Literacy Rituals in the Community and the Classroom

This article examines literacy rituals as a form of culturally relevant pedagogy and argues that ritual reading practice may offer some students a culturally resonant engagement with school that draws on community relationships. Using data from a year-long classroom and community literacy ethnography of an urban Catholic school and parish, the author outlines how Greg, a Vietnamese-American student and member of an immigrant community, engaged with literacy rituals in his religious practice as a Catholic and how his teacher drew on literacy rituals in her classroom practice. The article concludes by suggesting teachers consider a wider range of what counts as community knowledge and draw on the ritual literacy practices of children, their families, and their religious associations, many of which are core parts of their immigrant identities.