Reading Don't Fix No Chevys : Literacy in the Lives of Young Men

Grades 7-12   Winner of the 2003 NCTE David H. Russell Research Award   The problems of boys in schools, especially in reading and writing, have been the focus of statistical data, but rarely does research point out how literacy educators can combat those problems. That situation has changed.   Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm, two of the most respected names in English education and in the teaching of reading, worked with a very diverse group of young men to understand how they use literacy and what conditions promote it. In this book theyshare what they have learned.   Through a variety of creative researchmethods and an extended series of interviews with 49 young men in middle and high school who differ in class, race, academic achievement, kind of school, and geography, the authors identified the factors that motivated these young men to become accomplished in the activities they most enjoyed; factors that marked the boys'literate activities outside of school, but were largely absent from their literate lives in school. Their study questions the way reading and literature are typically taught and suggests powerful alternatives to traditional instruction.

An award-winning high school and university teacher, MICHAEL W. SMITH currently teaches English education in the Literacy Cluster of Rutgers Universitys Graduate School of Education. His publications include three monographs from the National Council of Teachers of English, and Authorizing Readers: Resistance and Respect in the Teaching of Literature, written with Peter Rabinowitz. Former Chair of the Literature Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association and co-Chair of NCTEs Assembly for Research, he is coeditor of Research in the Teaching of English.JEFFREY WILHELM was a middle school reading teacher and a high school English teacher for thirteen years. He currently teaches in the PDN network (Professional Development Network) at the University of Maine and is the director of The Maine Writing Project and The Maine Technology for Teachers Institute. Wilhem is the author/coauthor of five other books, including 'You Gotta Be the Book': Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents (Teachers College Press, 1997) and Imagining to Learn: Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration Through Drama(Heinemann, 1998).