Assessment of Oral Language Proficiency

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Article

Emerging Critical Meta-Awareness Among Black and Latina/o Youth During Corrective Feedback Practices in Urban English Language Arts Classrooms

Danny C. Martinez1

Abstract This article addresses teachers’ uptake of Black and Latina/o youth linguistic repertoires within the official space of an English Language Arts (ELA) classroom and how youth respond to corrective feedback that is focused on the form of their messages, rather than their function. Corrective feedback offered by one Latina teacher indexed larger standard language ideologies that circulate within urban Black and Latina/o schools. I argue that youth’s responses to corrective feedback point to their emerging critical meta-awareness, given their alignment against narrow conceptions of what counts as language for schooling and learning.

Keywords youth, critical meta-awareness, classroom discourse, corrective feedback, language ideologies

1University of California, Davis, USA

Corresponding Author: Danny C. Martinez, School of Education, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Email: [email protected]

623345 UEXXXX10.1177/0042085915623345Urban EducationMartinez research-article2016

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Introduction

Throughout the 2010-2011 academic year, I worked alongside Black and Latina/o high school youth documenting their everyday linguistic repertoires in four urban English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. I often asked youth to comment on their own language practices and those of their peers. Yesenia,1 a Latina youth who was a recent immigrant from Chihuahua Mexico, reported, “Ingles macheteado es lo que hablo yo.” “English sliced into tiny pieces by a machete knife is what I speak.” These words, for me, conjure images of a machete knife slicing through rough tin-like words that Yesenia herself believed her English “sounded.” Diego, a Salvadoran youth, chuckled recounting how much he enjoyed “clowning” or making fun of his Latina/o peers who did not speak Spanish. He reported calling them names such as pasmados or dundos2 in what he casually and confidently called “Salvadoran.” In addition to speaking “Salvadoran,” Diego, like many Latina/o youth at his school, displayed features of Black Language, particularly the use of the habitual “be,” considered one of the hallmark features of Black Languages in the United States (Alim, 2004; Paris, 2011). When I asked Jerome, a Black male youth what language he and his peers at Willow High School (WHS) spoke, he responded, “We speak ghetto slang!” Included in the “we” were his Latina/o peers who spoke this way, according to Jerome, as “it’s like the habi- tat we’re used to.” Finally, Omar, a Latino youth in the magnet program, firmly conveyed that he only spoke “formal” English. Interestingly, through- out my observations, he frequently engaged in Spanish English code-switch- ing in addition to utterances that featured Black Language.

The linguistic virtuosity of Black and Latina/o youth documented in this study countered false perceptions of these youth as monolingual speakers of stigmatized languages, limited in their proficiency of “standard” varieties of English valued in schools (Ball, Skerrett, & Martínez, 2011). Instead, these youth showcased their linguistic flexibility which mediated their daily move- ment across the porous cultural and linguistic boundaries they traversed within their school as they interacted with diverse Black and Latina/o peers, teachers, and community members. As noted from the perspectives above, these youth were also varied in their ideas and beliefs about language, their language ideologies, what languages mattered, how they mattered, and when they should be uttered. Declaring that they spoke, ingles macheteado, Salvadoran, ghetto, and formal English, they pointed to the dynamic nature of their linguistic repertoires while providing both normalized and marked accounts of the languages circulated and heard within the walls of their class- rooms. Despite the linguistic virtuosity displayed by Black and Latina/o

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youth, these resources were not exploited as a resource for learning or mean- ing making within their ELA classes (see Martínez, 2012).

This article addresses teachers’ uptake of Black and Latina/o youth lin- guistic repertoires within official spaces of an ELA classroom and how youth respond to corrective feedback focused on the form of their messages, rather than their function. Corrective feedback offered by one Latina teacher in par- ticular indexed larger standard language ideologies that circulate within urban Black and Latina/o schools. I argue that youth’s responses to corrective feedback point to their emerging critical meta-awareness (Souto-Manning, 2014) given their alignment against narrow conceptions of what counts as language for schooling and learning.

In line with Souto-Manning’s (2014) call for researchers to move away from imposing our own “ideas, beliefs and ideologies” onto our participants, I contend that we must ask participants what questions, ideas, and beliefs are important to them. While this research did not initiate from youth-generated questions, ethnographically, I uncovered issues that emerged as salient for youth based on the regularity of a given cultural practice, youth responses to corrective feedback offered by their teacher. Therefore, the questions that guide this article are as follows: How do Black and Latina/o youth respond to corrective feedback offered by teachers? How do youth responses align with or against standard language ideologies?

Circulating Language Ideologies

In her important work documenting the language and literacy practices of Latina mothers along the Arizona borderlands, Norma González (2001) considers language ideologies a useful framework for uncovering the mes- sages woven into everyday utterances of individuals while untangling essentialist notions that “cultural traits [are] evenly distributed within any population.” She continues that via language ideological inquiry, we can disrupt the “‘one language, one culture’ isomorphism of Spanish-speaking populations . . . ” (p. 178). Here, Gonzalez offers up the possibilities of a language ideological framework for rupturing deficit-oriented framings of non-dominant populations. I bring this perspective to examinations of Black and Latina/o youth utterances in classrooms where their languages are treated as needing remediation, or elimination. This has been docu- mented among well-intentioned teacher’s with goals of eliminating Black Language use among students (Alim, 2004), ELA daily language practice activities that index standard ideologies favoring monoglot notions of

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English (Godley, Carpenter, & Werner, 2007), to everyday teachers’ dis- courses that surveil and mark Black and Latina/o youth who were speakers of Black Language, to recent immigrants whose approximations of English were indicative of their socialization to and through diverse Black and Latina/o settings (Martínez, 2012, 2015). Ultimately, the language practices of these youth were heard by teachers whose practices were mediated by standard language ideologies institutionalized by schooling narratives. A focus on language ideologies also provides an understanding of how instruction in ELA contexts for non-dominant groups must move beyond a one underachieving group, one standardized curriculum approach that has gained currency in U.S. schools in attempts to “remediate” youth without re-mediating or reorganizing the learning ecologies in which non-dominant youth are expected to learn (Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martínez, 2009), which are governed by antiquated notions of “standard” English.

Silverstein’s (1996) notion of the Monoglot Standard interrogates notions of “the Standard” that are normalized by individuals who have narrow con- ceptions as what counts as language. He argues,

Standardization, then, is a phenomenon in a linguistic community in which institutional maintenance of certain valued linguistic practices—in theory, fixed—acquires an explicitly-recognized hegemony over the definition of the community’s norm. People defer—on grounds varied as a function of their positions in the community, to be sure—to the authority of such institutions to articulate the community’s norm. Hence, “best” users of the language, that is, at least, those who would be “best,” strive to achieve this Standard linguistic practice, the control of which is part of the functionally differentiated norm becomes an index of “best speakerhood.” (pp. 285-286)

As the standard becomes a hegemonic force within communities, even speak- ers of “non-Standard” forms default to accepting “the Standard” as the natu- ralized linguistic form. Schools, as powerful circulators of ideologies within communities, therefore amplify messages that speakers who do not attain recognizable versions of the standard be neglected from community partici- pation. Milroy and Milroy (1999) support this notion arguing that the hege- mony of English leads to an imagined understanding of the existence of a “Standard.”

Through the analytic lens of language ideologies, I will examine teacher responses to Black and Latina/o youth utterances that entered what Gutiérrez, Rymes, and Larson (1995) call “official spaces,” the discursive space within a classroom where a teacher sanctions speakers and contributors to the scripts of classroom life. The range of language ideologies indexed by teachers

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within official spaces of classrooms can reveal what counts as language in the classroom. Just as important are the ways in which Black and Latina/o youth engage teacher scripts within official classroom spaces. Therefore important to this manuscript are moments when Black and Latina/o utterances are revoiced, reframed and rearticulated by teachers attempting to align youth voices to so called standard English varieties. While I argue that youth in this study displayed expansive language practices, with regularity, when youth languages entered the official space, they were highly marked and treated as error filled.

White Public Space (WPS)

While I situate Black and Latina/o language practices within ELA classrooms where they are highly marked, their languages are generally normalized and unmarked among youth themselves who embrace hearing the linguistic bri- colage within their community (see Martinez, 2016). To make sense of teacher uptake of Black and Latina/o youth utterances in official classroom spaces, I draw on the notion of WPS offered by Urciuoli (1996) and Hill (1998) who defines WPS as

a morally significant set of contexts that are the most important sites of the practices of a racializing hegemony, in which Whites are invisibly normal, and in which racialized populations are visibly marginal and the objects of monitoring ranging from individual judgment to Official English legislation. (Hill, 1998, p. 682)

Urciuoli (1996) highlights WPSs for Puerto Ricans who experienced lan- guage within an inner and outer sphere. In the inner sphere, language flexibil- ity was the norm for Puerto Ricans who spoke in “accented” English and Spanish that was unmarked and normalized within in-group members. In the outer circle, where bilingual Puerto Ricans were not familiar with potential monolingual interlocutors, languages were cautiously separated, as if bounded, attempting to cover up accents. Simultaneously, they often became silent, worried about sounding “too white” in front of friends and relatives who might view them as betrayers of their own people. Jane Hill (1998) extends the notion of WPS, arguing that while speakers of stigmatized lan- guages are marked for their utterances that deviate from the imagined stan- dard varieties of English, White speakers often attempted to code-switch or speak grammatically incorrect versions of Spanish, what she calls mock Spanish, without any repercussions.

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I draw on notions of WPS to explore the linguistic monitoring and gazing that occurs within classrooms where notions of “speaking right” are reified even in the absences of White speakers. Schooling, therefore, in the act of socializing students into the accepted norms of a nation state (Wortham, 2008) ethnocentrically imposes their ideas and beliefs about language and nationhood, onto students who are expected to internalize these messages (Souto-Manning, 2012, 2014). Urban Black and Latina/o children and youth receive these messages via teachers who monitor and surveil their language. While it might be acceptable for a teacher in the WPS of classrooms to mis- pronounce Black and Latina/o names, it becomes an opportunity for “correct- ing” these youth when their utterances are filled with Black Language features or urban language practices more generally. Where a teacher might not “correctly” pronounce the name of a Latina/o character in a novel, it does not carry the same stigma as a Black or Latina/o youth who cannot utter a Shakespearean line with ease. The WPS of classroom life exists even when Whites are not participants. Given the circulation of ethnocentric, standard language ideologies in schools, and the policy mandates for socializing Black and Brown students, standard language ideologies circulate and permeate many schooling practices. To be clear, there is an “imagined” standard English (Milroy & Milroy, 1999) that is required for participation (Franquiz & de la Luz Reyes, 1998) in many classroom activities, and the pre-requisite language is determined by teachers who impose ethnocentric positions onto their students. This article examines the language ideologies indexed by Black and Latina/o youth as they respond to and comment on the corrective feedback offered by their teacher in the official WPS of classroom life.

The Practice of Repair: Sounding “Right” in the ELA Classroom

In a study of classroom discourse in English language learners (ELL) class- rooms, Razfar (2005) found that the most pervasive practice indexing lan- guage ideologies was that of repair, the discursive act of an individual correcting or “repairing” their own utterances (self-repair), or that of others (other repair) (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). Razfar demonstrates how teachers use “other repair” to hold students accountable to dominant language practices. Drawing on both conversational analysis and critical dis- course analysis, Razfar explains how power dynamics are embedded in “other repair” practices, where an individual with more power or authority in a conversation may impose dominant or standard language practices onto an individual who is viewed as the subordinate or a speaker of a language that is marked because it does not conform to standard language practices (Farr & Song, 2011; Razfar, 2005). Throughout my study, the language ideologies of

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WHS teachers were most salient via instances of repair that occurred during moments when a teacher “revoiced” or restated a student’s comment in the official classroom space. Repair practices emerged as a prevalent discursive event for Ms. Luz, more than other teachers in this study who used repair practices as a discursive tool to “correct” or fix the “non-standard” language practices of her students.

Critical Meta-Awareness

While a language ideological perspective provides indexical connections between a speaker’s utterance, and the ideas and beliefs that belie the mes- sages being communicated, the youth in this study provides us with their own responses to the narrow conceptions of language expressed. Here I draw on notions of critical meta-awareness to understand youth agency in the process of responding to teacher’s corrective feedback. Souto-Manning (2014) argues that critical meta-awareness

. . . leads to individual research participants’ applying critical analysis to identify, problematize, take a stand, and engage in social action to change their own respective situations. It moves away from assuming that researchers have enough knowledge to determine what is critical based solely on larger institutional, systemic, and media discourses. Critical meta-awareness embraces humility—recognizing that no one knows it all, yet no one is ignorant of everything. (Freire, 1998)—thus empowering humanity in research and beyond (p. 203).

I draw on the notion of critical meta-awareness to highlight how youth applied their own tacit knowledge of language to understand and problema- tize the corrective feedback they received by teachers which focused on “cor- recting” their home and community language practices. Black and Latina/o youth responses to corrective feedback loops emerged as a salient cultural practice within the larger ethnographic project. Therefore my examination of the situaded nature of youth responses to corrective feedback was based on the situated nature of the phenomenon, rather than youth generated as sug- gested by Souto-Manning (2014). Yet, like the narratives described by Souto- Manning, the classroom discourse practices documented for this study revealed that youth had the ability to engage in a discussions that revealed their emerging critical meta-awareness of the utterances directed to them by their teacher. Analysis of instructional interactions highlights how youth take on a critical meta-awareness stance as they responded to the standard lan- guage ideologies circulated by their teachers during instruction. It is within

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the narratives of Black and Latina/o youth that their actions toward sustaining their full linguistic repertoires can be witnessed, despite the narrow approaches to what counts as a language for learning that permeates current urban educa- tional and language policies.

Setting the Context

This study took place at WHS, a comprehensive urban high school located in the Tajuata3 neighborhood of Southern California during the 2010-2011 aca- demic year. Tajuata was and is still considered a Black community, and for several decades, this was the case. My own mother was raised in Tajuata and remembers being one of few Mexican families in the 1950s. Within the last 20 years however, demographic shifts in Tajuata, influenced by larger global flows of migration, has brought about a Latina/o majority, a phenomenon occurring across many historically Black communities (Pastor, De Lara, & Scoggins, 2011). In the early 90s, Latina/o immigrants steadily arrived to the section of the neighborhood known locally as “La Colonia” for the large pres- ence of Mexican families. The “Colonia” neighborhood could no longer accommodate the large immigrant populations arriving from Guatemala and El Salvador, in addition to Mexican immigrants, and these populations spread beyond the boundaries of La Colonia into the entire Tajuata community, slowly occupying Black neighborhoods. The shift slowly led to media atten- tion that focused mostly on the racial, social and economic adversity faced by this conflicted community rather than the transformative alliances made between them to combat systemic inequities faced.

WHS and Participants

WHS is prominently housed at the edge of Tajuata, surrounded by residential housing projects, homes, apartments, and industrial factories. During the 2010-2011 academic year, 1,577 students enrolled at WHS. In all, 19.7% were reported as Black and 79.6 reported as Latina/o, and 100% of students were considered economically disadvantaged (California Department of Education, 2011). A total of 35.9% of students at WHS were designated English learners. Although data were not collected for this designation, the district to which WHS belonged, and some teachers, considered many WHS students standard language learners, youth whose home languages were a “non-standard” variety of English. While schools across the country rely on language designations for their students, these labels are often over-simplistic and deficit in orientation (Orellana & Gutiérrez, 2006).

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Teachers

In deciding which ELA classes to observe, I sought out 10th-grade ELA teach- ers. Based on previous experience at WHS, I knew that English 10 courses were the first time students formerly enrolled in the English learner program were together with the larger school population in an ELA setting.4 I believed that this would provide a setting that closely mirrored the diverse Black and Latina/o youth population at WHS. While I did observe three sophomore-level English courses, I was invited to observe a senior English course as well because the teacher believed his student population mirrored the larger school population that I hoped to capture. Overall, three of the courses closely mir- rored the school population, whereas the sophomore honors English class did not have any Black youth enrolled, contrary to the teacher’s expectations.

Three teachers agreed to participate. I observed two 10th-grade ELA courses taught by Ms. Luz, a Latina 10th-grade English teacher with 7 years experience, one honors ELA course taught by Ms. Lyn, a White magnet teacher with 6 years teaching experience, and one senior ELA course taught by Mr. Esperanza, a White senior English teacher with 9 years of teaching experience. In this article, I focus on the two ELA courses taught by Ms. Luz. While a range of interactions that support my argument in this article occurred in Ms. Lyn and Mr. Esperanza’s classrooms, with increasing regularity, youth in Ms. Luz’ two courses highlighted how youth display their critical meta- awareness within classroom interactions.

Black and Latina/o Youth Participants

The youth enrolled in any of the designated ELA classes taught by the three teachers mentioned above were invited to participate in this study. I secured consent from approximately 90% of students with their understanding that I would document communicative interactions within class and within school grounds whenever appropriate using an audio-recording pen and a notebook where my raw fieldnote jottings would be written. In each class, a few stu- dents emerged as focal participants who engaged in informal and semi-for- mal interviews throughout the study. Despite the emergence of focal participants, all youth participants’ communicative interactions were included in the reduction and analyses of data. In this article, we will hear from youth enrolled in one of two courses taught by Ms. Luz, including the following: Marylou, a Black female youth in 10th-grade; Troy, Dave, and Chris, all Black male youth in 10th-grade; Miguel, Enrique, and William, Latino youth all in 10th-grade.

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Methods for Collecting Data

I drew on ethnographic methods inspired by the ethnography of communica- tion tradition (Hymes, 1964) as well as the sociocultural tradition of language and literacy research (Heath & Street, 2008) to conduct this study. Both per- spectives treat language as the premier tool mediating culture, learning, and development while placing an emphasis on lengthy ethnographic observa- tions of a community and its’ sociocultural practices (Cole, 1998). I observed ELA classrooms at WHS for one academic year, moving from observer to participant observer over time. I audio recorded classroom interactions and small group discussions had by youth participants, and semi-structured inter- views with youth participants and their teachers using a Livescribe Echo Pen which allowed for the simultaneous jotting of fieldnotes and audio recording of classroom interactions. In addition to class sessions, I participated in activ- ities outside of the ELA classes, including lunch time interactions, special assemblies and events, in addition to serving as a volunteer for college prepa- ration workshops afterschool and weekends.

Data Analysis

Data from the larger study sought to document the regularities and vari- ance (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) in the linguistic repertoires of Black and Latina/o youth (Martínez, 2012). This study zoomed in on Ms. Luz’ class- room interactions where she offered students an evaluation or feedback within an ongoing participation framework within official classroom spaces. Examining participation frameworks in this space made clear Ms. Luz’ hyper use of corrective feedback within turn-taking sequences. Ms. Luz’ corrective feedback features within participation frameworks in offi- cial classroom spaces appeared to function as a mechanism to monitor the “non-standard” use of English by her students. Therefore, I coded all turn-taking sequences within the official classroom space during Ms. Luz’ instruction, subsequently coding for types of corrective feedback offered by Ms. Luz using revoicing (recasting student utterance for whole-class comprehension) and repair (explicit or implicit “correction” of a student’s utterance) as codes. In addition, I coded for Black and Latina/o youth’s uptake or not of the evaluation and feedback offered during corrective feedback practices. These moments were analyzed via close readings of transcripts from audio recordings in addition to triangulation of data from fieldnotes and analytical memos.

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Researcher Positionality

I entered this research as a former teacher and college advisor at WHS, a Chicano researcher with a teacher solidarity lens (Philip, Martinez, Lopez, & Garcia, 2014). While I left WHS to become a full-time doctoral student, I continued to work at WHS as a field supervisor for pre-service teachers, in addition to conducting two pilot studies for my doctoral coursework. In addi- tion to having a professional connection to WHS, my mother was born and raised in Tajuata and attended WHS until she was pushed out during her senior year. My father also attended WHS to learn English soon after he arrived as an immigrant to Tajuata from Mexico City. I was born and raised in the neighboring city of Home Gardens where I visited Tajuata on a weekly basis growing up. While I was potentially a “native” researcher in this space, my own positionality and that of my research tools affected my own subject position and access to participants throughout this study documented else- where (Martinez, 2016).

Repairing the Sounds of Black Language

In this section, I bring attention to an interaction between Troy and David, both Black male students, and Ms. Luz. We will hear from Troy and David, who have been sanctioned by Ms. Luz as speakers in the official classroom space.5 Prior to this interaction, Ms. Luz asked her students to decide whether the characters listed on a transparency film and projected onto a wall were pro- or anti-Caesar. This sequence began when Ms. Luz and her students com- pleted the entire list of characters and returned to discuss the involvement of Portia, a more complex character in relation to Caesar’s assassination. It was during this interaction that Troy and David engaged Ms. Luz’ comments and questions. Here, the Black language features of Troy and David undergo a process of corrective feedback during the ongoing participation framework.

Transcript 5.1—She don’t even know wassup6

01 Ms. Luz: Now lets go back to Portia. = ((to class))

02 Portia’s tricky. Okay?

03 Troy: Where she-where Ø she from ((to Ms. Luz))

04 Lorenzo: Con permiso. ((to Ms. Luz))

05 Can you push it up [miss?

06 Ms. Luz: [she’s Brutus’ wife ((to

Troy))

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In Line 03, Troy asked Ms. Luz a clarifying question: “Where she- where Ø she from,” attempting to understand or remember who Portia was in rela- tion to the text, Julius Caesar. Throughout the data, many moments occurred where corrective feedback might be expected according to the use of “non- standard” language forms; however, not all were initiated. Teacher prepara- tion handbooks often recommend teachers provide corrective feedback when a student utterance does not align with academic or standard language con- ventions, specifically for emergent bilingual students (e.g., see Vásquez, Hansen, & Smith, 2013, p. 12), despite inconclusive findings from second- language acquisition research (see Russell, 2009, for a review of findings on corrective feedback). And, little research has been conducted on corrective feedback for speakers of Black languages or other stigmatized languages. However, it is important to bring attention to these moments as much atten- tion is otherwise given to marking non-dominant language features.

We see in this interaction that Ms. Luz did not provide feedback to Troy’s question: “Where she- where Ø she from?” that featured a zero copula, or the absence of “is” or “are,” in dominant varieties of English such as “Where is she from?” Instead, Ms. Luz answered Troy’s question in Line 06 with “She’s Brutus’ wife” without bringing attention to his Black language feature.

Troy continued,

07 Troy: She~Ø~a~pro?

08 Lorenzo: (2.0 sec) pa-rriba:: ((to Ms. Luz))

09 Dave: Yeah but she was—she was [(xxx)

10 Troy: [she don’t even know

wassup

11 Lorenzo: [Hey miss: ((to Ms. Luz)

12 Ms. Luz: [She doesn’t know what’s going on

13 but [she’s worried about her father right? ((to

class))

14 Troy: [((stands up blocking more of Lorenzo’s

view))

In Line 07, after hearing that Portia was Brutus’s wife, Troy declared, “She~Ø~a~pro?” to which Dave replied in Line 09, “Yeah but she was- she was (xxx),” attempting to explain that her marriage to Brutus did not imme- diately implicate her as a “pro” Caesar character. Again, Ms. Luz did not

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repair Troy’s utterance, “She~Ø~a~pro?” that again featured a zero copula. In Line 10, Troy’s utterance overlapped with Dave’s final utterance. He calmly but rapidly and confidently stated, “She don’t even know wassup.” Here, Troy’s utterance featured the omission of the third-person singular present tense s, common in Black language when he stated, “She don’t” as opposed to the dominant English inclusion of -s or -es as in “She doesn’t” (Rickford & Rickford, 2000). Troy also uttered the popular word “wassup” often attributed to Black language or Hip Hop Nation. The meaning behind Troy’s utterance is clear, Portia “don’t even know wassup.” Ms. Luz, how- ever, revoiced7 Troy’s statement in Lines 12 and 13, and stated, “She doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Ms. Luz’ revoicing of Troy’s utterance brings attention to the form of his statement, engaging a type of repair that Jefferson (1987) calls an embedded correction, a form of “other repair” where ongoing conversation does not stop to attend to the “correction.” The repair is embedded in the natural flow of conversation. This type of participation framework, however, did not pro- vide Troy the ability to align himself with the recasting and translation of his utterance. Ms. Luz quickly moved into her next utterance “But she’s worried about her father right?” with a rising intonation at the end of “right” which only provided a space for Troy, David, and other students to either align with this statement or not. After this, neither Troy nor Dave contributed any fur- ther to the topic, rather they nodded their heads along with other students in the class, displaying their alignment or agreement with Ms. Luz’ final state- ment potentially accommodating to the procedural display expected of them (Bloome, Puro, & Theodorou, 1989), or the expected ways of “doing school” given the imposed routines of classroom life.

While Troy and David did not follow up with additional comments, this interaction highlights how Black language uttered by these youth received corrective feedback in a subtle form that potentially disrupted the meaning- making dialogue about Portia’s role. In Line 10, Troy’s utterance “She don’t even know wassup” was offered to Dave who did not successfully communi- cate his intended statement that supported Portia’s knowledge of or involve- ment in Caesar’s assassination. A potentially robust conversation about a literary character’s intentions was ultimately stumped by Ms. Luz’ embedded repair within this interaction and several others documented within the two courses observed within this academic year.

Repair or “correction” of Black language practices occurred with regular- ity throughout my observations at WHS, yet were overwhelmingly present in Ms. Luz’ class where students were labeled as performing well below state and federal expectations. I provide an additional example of Ms. Luz’ repair of Black language by introducing Marylou, a Black female youth who was a

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peer of Troy and David. Described by Ms. Luz as a student who needed to be looked after closely, Marylou described her English class as her favorite. Marylou, like many other Black and Latina/o youth at WHS was over labeled, the most prominent was being labeled as a Special Education student for which she had an Individualized Education Plan. Like her peers, Marylou also experienced many contributions in the official space of her classroom where corrective feedback was offered.

The following sequence occurred after Ms. Luz asked several students to consider whether Brutus, given his actions toward Julius Caesar, was a hero or a murderer. Marylou was called on by Ms. Luz because of a previous interac- tion with her peer where she answered the question about Brutus in the “unof- ficial” space of the classroom. Marylou told her peer that Brutus was “a mutha fuckin murderer cuzz::” Twenty-three seconds after hearing Marylou com- ment to her peer, Ms. Luz called on her to respond to a known answer question that one other student had already answered, perhaps a way of “checking in” with Marylou after hearing her utter an expletive, which, according to the local language policies of the class, was considered transgressive.

Transcript 5.2—He a murderer

01 Ms. Luz: Marylou, what do you think?

02 Marylou: He Ø a murderer.

03 Ms. Luz: Why?

04 Marylou: because he traded

05 on his best friend

06 Ms. Luz: he be:trayed his best friend

07 Marylou: because of what somebody told him

08 Ms. Luz: Based on wha-Cassius told him

Ms. Luz asked Marylou in line 01 “ . . . what do you think?” In Marylou’s response in Line 02, “He Ø a murderer,” corrective feedback was not offered by Ms. Luz despite the presence of a zero copula. In response to Ms. Luz’ question “Why?” Marylou responded in Lines 04 and 05, “because he traded on his best friend.” Here, Marylou’s utterance functioned to share her under- standing that Brutus “traded on his best friend,” shifting allegiance against Caesar and ultimately murdering him. Ms. Luz followed Marylou’s statement by revoicing her utterance in Line 06, “he be:trayed his best friend” with emphasis on the word “be:trayed,” elongating the first syllable “be:” and emphasizing and rising her pitch in the second syllable “trayed.” In doing so,

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Ms. Luz replaced Marylou’s use of the phrase “traded on” with “betrayed,” a word that may, from Ms. Luz’ perspective, be more appropriate.

The revoicing of Marylou’s utterances may have worked to position her words as a contribution to the classroom discussion (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993), yet the embedded repair in Ms. Luz’ revoicing also served to “cor- rect” Marylou’s form rather than the function of her utterance and message. This repair event was therefore one of many that indexed and circulated ideologies of language the made clear the preferred use of the Standard. Black and Latina/o youth’s utterances were often recasted in ways that closely mirrored imagined Standard varieties of English. Ms. Luz did this once again when Marylou followed up in Line 07 “because of what some- body told him” which was revoiced into “because of wha- Cassius told him” in Line 08. In the final revoicing in this sequence, Ms. Luz provided Marylou (and the rest of the class) with background information from the actual textbook, in this case, the name “Cassius” who encouraged Brutus’ actions.

While I am interrogating the previous sequences for the imbedded correc- tion or repair practices that Ms. Luz’ initiated, it is important to note that “revoicing” is considered an effective teaching strategy. In their study of revoicing among teachers, O’Connor and Michaels (1993) found that teacher revoicing served three functions: (a) to assist students in staking a position, (b) to credit student voice, and (c) to “scaffold and recast problem-solution strategies of non-native-language students” (p. 318). Researchers and practi- tioners consider “revoicing” a “best practice” to encourage students, espe- cially non-dominant students, to participate in classroom discussions (Dyson, 2002). Revoicing as a strategy is also believed to counter the Initiation– Response–Feedback (or sometimes “E” for evaluation; IRF/E) sequence prevalent in classrooms (Mehan, 1979). Through revoicing, the “feedback” or evaluation part of the sequence is replaced with a teacher’s retelling of students’ utterance, giving students a place in the official classroom space (Herbel-Eisenmann, Drake, & Cirillo, 2009). However, it is important to examine revoicing practices that might function to mark non-dominant lan- guage practices in our classrooms.

Youth Perspectives on Corrective Feedback

During interviews with Black youth, each remembered specific experiences when a teacher “corrected” their speech. When I asked Chris, a Black youth in Ms. Luz’ first semester English class (and Troy’s peer in the class), if he had ever been corrected by a teacher in front of class he quickly confirmed. When asked for an example, he provided the following:

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Transcript 5.3

01 Chris: Like, When I say

02 We was goin to the store

03 and and they be like

04 We were going to the store

During this interview, Chris shared his memory of being repaired by teachers, in addition to his understanding of a “correct” or more “appropriate” way, accord- ing to schooling demands, of communicating: “We was goin to the store.” His reflection also captured his ability to shift from Black language to a dominant variety of English. Chris also revealed that he did not mind being “corrected,” because he reported, “It helps me get my English better” even though he dis- played his ability to “shift” into this so-called “better” English anyway.

When I asked Marylou about her experiences being corrected, she responded, “They (teachers) just uhh was telling me how to talk and stuff . . . it’s whatever to me, like kids gonna be kids,” suggesting that being corrected did not affect her view of teachers or her language use as “kids gonna be kids” and they will speak as they please. Jerome, a Black youth in Ms. Luz’ second semester ELA course, pointed to his belief that it was not necessary to be corrected or that teachers demand that he speak in what he called “school” language. “Well I tell them like, cause they see I could take English tests and I take ‘em perfect. . . there’s no point it’s just for the test.” Jerome believed that speaking “school” language was not important as he only found it useful to use “school” language during exams and assessments. Gee (2004) supports this notion arguing that so-called “academic” language is a specialized dis- course used only within specialized contexts. Despite initial goals of teachers to create free-flowing discussions about a literary text, attention is paid to the form of utterances rather than the function, disrupting rich opportunities for youth to engage in meaning-making conversations about literary works.

Analysis of classroom discourse at WHS revealed that who was speaking and how they spoke were often more important for teachers than the meaning making youth attempted to communicate. Yet, for many youth at WHS, they did not passively allow repair practices to occur without displaying their emerging critical meta-awareness of the power-laden messages being directed toward them. While these youth did not explicitly state their understanding of repair practices as an indication of their teacher attempting to eliminate home language practices, their responses provide indexical connections to their alignment against the suggested repair offered by their teachers. In the

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following section, I provide a look at how youth negotiate standard language ideologies in official classroom spaces, using humor and their verbal dexter- ity to signal a tension in their own uptake of the corrective feedback practices engaged by their teacher.

Youth Negotiation of Standard Language Ideologies

In this section, I highlight how youth display their emerging critical meta- awareness by making indexical connections to their awareness of the power- laden messages they receive from their teacher. At WHS, talk about testing was prominent among teachers and heard loudly on the school-wide public speaking system. During my early visits, teachers spoke to their students about upcoming examinations, what scores WHS needed to meet state and federal benchmarks, and how everyday classroom activities were directly related to the upcoming exams.

When testing season began, between March and May, talk about testing was heightened, and “Do Now” or warm-up activities in Ms. Luz’ class were consistent. Ms. Luz often announced, “On the test, sometimes you’ll have to make an educated guess,” “On the CAHSEE8 you only have to get a little more than half the questions correct,”9 “Don’t become like some seniors who still haven’t passed the CAHSEE.” The proceeding sequence is of interest, given the constant attention to testing. On the day after California Standards Tests (CST) were completed, students returned to Ms. Luz’ second semester course after 2 weeks of “special” schedules.

Minutes into the beginning of class, Miguel, a Latino youth, expressed his frustration with Ms. Luz for not asking about testing. The following sequence began when Ms. Luz transitioned from a “Do Now” activity to another activity.

Transcript 5.4

01 Luz: Alright, so (1.0) here’s what~we’re~gonna do.

02 We’re gonna quickly or briefly re:view::

03 The three ter:ms

04 We talked about

05 And discussed on:: Monday.

06 (sec)

07 I didn’t see you guys yesterday

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08 Cause yesterday was CST

09 It was the last CST test okay

10 Miguel: ((Staring at Ms. Luz)) It went well

11 Thank you for asking

12 Luz: Thank you:: for: us:ing the word well::

13 [good job

14 Enrique: [That shit was: tigh::t

15 Class: ((laughter throughout class))

16 Luz: yeah, I- I- I prefer it went well

17 (sec)

18 that was your history test right

In Lines 07 to 09, we hear Ms. Luz talking about how she did not see her students on the previous day as they were completing their CST exams. Immediately after, in Lines 10 and 11, Miguel entered the official space stat- ing, “It went well, than you for asking.” Here Miguel brings up his concern or “calls out” Ms. Luz for not asking about the exams. Perhaps Miguel was expecting an apology from Ms. Luz for not asking sooner or an explanation to Miguel and the rest of her students that she was about to ask about their experiences. Miguel sat at his desk with his two hands folded on top of each other staring intently at Ms. Luz as he stated these words. While Miguel was usually a jokester, he was visibly upset and later told me that he was disap- pointed, but that he couldn’t fully explain to me what he was feeling.

Interestingly, instead of apologizing for the oversight, Ms. Luz focused on the form of Miguel’s statement, despite his use of what sounded like a domi- nant variety of English. In Lines 12 and 13 she responded, “Thank you:: for: us:ing the word well:: good job.” Here Ms. Luz highlighted, or marked, Miguel’s use of what she might call a “proper” form of language, specifically noting that he used the word “well,” perhaps instead of “good,” as in “It went good.” She followed up with an evaluative statement, “good job.” Lines 12 and 13 by Ms. Luz indexed a language ideological stance that positioned her as an authority and monitor of language. In pointing out Miguel’s proper use of the word “well,” she indexed her belief that his utterance (and the proper- ness of this utterance) countered his everyday communicative practices, sug- gesting that he did not always do a “good job” in speaking. In making these comments, Ms. Luz opened the participation framework for another student, Enrique, a Latino youth, to provide an alternative message within the official classroom space.

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In Line 14, Enrique overlapped with Ms. Luz and entered the official classroom space with, “That shit was: tigh::t.” Enrique’s words point to his own attempt to revoice Miguel’s statement that testing “went well” in a lan- guage that his peers would understand, witnessed by the alignment he received by students who laughed (Line 15). More powerfully, Enrique’s utterance, “That shit was: tigh::t” indexed an emerging critical meta-aware- ness about the message relayed by Ms. Luz to Miguel. Could Enrique’s utter- ance work to resist Ms. Luz’ attention to Miguel’s language choice rather than his larger statement? If so, I read Enrique’s utterance as his alignment away from the standard language ideologies that Ms. Luz sought to invoke. While I believe all youth would agree that they want to learn “good” English, this sequence demonstrates how youth can recognize linguistic monitoring, even when they are using standard varieties of English, as was the case with Miguel. The moment Enrique stepped into this interaction with an alternative to Ms. Luz’ “proper” way of using language can be treated as a rupture in the participant structure, demonstrating Enrique’s ability to counter the larger standard ideology that was being circulated by Ms. Luz in that moment.

Youth Rupturing Standard Language Ideological Discourse

In the following sequence, I will examine another rupture in classroom dis- course, drawing on data from Ms. Luz’ second semester English 10A/B course. On this day, Ms. Luz was reviewing the “Do Now” activity and was feting responses from youth about the relationship Julius Caesar had with Brutus. Specifically, she asked her students to reflect on and compare Caesar’s reaction to both the individual wounds he received from the various men who participated in his assassination with the final wound he received from Brutus, his supposed best friend. While Ms. Luz spoke to the entire class, only a few of her students responded, and like many other classroom interac- tions during her second semester course, the male youth dominated the offi- cial classroom discussion space.

Below, I introduce Enrique (mentioned previously) and William, two Latino youth, who were raised in the Tajuata neighborhood since birth. Both these youth displayed a range of language practices, including the ability to shift into and out of dominant varieties of English. Enrique seemed fairly comfortable contributing to classroom discussions. His sarcasm in speaking to his peers and Ms. Luz was on display whenever he disagreed with a point made by anyone in class. William spoke a range of languages, and fluidly moved into and out of diverse English(es) and prominently deployed of Black language features. In the following interaction, we get a glimpse of the discursive moves

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made by Ms. Luz, when Enrique and William attempted to bring language possibly understood as their “home,” “slang,” or “ghetto language” to describe incidents that occurred in Julius Caesar, such as the scene when Caesar is stabbed. Specifically, Enrique and William speak to the universal theme of betrayal, or in Marylou’s words, the theme of “being traded on.”

This sequence began as Enrique and Ms. Luz discussed why Caesar was shocked when he saw Brutus among the men who conspired against him. Ms. Luz’ asked Enrique how we (the reader) can know that Caesar was shocked and saddened:

Transcript 5.5

01 Ms. Luz: How do we know this: Enrique

02 Enrique: Because he trusted [him

03 Miguel: [cause he told ‘em

04 Ms. Luz: shh:: (to Miguel). Enrique?

05 Thanks: Miguel?

Here, the participant framework followed an IRF sequence. In Line 01, Ms. Luz asked Enrique, “How do we know this: Enrique” (a known answer ques- tion) to which Enrique replied, “Because he trusted him.” Enrique’s utterance was mostly complete when Miguel, another Latino male youth in the class chimed in, overlapping the end of Enrique’s statement in Line 03 with “cause he told ‘em.” In Line 04, Ms. Luz attempted to quiet Miguel for speaking out of turn, thus interrupting her feedback or evaluation to complete the sequence. As Miguel was not called upon to participate in the official classroom space, even though both Enrique and Miguel conveyed the same message, or “answer” to her question, only Enrique’s response was sanctioned and there- fore invited into the official classroom script. This was evident in Lines 04 and 05 where Ms. Luz deployed a “shh: Enrique:: Thanks Miguel?” Here Ms. Luz made it clear to Miguel that he was talking out of turn, and sarcasti- cally thanked Miguel, admonishing him for speaking out of turn. By not wel- coming both Enrique and Miguel’s points into the official script in the classroom, Ms. Luz supported the notion that only students allowed into the space can contribute.

Enrique continued to support his initial notion that Caesar trusted Brutus and was therefore shocked by his actions.

06 Enrique: because Caesar trusted-

07 Ms. Luz: Cesar trusted

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08 Enrique: Bruno- I- I mean Brutus-

09 Peers: ((laughter because Enrique said Bruno rather than

Brutus))

10 Ms. Luz: Caesar trus:ted Bru:tus:: ((writing on

transparency))

In Line 06, Enrique picked up where he was cut off by Miguel and Ms. Luz, and stated “because Caesar trusted.” In Line 07, midway through Enrique’s utterance, Ms. Luz began to revoice his statement: “Caesar trusted.” This revoicing, while potentially bringing Enrique’s opinion to the rest of the class, interrupted his complete comment similar to the way Miguel chimed in for Enrique previously. As soon as Ms. Luz’ revoicing was complete, Enrique continued in Line 08 with “Bruno- I- I mean Brutus-” where once again, his utterance was revoiced by Ms. Luz. The revoicing that is apparent here reminds me of what Gutiérrez and Stone (2002) called hypermediation in scaffolding practices. They identified moments in instruction where teachers provided their students with too much assistance, inhibiting students’ ability to demonstrate competence or expertise on their own. This sequence is repre- sentative of a moment where hypermediation occurred through revoicing practices. The consistent revoicing in this sequence could potentially stifle the ideas and contributions of youth as they were working through their thoughts before they spoke. Noting the turn taking for speaking above, Ms. Luz’ revoicing led to Enrique taking three turns to respond to her known answer question. Revoicing was a tool used to monitor students’ voices, man- aging the linguistic form of their utterances. In the rest of this stretch of talk, it became evident that Ms. Luz did not revoice non-standard language prac- tices, similar to the case of Troy and Dave, she only revoiced the form of their messages.

Ms. Luz continued from her previous utterance where she revoiced Enrique’s utterances by following up with additional information about the incidents in the play. The rest of this transcript demonstrates what happened when youth provided alternatives or translations of standard ways with words in this class:

11 Ms. Luz: and in fact when he’s stabbed

12 by all these men: right.

13 he’s jumped right.

14 William: he [wa-

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15 Ms. Luz [he stabbed by all these men

16 girls [shh::: ((to group of girls in class))

17 William: [he was shanked?

18 Ms. Luz: alright so when he’s stabbed by all these men

In Line 13 of this sequence, Ms. Luz uttered the phrase “He’s jumped right” to describe events from Caesar’s assassination. The word “jumped” refers to the act of an individual being physically assaulted by one or more people (this usually occurs with several individuals “jumping” or physically attacking one person). Here Ms. Luz invoked a phrase often uttered by youth. In Line 14, William attempted to chime in with a statement “he wa-” but he was quickly overtaken by Ms. Luz’ who continued with, “He was stabbed by all these men,” a statement that was potentially a self-repair of her previous statement, “he’s jumped right.” Consistent throughout the data, Ms. Luz’ often invoked self-repair practices whenever she used phrases she may have considered “non-standard.” Her revoicing also provided additional informa- tion about the act of being stabbed: “He was stabbed by all these men.” Interestingly, in Line 17 William quickly provided another way of saying this: “He was shanked?” William’s utterance had the potential of adding to the communicative repertoire of the class, that is, contributing to the lan- guages honored in classrooms. However, there was no uptake of William’s interpretation of the incident. Instead, Ms. Luz revoiced William’s utterance in Line 18 with “Alright so when he’s stabbed by all these men,” making a discursive move to revoice in a way that did not acknowledge the word “shanked” yet highlighted the word “stabbed” granting preference to a more appropriate way of communicating this point.

Again, Ms. Luz continued presenting more information to her students:

19 Ms. Luz: Isn’t it a fact that he only reacts

20 To his best friend the last guy to stab him

21 The rest- he’s more in shock

22 And just like trying to control his pain

23 Or bleeding or something

24 But when his best friend stabbed him

25 What does he say to him

26 Enrique: I’m from the projects

27 Peers: ((laughter))

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28 Ms. Luz: He does not say I’m from the projects Enrique

29 students: ((laughter))

In this sequence, Ms. Luz spoke to the entire class, but here her gaze returned to Enrique once again. In Line 25, she asked Enrique, “What does he say to him,” and Enrique replied, “I’m from the projects” in Line 26. Here Enrique created a rupture in the ongoing participation framework, by not replying “correctly” or “appropriately” to the known answer question posed by Ms. Luz. In fact, his response had the potential to detract the entire discussion as it caused laughter among his peers, but Ms. Luz was quick to take up his statement in Line 28 where she uttered, “He does not say I’m from the proj- ects Enrique.” While Enrique’s statement was not fully considered, he did receive several laughs from his peers. These laughs could have been align- ments to his comment but this argument cannot be supported simply by their laughter.

Enrique’s utterance “I’m from the projects” had several potential mean- ings, however. Ethnographically, youth often made references to the proj- ects. It was well known that many youth at WHS lived in one of the four housing projects in the Tajuata community. Even youth who did not live in the projects experienced the projects as they walked to and from school, drove past the projects, and visited friends and family members in the proj- ects. “Being” from the projects or living near the projects indexed a set of beliefs for youth that are not in the purview of this study. However, there were many moments when youth discussed the complexities of being from the projects. Some youth believed that everyone should be scared of the potential danger of those living in or near the projects, while other youth saw the projects as a symbol defiance against outsiders and solidarity with those from within. In addition, stories of betrayal from violence, family conflicts, and peer misunderstanding were universal themes not limited to youth at WHS or urban neighborhoods. Ms. Luz herself had shared a story about being betrayed by a family member. Enrique’s response “I’m from the proj- ects” indexed several possible experiences as he lent his voice to Julius Caesar. Enrique stating that Caesar’s response would have been “I’m from the projects” points to a potential connection to his lived experiences and the theme of betrayal in Julius Caesar. However, Enrique’s potentially fruitful rupture of the participation framework did not lead to strong connections with the lives of youth mediated by their transcultural ways of communicat- ing. An important pedagogical consideration that we must confront in edu- cating teachers is how we discuss the significance of moment-to-moment interactions.

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Discussion and Conclusions

This article highlighted the uptake of Black and Latina/o youth language practices in ELA classrooms by their teacher. While Ms. Luz displayed a nar- row approach to what counted as language with her students, the youth in her class did not always passively accept the corrective feedback she offered, signaling their emerging critical meta-awareness. The varied youth ruptured ongoing participation frameworks opening up a potential space where youth tacitly worked toward sustaining their language practices. While I argue that they aligned themselves away from standard language ideologies circulated by their teacher(s) during a given interaction, this was not a fixed perspective. Black and Latina/o youth at WHS consistently reported wanting to speak “right”; however, they also expressed their emerging critical meta-awareness of moments where their home and community languages were being marked by a specific corrective feedback loop.

While ever so minute, these micro interactions represent moments where youth themselves are expanding their linguistic repertoires, demonstrating their ability to communicate in their transcultural settings. However, Black and Latina/o youth’s linguistic resources are not being built on or leveraged in their classes. Instead, these practices were subjected to processes of “cor- rection” or repair, even when uttering communicatively appropriate speech. This article points to the need for teachers to understand their students’ lan- guage practices and to become involved in the process of expanding their own linguistic repertoires (Zentella, 1997). In doing so, teachers might be able to understand the linguistic features of their students and interrogate their own ways of communicating in transcultural settings.

The language ideologies of youth were also important to consider. While some youth displayed their linguistic dexterity in their transcultural settings, the youth still understood their language practices as deficient, or in their words, “not right.” If we hope for students themselves to have a wider under- standing of language, we must have youth consider the various languages they speak across settings, and for instructional practices to leverage the tacit understandings of language youth already have, tapping into and developing a critical meta-awareness. While the youth reported here did not take an extensive stance, I see them taking emerging steps toward a critical meta- awareness about the linguistic markedness of their utterances, and how to respond to such experiences within their schooling experiences. These youth, whether they communicate a message through their silence or by responses to corrective feedback offered, are taking initial steps to recognizing the dis- ruptions their own language practices may have on the WPSs of their classrooms.

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Moving Toward an Expansive Understanding of Language

In this article, I have been particularly critical of the discursive moves made by Ms. Luz who was well intentioned in her work. She was concerned with her students meeting the benchmarks set by local, state, and federal account- ability measures. While this article did not center on her own dispositions and ideological stances as a teacher, I will quickly add that many of her instruc- tional choices were mediated by directives (ideological) from her leadership team to raise test het students’ test scores. This often meant that instructional practices were reductive in nature, focusing on building basic skills rather than promoting learning that required students to form their own opinions and relate their learning to real-world problems. And this is where the tension becomes apparent. Black and Latina/o youth are more likely to have a nar- rower curriculum that rarely gives them an opportunity to come of with their own questions or debate possible answers (Darling-Hammond, 2007). Educational narratives laud reform efforts that seek to improve the educa- tional lives of all students, particularly Black and Latina/o youth who have not fared well in schools. Yet, these are the very students who are constrained at various levels of their educational lives. They receive curriculum that wants them to think, write, and speak in a manner that has very little to do with their everyday lived experiences all while being told that the languages of their hearts are unacceptable (Razfar & Rumenapp, 2014).

By examining the moment-to-moment interactions of even the best inten- tioned teachers, we get a glimpse of the linguistic supremacy alive in the schools serving non-dominant groups. Again, Ms. Luz, like many teachers across the United States, was an actor within a larger institutional organiza- tion that continued to link learning to scores on standardized assessments. She was potentially a victim in the deprofessionalization of teachers, a move- ment that seeks to make teaching uniform.

The youth in Ms. Luz’ classes were capable of engaging in fascinating discussions. This article showcases how Black and Latina/o youth were on the path to genuine conversations about literary critiques, character analysis, and their own feelings about testing! It was also highlighted how these youth were capable of recognizing the corrective feedback being offered to them embedded in everyday classroom talk, while some felt the sting of utterances that were supposed to help them “speak right.” Observing in several WHS classrooms and examining these data, I am left imagining the fruitful discus- sions that could have happened in classrooms. I am also left asking what we can do for youth by working with educators to re-mediate, or reorganize the ways in which classroom discourse is organized in classrooms. We are still seeing participation frameworks that do not fully allow youth to engage in learning that matters beyond classrooms and schools.

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This work has several implications that we must consider as a field. To begin, Black and Latina/o youth must be allowed to engage in genuine, unin- terrupted discussions about literacy texts in ELA classrooms and beyond. For some time, teacher educators and researchers have cautioned teachers to move away from teacher-directed instruction and teacher-led discussions. Instead, they promote a student-directed classroom where all voices might contribute to the meaning-making processes of a classroom. Despite this, school reform efforts tend to make test preparation the goal, moving teachers away from using their own expertise to make curricular decisions. Student questions and opinions are replaced with known answer questions and sug- gested opinions. Common Core State Standards seek to change this.

Second, the power of classroom discourse analysis reveals to teachers moment-to-moment interactions not readily accessible to them during every- day instructional practices. Schools and teacher education programs must engage teachers in analyzing their own classrooms for the sake of making adjustments to their teaching and powerfully learning what works best for their students. It is through the ability to look back and reflect on pedagogical decisions made every day that teachers can point out which practices are limiting or expanding opportunities for learning. Finally, I believe that all youth are capable of engaging in critical meta-awareness, the ability to point out, and remark the discourses that position them and their peers’ cultural and linguistic practices as deficient. Alim (2005) offers a note on engaging educa- tors and students in a critical language awareness, a framework for expanding what counts for language in schools. This works to support the emergence of critical meta-awareness among non-dominant youth and their teachers.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this research was provided by the Ford Foundation Dissertation Year Fellowship, the University of California All Campus Corstium for Research on Diversity, the Texas State University Pre-doctoral Summer Fellowship, and the National Council for Teachers of English Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms. 2. Diego explained that calling someone a pasmada(o) translates into a diminutive

form of “silly dummy.” Dundos has a similar meaning, often a response to being called a pasmada(o).

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3. Willow High School (WHS) and Tajuata are pseudonyms. 4. At WHS, and in the larger district, English language learner (ELL) students were

placed in English as a second-language courses that took up to 2 to 3 years to complete. When students finished these courses, they were placed into English 10A/B courses with peers from the larger school.

5. A close analysis of Lorenzo in this interaction appears in Martínez (2014, 2016). 6. Transcription conventions: [brackets indicate overlapping speech, (.) a period

indicates falling contour, (?) a question mark indicates rising intonation, (:) colons indicate the sound preceding is noticeably lengthened, bolded italic words indicate loud speech, (1.5) numbers in parentheses mark silences in seconds, translations appear inside (parenthesis), and author notes appear in ((double parenthesis)), inaudible utterances are noted by an ‘x’ inside parenthesis (xxx), Ø indicates a copula absense.

7. Revoicing is the reuttering of another person’s utterance via repetition, expan- sion, rephrasing, and reporting (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993).

8. California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). 9. Passing the CAHSEE requires two passing scores on a Mathematics and English

section of the exam. Students must receive higher than 55% on the Mathematics portion, and more than 60% on the English Language Arts portion of the exam that includes a writing evaluation.

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Author Biography

Danny C. Martinez is an assistant professor in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of California, Davis’ School of Education. Using ethnographic meth- ods, his research examines the language and literacy practices of Black and Latina/o youth in urban schooling classrooms, and teacher learning with respect to leveraging youth practices for creating expansive learning environments.