to assist her with her homework. Her journey continues as she excels at both English and school in general. She provides a window into the home life of a bilingual immigrant youth. She described, “I am eight years old…My mother needs me to help my brother in school. I talk to his teachers and translate his reading questions for my parents. I show up to every open house with them, sit in on important conversations, and translate our mail. I know more about taxes than I need to,” (p. 174).  Her perspective redefines childhood experience, and highlights the way, as a child, she is participating in very adult things.  

As a high school student, Guidici-Juarez comes out on top, and yet, one of the most powerful moments in the essay is towards the end as she prepares to apply for college.  She writes, “I stare at blank applications until the Social Security number fills itself in,” (p. 174) demonstrating, without saying, that, as an immigrant, she does not have a number.  She goes on to describe her feelings, writing “I have never known a world where I was not less than or equal to. My future feels like an unfinished math equation,” (pp. 174-175). The evaluation of her story is implied, that all of her hard work is not enough. As a youth likely applying for schools as she is writing the essay, this part of the essay is particularly raw. 

Interestingly, both Guidici-Juarez and Kamal’s essay end in the unknown. There is no sure resolution. While Kamal’s father says he will refuse to tear down the apple tree, the reader does not know how this impacted the family’s life in their community. Similarly, Guidici-Juarez story is unfinished, as readers are left wondering whether she will be able to go to college or not. Other youths will likely identify with these feelings of uncertainty and appreciate reading about other young people who are struggling with their identities in the community or fulfilling their personal goals in the near future.  

Resources for Incorporating Youth-Generated Writing and Media into Curriculum

​As Jocelyn’s analysis demonstrates, youth are able, in some cases perhaps more potently than adult voices, to effectively write about complex and pressing social issues like immigration and religious discrimination. These essays, the podcasts featured in the introduction, and much more quality, student-generated literature would make for valuable inclusion in our curricula and engaging discussion among our students. As readers consider the inclusion of student-generated literature in your classrooms, here are some resources to consider: 

• NPR Student Podcast Challenge: Includes links to 2018 winning podcasts, podcasting resources for students and teachers, and information about the contest.
• The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards: Includes links to volumes of the Best Teen Writing, The National Catalog of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and online galleries of award-winning student writing and artwork.
• TED Youth: Includes videos, photos, and information from TED Youth events.
• The Moth Education: Includes videos of classroom-friendly stories from The Moth including winners and standouts from The Moth’s High School GrandSLAMs.
• 826 Valencia: San Francisco-based nonprofit (which has branched out to several other cities) dedicated to supporting under-resourced students in their writing. Along with the specific examples of youth writing on this website, a group of adolescents from 826 Valencia curate annual volumes of The Best American Nonrequired Reading. 

References

Drummond, S. (2019, May 1). Here are the winners of the NPR student podcast challenge. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/05/01/713654812/here-are-the-winners-of-the-npr-student-podcast-challenge

Giudici-Juarez, S. (2018). Truths I’m trying to ignore. In Benzizoune, R. (Ed.) The best teen writing of 2018. New York, NY: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Jennings, L. B., Parra-Medina, D.M., Messina, D.K.S., McLoughlin, K. (2006). Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment. Journal of community practice, 14(1): 31-55.

Kamal, M. (2018). Under the shade of the apple tree. In Benzizoune, R. (Ed.) The best teen writing of 2018. New York, NY: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S.T., & Lewis, M.A. (2015). The youth lens: Analyzing adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4): 506–533.

Saragianides, S. T., Petrone, R., & Lewis, M.A. (2017). Rethinking the “adolescent” in adolescent literacy. Urbana, Il: NCTE. 

Jason Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Language and literacy Education at Penn State University.
​
Jocelyn Amevuvor is a PhD Candidate in Curriculum and Instruction with an Emphasis on Literacies and English Language Arts at Penn State University. 

Until next time.