To become literate when we move from one part of the country to another with significant cultural differences, our first task is to learn the new culture so we can more effectively work with our colleagues and our students. When I moved from Bay City, MI, to Morehead, KY, there were many customs I needed to learn. Fortunately, what I learned…

This article presents the experience and emotional responses of the two authors and the content of the Writing Workshop Manual that they created for the Caretta Community Center in McDowell County, West Virginia. Their technique shows not only the contrast of their private and public personas but also some of the outsider/insider dialogue that…

I conducted a survey in order to determine whether or not the cultural values shared by parents from a poor mountain town in West Virginia discourage high school students from pursuing a college education. The results suggest that the persistence of poverty in rural Webster County can be attributed to the region's traditional set of cultural…

This paper develops a rhetorically centered model of community literacy in the theoretical and practical context of local publics--those spaces where ordinary people develop public voices to engage in intercultural inquiry and deliberation. Drawing on fifteen years of action research in the Community Literacy Center and beyond, the authors…

This article addresses how community-university digital media literacy projects are redefining literacy, literate practices, and institutions. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which emphasizes the organizing process itself, I analyze the shifting definitions of literacy within one particular university-community collaboration. My analysis…

After reviewing results from the Nation's Report Card in Writing, this article presents data from a survey of Latino students, the largest ethnic group of students at Northeastern Illinois University. These data suggest that the Hispanic students at Northeastern are similar to their national Hispanic peers in several ways, such as the levels of…

Integrity is commonly conflated with basic literacy in assessments of the skills workers need. This case study of a word-based character education program in Springfield, Missouri examines how business leaders may blame a lack of skills by employees on a lack of moral literacy. The premise of this essay is that the expression of a literacy program…

This essay describes service learning as a space for civic dialogue. In the project-oriented course discussed below--an oral history of a south-side African-American neighborhood in Chicago--civic dialogue took shape when middle class students from a range of backgrounds at the Illinois Institute of Technology interviewed residents of different…

In this article, we begin by briefly reviewing some of the national statistics on older adults and computer usage, statistics that led each of us to volunteer as teachers to develop technological literacy programs for older adults at local community centers. Because we recognize that all literacies are developed and used by specific people in…

Arguing that we fail both parents and students if we continue to think of community literacy as a dichotomy between school and work, this article illustrates Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) as sites of community literacy. The investigation of LMIs in a particular community (Greater Lafayette, Indiana) allows for a more thorough understanding of…

For nineteen years, Mercy Learning Center, a community-based literacy organization, has provided basic literacy instruction to low-income women in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During that time it has grown from three students and two tutors to 450 students, 155 tutors, and five full-time teachers. This growth has been affected by changes in welfare…

What does it mean for a community writing assistance program to bridge the gap between the university and the community? What makes for a successful alliance between these two worlds usually considered distinct? Our paper addresses these questions by reflecting on the factors that have contributed to the growing success of our CWA program at the…

This article outlines one potential model for a graduate-level course in community literacy studies. Ellen Cushman and Jeffery Grabill taught this course for the first time at Michigan State University in the spring of 2007. In this article our colleagues with varying disciplinary backgrounds reflect on the course, its readings, and their…