Throwing the Book Away

This book explores how the inclusion of students’ out-of-school literacies in a secondary English classroom affected students’ engagement, motivation, and sense of community. Findings revealed that students felt the inclusion of hip hop made this English class more relevant and meaningful to the students and helped to foster a strong sense of community among the class members. This study also found that student-directed curriculum, teacher vulnerability, and the inclusion of community members as mentors were very important to the students’ sense of community. This sense of community, however, did not extend beyond the classroom.