Research in the Teaching of English - Volume 60, Issue 2, 2025

This article reports the findings of a long-term qualitative study that examines the experiences and perspectives of Native youth re-learning their tribal community’s language. Situated within notions of Indigenous relationality, “identity resources” from the learning sciences, and Indigenous futurisms, findings reveal that, through learning their ancestral language, Native youth: (a) develop a deeper sense of their cultural identity, (b) imagine new linguistic futures and possibilities for their tribal community, and (c) recognize ways they, themselves, can become contributors to the cultural continuance of their tribal community. Set against the backdrop of structural settler colonialism and ongoing apocalypse within what is currently known as the “United States,” this research demonstrates the ways language revitalization operates as an anti-colonial act of rupture to settler colonialism’s ongoing attack on Indigenous Peoples, as well as an Indigenous-centric act of healing and self-determination.

This paper examines the civic and literacy practices that emerged through virtual feminista pláticas between Adri, a first-year college student and graduate of a “newcomers” high school, and her former teacher. Amidst a context in which transnational and immigrant youth often struggle to find a sense of belonging in educational and civic spaces, this article reveals the importance of relationships and spaces built on trust, care, and the co-construction of knowledge in which multilingual recently arrived youth can elevate their voices. I draw from transcripts of over seven hours of translingual virtual feminista pláticas. I draw on the concepts of border thinking (Anzaldúa, 2012, 2015; Mignolo, 2000) and futurity literacies from the margins (Cervantes-Soon, 2024) to deepen our understandings of speculative civic literacies (Mirra & Garcia, 2022). Findings reveal how Adri drew upon her border thinking to critically interrogate a deeply unjust global context and to imagine alternative futures for herself and her communities. This work highlights the epistemic ingenuity of transnational youth like Adri and the civic and literacy practices that can emerge through methodologies and pedagogies that recognize that ingenuity.

As recent history has shown, an information ecology polluted with fake news, mis/disinformation, and conspiracy theories can breed division, anxiety, and hatred—forces that pose profound challenges to nurturing a civically engaged, democratic citizenry. But is that always the case? The satirical conspiracy movement Birds Aren’t Real offers a curious example of how a faux conspiracy theory—that birds were replaced by avian drones to spy on Americans starting in the 1960s—can counterintuitively create counterpublics that engage in democratic civic action across digital platforms and real life but do so by actively increasing the noise in the system. Guided by Moncada’s theoretical work on vigilantism, this critical content analysis of Birds Aren’t Real describes how Bird Truthers enact vigilante civic literacies, authentic forms of youth-led activism in which literacy practices are deployed outside of and/or against institutional constraints in the service of collective, democratic good. Through this study, the authors suggest that beyond merely integrating Birds Aren’t Real into classroom media literacy lessons, ELA classrooms can become civic-minded counterpublics in their own right—spaces where students’ literacies are mobilized to interrogate institutional power, imagine alternative futures, and engage in novel forms of civic participation.

Drawing from theories of youth speculative civic literacies and freedom dreaming, this article explores how youth imagine the future of education and what roles schools and teachers play in fostering students’ dreaming. In this research study, the three co-authors—a literacy professor, an undergraduate English major, and a graduating high school student/future teacher—engage in intergenerational qualitative data analysis to discover how youth cultivate the capacities and imagination to engage in speculative educational dreaming. Through analysis of student interviews and youth counternarratives, we found that the types of interactions students have with their teachers as well as the availability of authentic opportunities for youth to engage in civic thought and action in schools are instrumental in the shaping of youth imagination and agency. For many students, school is something that is happening to them rather than for them. However, when their ideas and voices are heard within schools, it compels students to think about the world outside of school and their place in it. Conceptualizing student dreaming as acts of discovering and moving toward one’s purpose, we posit that engagement in critical civic praxis and relational encounters in learning environments are instrumental factors in the cultivation of youth agency and capacities for freedom dreaming.