What Adolescents Deserve: A Commitment to Students' Literacy Learning

What do adolescents deserve? According to editors James A. Rycik and Judith L. Irvin, adolescents deserve enhanced opportunities to grow into independent readers and writers. But how do educators make this goal a reality and facilitate this literacy growth?

What Adolescents Deserve: A Commitment to Students' Literacy Learning has been compiled to help staff developers, administrators, teachers, and policy makers reexamine current literacy practices and reimagine how they can work with each other and with parents and community members. This collection of 22 previously published articles from various professional journals and 1 new article offers examples of how educators can revitalize their efforts for teaching middle school and high school students, and form a better understanding of youth cultures and adolescents' everyday lives.

Developed as an extension of the International Reading Association's Adolescent Literacy: A Position Statement, the volume focuses on four commitments the editors believe are critical to achieving results for adolescent literacy learners: literacy access for all students, challenging and supportive instruction, comprehensive and collaborative programs, and reimagining adolescent literacy learning.

There is life and literacy after the fourth grade. Today's adolescents can have lives that are richer than any previous generation's through the wide range of books, media, and digital texts that are readily available to them. But it is up to educators to recognize these new opportunities for literacy growth and provide continual instruction. What Adolescents Deserve will help to make this task seem much less daunting.