Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 250– 261

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Linguistics and Education

j o ur nal homep age : w ww.elsev ier .com/ locate / l inged

Activist literacies: An analysis of the literacy practices of aschool-based human rights club

Ross Collin ∗

Manhattanville College, 2900 Purchase St., Purchase, NY 10577, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 27 June 2012

Keywords:ActivismHuman rightsLiteracyGenreDiscourse analysis

a b s t r a c t

In this article, I examine the literacy practices of a high school-based human rights club. Iinvestigate how the group engages in certain kinds of textual production to sponsor andarrange advisory sessions (school-wide meetings between teachers and small groups of stu-dents). More specifically, I consider how the club adapts school genres to mediate advisorysessions and to advance its visions of human rights and international relations. I describehow students collaborate both to develop a strategy for negotiating the school bureaucracyand to produce texts that will elicit institutional action. Also, I present a discourse analysisof one student-authored text crucial to the mediation of advisory meetings. I argue that stu-dents’ knowledge of situations (e.g. advisory sessions) shapes how they adapt institutionalgenres and advance their visions of the world.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

This advisory is brought to you by the Human Rights Activists Alliance.1 It’s Women’s History Month. . .!If we do our part, 600 million girls in the developing world will do the rest. Please enjoy, think about it, discuss, and spread the word. Women aroundthe world will appreciate it.

—from a memo co-written by a high school student activist and distributed to teachers in advance of a monthlyadvisory meeting (see Appendix A).

The memo excerpted above and analyzed below is a kind of text seldom studied in critical literacy research: it is adocument co-produced by a self-identified student activist. In education research, “critical literacies” are usually understoodas practices of reading, writing, speaking, and thinking that foreground questions of difference and power. Much of this workhas sought to answer the question “How can classroom teachers help general population students develop literacies that willenable them to identify and work to overcome injustice?” (see Cahnmann & Varghese, 2005; Lankshear, Greene, & McLaren,1993; Morrell, 2007; Shor, 1992; Smith, 1995; Vasquez, 2004; Willett, Solsken, & Wilson-Keenan, 1998). Few researchers,though, have asked how students who already identify as activists engage in critical literacy work.

Discussing the dearth of research on activist literacies across domains, anthropologists Holland and Skinner (2008)observe, “Social movements often organize activities around the use of written forms. Yet these literacy events and practiceshave received little attention for the roles they play in effecting social, cultural and political change” (p. 849). While Hollandand Skinner seek to address this gap by examining the literacies of activist adults, I endeavor to address it by researchingthe literacies of activist high school students.

∗ Tel.: +1 914 323 5431; fax: +1 914 323 5493.E-mail addresses: ross.collin@mville.edu, rossecollin@gmail.com

1 Unless otherwise indicated, all names are pseudonyms. Though “Human Rights Activists Alliance” is a pseudonym, the group’s actual name includesthe key term “Activists.”

0898-5898/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2012.05.001

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In this study, I examine the literacy practices of a school-based Human Rights Activists Alliance (HRAA). I consider howthe group, seeking to negotiate the school bureaucracy, works with different kinds of texts. More specifically, I investigatehow the group engages in certain kinds of textual production to arrange school-wide advisory meetings organized aroundthe theme of human rights. Advisories, I explain below, are monthly meetings in which all students meet with teachers toconduct school business and to discuss selected topics.

This investigation aims to answer the following interrelated questions:

1. How do student activists mobilize different cultural and institutional resources to produce texts?2. How, in these texts, do activists figure themselves, their peers, their teachers, and women and girls in “the developing

world”? How do they frame human rights?3. How, through textual production, do activists prompt institutional action?

To answer these questions, I describe how students collaborate both to develop a strategy for negotiating the schoolbureaucracy and to produce texts that will elicit institutional action. I also present a critical discourse analysis of one text—thememo cited above—to examine how textual production shapes and is shaped by the situation of the advisory meeting. First,though, I discuss the rise of activist clubs and I map out a space for research on activist literacies.

1.1. Activist clubs, activist literacies

Since the first decades of the twentieth century, student clubs and organizations have proliferated in public high schoolsthroughout the USA (Kleibard, 1994; Powell, Farrar, & Cohen, 1985; Tyack, 1974; Wraga, 1998). Indeed, the twentieth centurywitnessed an explosion in student groups, from Spanish Clubs to Students Against Destructive Decisions to Key Clubs andmore. Though different groups pursue different goals, schools established clubs largely to help students: feel more connectedto school; learn to get along with peers from different walks of life; find their place in an industrial democratic order; andgain skills and experiences that may open doors to employment and higher education. Though critics occasionally arguethat these goals and the groups that pursue them are distractions from academic work, clubs have largely been accepted bystudents, parents, and educators as legitimate components of public schools.

Newer to the scene of student organizations are progressive activist groups such as Gay-Straight Alliances, environmentalclubs, and high school chapters of Amnesty International. Such clubs are linked to new social movements that seek, amongother objectives, to make major institutions such as schools more responsive to concerns including: identity (e.g. race, class,gender, and sexual orientation); ecology; and human rights (Anyon, 2005; Miceli, 2005). When students and teachers havebeen able to convince administrators that these goals converge with accepted goals for school clubs (see above), they havefounded groups that aim to transform schools and society in line with movement principles.

Such groups are the objects of study of a growing literature in education research. This work documents how studentactivist groups: create safer climates in schools; enable students to develop as active agents in the world; help studentscommit to school; allow students and teachers to bond; and display for adults the contributions of young people (Blackburn,Clark, Kenney, & Smith, 2009; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007; Kirshner, 2008; Miceli, 2005; Russell, Muraco, Subramaniam,& Laub, 2009).

Largely absent from this work, though, are investigations of the literacies of school based activist clubs. Much as theseclubs are elided in the literature on critical literacies, critical literacies are elided in work on school based activist groups.Indeed, few researchers have asked how activists in schools mobilize different ways of reading, writing, and thinking. Morespecifically, few have examined how activists perform their work by adapting school genres (e.g. space request forms, schoolannouncements, and agendas for club-sponsored advisory meetings). I take up these issues in the investigation below.

2. Theoretical framework: communication as situated practice

In this study, I follow Gee (2005) in viewing communication as situated practice. That is, I begin from the premise thatcommunicative acts shape and are shaped by the situations they engage. By “situations,” I mean materially and discursivelyproduced complexes of seven interrelated areas: identities; social relationships; activities; significance; connections; poli-tics; and sign systems/knowledge (Gee, 2005). In this paper, I focus on the first three areas. I consider how communicantsuse language to build situations where they can take on certain identities, contract certain relationships, and perform certainactivities. Further, I examine how communicants use language in one situation to bring about action in other situations (e.g.in group meetings, student activists compose texts that prompt teachers to carry out specific acts in advisory sessions).

2.1. Discourse theory

To perform as recognizable actors, communicants draw upon Discourses, or integrated ways of speaking, reading, writing,thinking, dressing, etc. as members of social groups (Gee, 2005). These resources, however, do not appear out of thin air.Rather, they emerge out of and, through their use, shape group-normed material practice. Because Discursive resources mustbe adapted to fit new situations, moreover, they are always in flux. That is, by using a resource to engage a new situation,

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an actor changes that resource (however slightly). If others recognize this novel performance as legitimate, the Discourse inuse changes (however slightly).

One type of resource important to the present study is the Discourse model, defined here as a theory or storyline of howthe world works or should work (Gee, 2005). Whenever actors communicate, they mobilize Discourse models and set themas backdrops against which their words, gestures, etc. take on meaning. For instance, when a student activist addressing acrowd at a rally says “We’re all in this together,” she (a) builds the rally as a situation comprised of activists working togetherand (b) employs a Discourse model of solidarity that emphasizes humans’ responsibility for each others’ wellbeing. Whenthis same activist discusses her college plans with her parents and tells them club membership will “look good on a résumé,”she (a) builds the scenario “family plotting a student’s academic trajectory” as a situation comprised of family membersusing means-ends rationality and (b) activates a résumé model that figures activism as a means for personal advancement.As these examples make clear, the resources of a given Discourse may figure the world in very different ways.

2.2. Genre theory

Actors discover which Discursive resources to employ and how to employ them by working in specific genres.2 Asargued by contemporary scholars working under the rubric of rhetorical genre theory (Bawarshi, 2003; Devitt, 2004; Miller,1984), genres are not neutral templates for presenting pre-formed thoughts. Rather, they are habitats within which andhabits by which communicants recognize, build, and act in situations. By placing themselves within the habitat of Genre A,communicants are called (though not required) to recognize, build, and act in Situation B in a particular way. Moreover, GenreA provides Discursive habits for building and acting in Situation B in an appropriate manner. What is deemed appropriate,however, is struggled over and evolves as actors adapt genres to pursue unique ends in specific conjunctures of space andtime.

Consider, for example, the genre of the homeroom advisory memo. These memos are composed by administrators andinform teachers of the topics of advisories and provide basic plans for running meetings. When they use this genre, teachersdiscover appropriate ways of recognizing, building, and acting in the situation of the homeroom advisory meeting. Morespecifically, the genre of the advisory memo calls actors to: take on particular identities (advisor and advisee); contractparticular relationships (advisors relate to advisees as mentors/mentees, not as order-givers/order-followers); and performparticular actions (discuss school business and selected topics). Further, the advisory memo calls actors to employ a Discoursemodel that figures advising as a personal matter, not just an academic matter.

Though the advisory memo is typically employed in the manner described above, actors may try to use it in differentways. A teacher, for instance, may bid to figure herself more as an order-giver than as a mentor. This bid, however, may becontested by her students. Thus, the question of what is an appropriate or typical use of a genre is a matter of struggle: actorswork this out through negotiation. Through practice and struggle, genres are made to elicit particular kinds of Discursiveperformances.

Finally, generic texts often function as relays between situations (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). In complex systems such ascomprehensive high schools, genres are often used to coordinate action from space to space and situation to situation. Forinstance, the genre of the advisory memo aligns action in and between administrative offices and classrooms (instructionsare written on the memo by administrators and are meant to be carried out by teachers). Such relay genres always figurethe receiver and her situation in a specific way and elicit particular kinds of Discursive performances. Those on the receivingend, however, may misunderstand or resist the writer’s intent and act in unexpected ways.

3. Research contexts and participants

In this section, I describe HRAA, its members, and the school in which it is based. This will bring into view the broadoutlines of the group’s ethos and the institutional dynamics the group must negotiate. This, in turn, will make it possible tosee how HRAA adapts institutional genres to bring the advisory meeting in line with its Discourse.

3.1. The school

New Bristol High School (NBHS) is a large comprehensive public school located in an affluent suburb of a major city inthe northeastern USA. Most of the students who attend the school identify as white and middle class or upper middle class.Increasingly, though, the school serves working class students whose families immigrated from Mexico and Central Americawithin the past twenty years. These students now comprise about twenty percent of the student body.

3.2. Advisories and advisory memos

Once a month, all NBHS students meet for twenty minutes in 10–15 person advisory groups. The school intends forstudents and teachers to use this time to get to know and support one another on a personal, rather than strictly academic,

2 On the relationship between genre and Discourse, see Collin (2012).

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level. More specifically, students and teachers are called upon in advisories to complete institutional tasks (e.g. surveyingcourse offerings and voting for student government officers) and to discuss pressing issues (e.g. drug use and academichonesty). The topics and agendas of issue-focused advisories are occasionally set by student groups such as HRAA andStudents Against Destructive Decisions.

To coordinate these meetings, vice principal Ellen Marchiando composes advisory memos and uploads them to theschool’s website. When advisories are sponsored by school clubs, students compose memos and send them to Ellen to upload.Often, though, student-composed memos provide only vague, thin plans for running advisories. One teacher, for instance,observed that in club-sponsored meetings, “[W]e show a two-minute video and then we have to talk about something thattakes five minutes and there’s still fifteen minutes left in the advisory.” Unimpressed with such plans, many teachers brushoff advisories as superfluous, uncompensated work. Students tend to match the minimal efforts of disengaged teachers. Asone student told me, “I know people who literally eat bagels during their advisory. That’s it.”

As noted above (Section 2.2), the advisory memo functions as a relay genre that coordinates action between studentclubs, administrative offices, and classrooms. This genre prompts actors to take on the identities, contract the relationships,and perform the actions that constitute the situation of the advisory meeting. Moreover, it sets as backdrops to advisoriesparticular Discourse models (e.g. those of HRAA or other sponsoring clubs). In general, the advisory memo calls teachersand students to relate to one another on a personal level and to explore meeting topics in a spirit of mutual support. Someteachers and students, however, resist this call and engage the situation in only perfunctory manners.

3.3. The club

Founded seven years ago after NBHS students returned from a local conference on remembering the Holocaust, theHuman Rights Activists Alliance seeks to assist oppressed populations in the Global South.3 The group’s commitment to“helping” and “saving” others in other regions is evident both in its recruitment posters (“Come to HRAA/Save the world”)and in the statements it asks teachers to read during advisory meetings [“Another way to help, of course, is to join HRAAand make a difference” (see Appendix A)].

Co-advising the group are Tom Caltagirone and Nick McCann, white male social studies teachers. While Tom is a twenty-year teaching veteran, Nick is newer to the profession. Each year, they told me, HRAA draws about twenty members, fifteenof whom attend meetings regularly and five of whom drive the club forward. One of these five, Zoe Carr, is HRAA presidentand co-author of the advisory memo analyzed below. The majority of club members, including Zoe, identify as white, uppermiddle class young women. Few students of NBHS’ growing Latino/a immigrant population participate in HRAA or otherclubs, Nick and Tom said, because these students often work or care for younger siblings after school. Discussing the genderbalance of HRAA, one member told me more girls than boys participate in the club because “the majority of guys here areinvolved with sports. And at New Bristol, you’re either in clubs or you’re in sports.” Nick and Tom observed that the genderbalance of the group gives rise to an “ethic of care” (Noddings, 1984) that informs both how the club operates (membershelp one another complete their tasks) and how it conceives of its mission (it frames human rights as a matter of caring forothers). Similarly, a group member told me she thinks girls gravitate to the club because “the human rights issue, like, justrelates directly to women” insofar as women’s rights are often violated in different societies.

While HRAA members maintain strong commitments to human rights, several remarked during interviews and duringmeetings that they see their peers as ignorant and/or apathetic about the issue. One student, discussing her peers outside ofthe group, simply said, “None of the kids care.” Framing the problem more as one of attention and knowledge, Zoe told me:

I don’t know, like, for some reason, [human rights are] so important yet so many kids my age don’t know anythingabout it. . . Because kids are so obsessed with, like, social lives and, like, their own little subcultures, that it’s reallyhard to, like, unplug for a moment and say, like, “Look, it’s right in front of your face! Go read about it!”

Absent from this depiction of disaffected youth, however, are those immigrant students with first- or second-handknowledge of human rights struggles in the Global South. Moreover, this picture erases those who experience human rightsviolations in the North. Nonetheless, HRAA’s estimation of students’ disinterest in and ignorance of human rights shapes itsstrategy for planning the advisory and working with genres connected to the meeting. Indeed, the group selects dramaticmaterials to grab students’ attention and prompts teachers to read a statement that largely affirms students’ “mainstream”views of the world (see Sections 5 and 6).

Pushed forward by its members’ commitment to helping those in “the developing world,” HRAA has pursued a numberof initiatives. The project described in this article, for instance, aims to build support and raise money for The Girl Effect,4

a foundation-driven effort to provide education and microloans to girls and young women in the Global South. HRAA hasalso: raised funds and paid for the education of several children in Africa; paid for children’s AIDS medicine; purchased and

3 I use the terms “Global North” and “Global South” not as precise categories, but as heuristic devices for comparing and contrasting different nations.The former refers to countries with strong economies and adequate-to-good standards of living, as measured by institutions such as The World Bankand The United Nations. “The Global South” refers to all other countries. However, given uneven socio-economic development within nations—processesexacerbated under global capitalism—these should be seen only as general terms (see Harvey, 2006).

4 The Girl Effect is the real name of the organization.

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distributed water filtration straws and mosquito nets; and organized supply drives to gather and send clothing and schoolequipment to those in the Global South. The group plans to travel to another country in the near future to deliver suppliesand/or build houses. Discussing this plan, one HRAA member asked a friend, “Where could we go? China? India? Africa?Ireland?” Hearing this, another group member interjected, “But Ireland doesn’t really have problems. . .” In such interactions,group members map out what they see as “the developing world,” the area of the world with “problems.”

While HRAA met and is likely to meet the proximate goals of the initiatives described above, it was less successful inits attempts to exert political and economic pressure to promote human rights in Darfur. Recounting the result of a club-sponsored project to send hundreds of student letters to representatives and senators, Tom said, “They never responded. [Ourrepresentatives and senators] never responded to the students.” Similarly, the group hit a dead end in its effort to convincea teachers’ pension fund to divest from companies that do business with the government of Sudan. Though the group sentalong a petition signed by hundreds of teachers, recalled Tom, the fund “sent back a letter saying, ‘Our only responsibilityis a fiduciary responsibility to our constituents.’ We were shocked!” Thus, the group has found it easier to promote humanrights through raising small funds and purchasing supplies than it has through exerting political and economic pressure.

Even in this brief overview of HRAA’s history, beliefs, and practices, it is clear the group employs a range of Discoursemodels that figure human rights in different ways:

• Human rights are violated in “the developing world” and it is the obligation of those in the Global North to “help” and“save” the less fortunate.◦ This obligation often goes unmet due to ignorance and/or apathy, especially on the part of the young.

• The human rights of women are regularly violated, making women’s rights human rights.• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of basic supplies.• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of individual opportunity.• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of global politics and economics.

As these models figure human rights in different ways, group members must determine which models to activate inwhich situations. How, though, is this accomplished? Answers are suggested in the following investigation of the genresHRAA employs and the situations the group engages.

4. Methods

Employing the theories outlined above (Section 2), I examine how HRAA members adapt institutional genres (e.g. advisorymemos and notes to teachers) to bring the situation of the advisory meeting in line with the Discourse of the group. Givenlimits of space, I consider only the production of texts, not their circulation or reception.

4.1. Data gathering

To collect data, I used ethnographic tools including observation, interviewing, and document collection. I sought togather data that would help me understand how group members employed institutional genres to navigate the schoolbureaucracy. Over a span of four months, I observed eight 30–40-minute meetings of HRAA. Using a field journal, I notedmembers’ statements about how genres such as advisory handouts should be composed so as to build the areas of theadvisory situation in appropriate ways. For instance, I wrote down their statements about: the identities the form shouldelicit (e.g. the identity of the concerned and engaged student); the actions the form should support (e.g. the form should helpteachers stir students’ emotions); the social relationships the form should endorse (e.g. it should prompt students to feelresponsible for others’ well-being); and so on. Furthermore, I conducted semi-structured 45–60-minute interviews with:Nick and Tom; Zoe and another student member recommended by Nick and Tom for her experience in the group; and VicePrincipal Ellen Marichiando, who co-wrote the advisory memo with Zoe. I talked with interviewees about their generalideas on HRAA and human rights and about their specific understandings of how different forms of reading and writing helpthe group conduct its activist work in different spaces in the school. Additionally, I collected documents used to set up andrun the advisory meeting. These documents included: the advisory memo; handwritten notes from HRAA members askingteachers to try their best in the advisory session; and HRAA-provided handouts for teachers to give to students during theadvisory meeting.

4.2. Data analysis

In order to interpret this data, I employed methods of critical discourse analysis and naturalistic qualitative analysis.Using the latter (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Merriam, 1998), I considered how HRAA members viewed and worked to buildthe situation of the advisory meeting. More specifically, I examined their statements about how institutional genres shouldbe composed so as to build appropriate identities, relationships, and activities into the meeting. Coding data for these threeconstructs, I developed a clearer view of how the group used institutional genres to mediate the situation of the advisorymeeting.

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I also used Gee’s (2005) method of discourse analysis to conduct a fine-grained study of how one text—the advisory memoto teachers—shaped and was shaped by the advisory meeting for which it was written. To begin, I identified syntactic andlexical patterns in the text. I then examined how these patterns construe the identities, social relationships, and actions ofthe advisory meeting. At the same time, I considered how these patterns activate Discourse models that figure human rightsin particular ways. Making a critical turn, I investigated how textual patterns figured some Discourse models, identities,relationships, and actions as more important than others.

5. Setting the scene: The Girl Effect

In the paragraphs below, I describe how HRAA selected materials to promote The Girl Effect and composed messages toteachers regarding advisories. I underscore throughout and discuss more thoroughly below how the group completed itstasks by mobilizing knowledge of the advisory situation. Moreover, by describing the group’s efforts to develop a plan topromote The Girl Effect, I set a background against which the ensuing discourse analysis of the advisory memo will makesense: the reader may see how features of the memo conform to and diverge from the group’s overall plan for organizingadvisories.

5.1. The Girl Effect

Early in 2011, Zoe approached Ellen about involving NBHS in some way with The Girl Effect initiative. At the time, HRAA’sonly idea was to raise money for The Girl Effect by hosting a school-wide ping pong tournament. As coordinator of theschool’s advisory program, Ellen’s first thought was to suggest HRAA sponsor the advisory for Women’s History Month inMarch. The advisory, Ellen told Zoe, could work as a kind of commercial for The Girl Effect and for HRAA’s fundraising efforts.A few weeks before the event, Ellen continued, she and Zoe could coauthor an advisory memo with a detailed agenda. Zoetook the plan back to HRAA and the group endorsed it right away.

5.2. Advisory materials

In the ensuing weeks, HRAA worked during its meetings to select and compose texts that would elicit active participationin their advisory session. To combat student apathy, they searched The Girl Effect’s website for material that would, in Zoe’swords, “rile up [students’] emotions.” With this in mind, they agreed to distribute to advisories a two-page fact sheet postedon the organization’s website (see Appendix A for URL). Surveying the text during a group meeting, Tom remarked, “This isreally good stuff, like about child marriage and how it’s normal in some societies.” Throughout the rest of the meeting, heread aloud facts such as “38 percent [of young women] marry before age 18” and “Medical complications from pregnancyare the leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide.” These facts, Tom said, would stir students’ emotionsand draw them into meaningful discussions of human rights.

“Wait a minute,” interjected a student. “Didn’t we say handouts don’t work in advisories?”

“Yeah, handouts don’t work,” added another. “My group just pushes the paper around the room.”

Tom thought for a moment and said, “We can make class sets [i.e. sets with copies for each student] for all advisorygroups. That way, everyone can read this.”

To “rile up” their peers’ emotions even more, the group decided to include in the advisory two short videos featuredon The Girl Effect’s website (see Appendix A for URLs). Both videos use animated text to introduce the organization andto solicit help in providing solutions to problems faced by “the developing world,” in general, and girls, in particular. Thesecond video listed in the memo features an animated black silhouette, featureless except for outlines of pigtails, breasts,and a skirt. This figure moves through a world of ticking clocks, clutching hands, and larger-than-life text (e.g. “HIV”). Bothvideos establish tones of tension and danger through their use of quick cuts, driving music, and dramatic statements (e.g.“When a girl turns 12 and lives in poverty, her future is out of her control”). Midway through each video, though, the musicbegins to swell and the text spells out a plan for changing the world by setting off a domino effect (girl effect) that beginswith young women (e.g. “girl → school → cows → $ → business → clean H2O → social change → stronger economy → betterworld”). Crucially, the first video emphasizes the initiative focuses not on politics or economics, but on individual girls. Thereis a solution to the problems of “the developing world,” the video states, but “[i]t’s not the government. It’s not money. It’sa girl.” Reflecting on this message and the videos, in general, Zoe stated that they will lead students to think, “Yeah, thesegirls are in trouble! We can do it!”

5.3. Messages to teachers

The week before their group-sponsored advisory, HRAA met to make one final push to win teachers’ cooperation. As partof this effort, Tom volunteered to e-mail his colleagues and make a personal appeal for their best efforts with the meeting.Mindful of his colleagues’ overflowing inboxes and occasional resentment of advisories, he told the group, “I’ll keep it short,

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or else teachers won’t read it.” Zoe, seeing the thrust of this appeal, added, “When you send the e-mail, make it BCC, not CC,so it looks more personal.”

To complement and build off his e-mail, Tom suggested the group handwrite and distribute to teachers requests forcooperation. These notes, he explained, could be included with the sets of materials the group would distribute to eachclassroom. The group agreed and Zoe walked to the front of the room and stood at the Smart Board to lead the effort. Thegroup would compose the basic message together, they agreed, and then individual members would handwrite notes andmatch them with class sets of materials.

After a few paragraph-long drafts, one student said, “Make it short, or this could be as annoying as an e-mail.”

“They’d think that?”

“We have a teacher right here!” the first student responded. “Mr. Caltagirone, what would get your attention?”

“Short and sweet” Tom answered.

At this, Zoe typed on the Smart Board, “Read the damn paper.” The group laughed and she deleted this sentence andreplaced it with “Don’t be lazy.” The group laughed again and then spent several minutes writing and revising a messagethat eventually read “Hi! Hope this inspires you to pursue the March 2nd advisory!/ –Human Rights Activists Alliance.”

5.4. Summary

The group adapted several genres to set up the advisory meeting and put certain Discourse models in play. The genresadapted by the group include “teacher’s e-mail to colleagues,” “student’s note to teachers,” and “advisory materials.” To winthe support of teachers, the group adapted the first two and used the relationships evoked by each genre—collegiality inthe first instance, support and affection in the second—to make their appeals personal. The group emphasized the personalquality of their messages by sending the e-mail BCC, not CC, and by handwriting their notes. Further, working in the genreof “advisory materials,” group members chose texts that were dramatic and that would not immobilize their peers or toodirectly challenge their beliefs. The videos and handout they selected are premised on Discourse models that frame humanrights problems as: (a) located in “the developing world;” (b) of particular concern for women; (c) matters of individualopportunity; and (d) matters that can be meaningfully addressed by those in the Global North. The materials they selected,then, did not activate HRAA’s other models that frame human rights problems as systemic and as largely ignored by apatheticyouth. Given the group’s experience with advisories, they knew these models would turn off their audience.

6. The advisory memo

In this section, I focus on the advisory memo Zoe composed with Ellen. I begin by presenting Zoe’s and Ellen’s remarks onthe text and the process of writing the text. I then offer a discourse analysis of the memo, keying in on the ways it engagesand builds the situation of the advisory meeting.

6.1. Writing the memo

Several weeks before HRAA’s advisory, Zoe and Ellen sat down to write a memo teachers could use to run engagingmeetings. Crucial to their efforts, they told me, was their knowledge of how the situation often plays out. That is, they wrotethe memo knowing teachers and students often put little effort into making advisories work. Thus, Ellen said, they wrotethe memo for teachers “thinking about this [for the first time] as they walk into the room.” These teachers, she continued,require a detailed, yet accessible plan. “If you don’t give them paint-by-numbers, the kids will get a study hall for twentyminutes.”

With this in mind, Zoe and Ellen worked to develop a step-by-step plan teachers could pick up at the last minute. At thesame time, they sought to shape this plan to make the advisory engage easily bored students. They accomplished these goalsby composing a memo that alternates back and forth between audiences: it begins by addressing teachers, then it addressesstudents (via a letter to be read by teachers), then it switches back to teachers, and then it poses questions for students andteachers to discuss. While this was a difficult balancing act, Zoe said, Ellen helped her shift between a student-directed voicethat was more evocative and a teacher-directed voice that was “more proper and polite, I guess. More, like, formal.” Zoeexplained:

This whole [memo] is different because we were instructing teachers, we were talking to the teachers, and then withinthat, we were saying, “Read this to the students.” So we kind of had to get both voices out there. Um, like, say, (readingfrom the memo) “Advisory Teachers: Please follow the instructions below.” So we had to give, like, very informative,kind of formal, like, correct grammar and punctuation. . . And then we kind of switched to the voice—to somethingthat would be more relatable to, um, to the students and talking about, like, interesting facts and what this wholeorganization was about and how you can be part of it.

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Thus, Zoe and Ellen adapted the genre of the advisory memo to address teachers and students and to elicit the activeengagement of both. They altered the conventions of the genre to evoke a situation in which teachers and students worktogether to explore the ideas and initiatives advocated by HRAA.

6.2. The discourse analysis

In the following paragraphs, I investigate how the memo builds lexical and syntactic patterns to figure the advisory as asituation constituted by certain identities, social relationships, and actions. More specifically, I examine the text’s personalpronouns, proper nouns, and person-designating common nouns (identities). Next, I consider how these are positioned vis-à-vis one another (social relationships). At the same time, I examine the verbs (actions) to which these nouns and pronounsare linked. I also consider how the text builds the situation by activating Discourse models, or theories and storylines ofhow the world works. To bring into view the different identities, relationships, and actions elicited by the text, I divide theanalysis into an examination of the memo’s teacher-directed sections (i.e. the instructions) and its student-directed sections(i.e. the letter and the discussion questions).

6.2.1. Instructions for teachersIn the sections of the memo addressed only to teachers, the following personal pronouns, proper nouns, and person-

designating common nouns are employed: “The Human Rights Activists Alliance,” “Advisory Teachers,” “students,” “advisorygroup,” and you (implied in imperative statements such as “[You: p]lease follow the instructions below”). Each of thesenouns and pronouns evokes a particular kind of identity. The sponsors of the advisory, for instance, are not just a collectionof students, but are “The Human Rights Activists Alliance,” an official school club. Further, the readers of the memo arehailed not simply as teachers, but as “Advisory Teachers.” Likewise, the memo collects students together into an “advisorygroup.” Through its use of nouns and pronouns, then, the text calls teachers and students to take on the roles of participantsin advisory meetings.

One identity left unspecified, however, is that of the memo’s author, i.e. the actor instructing teachers. Some teachersmay assume the author is Ellen, who composes most advisory memos and who, as an administrator, is in a position to tellteachers what to do. Others, though, may assume the author is HRAA, the identified “sponso[r] of today’s advisory.” Studentgroups such as HRAA, teachers know, often create the plans for the advisories they sponsor. This vagueness may contributeto teachers’ willingness to go along with the advisory: some teachers may accede out of a sense of duty to administration,while others may go along out of a sense of compassion and support for student groups.

Continuing, the memo establishes particular kinds of relationships between actors and enlists actors in particular tasks.HRAA is the “sponso[r of] today’s advisory” and thus sets the topic, the background against which students and teachersact. Students, for their part, relate to one another as co-members of “advisory group[s].” These groups are led by advisoryteachers, who “distribute” materials for students to “review” and ultimately “discuss.” In figuring advisories as discussions,the memo establishes an egalitarian relationship between students and teachers—they relate less as order-givers and order-followers and more as co-investigators. Further, the relationship between teachers and the memo’s author is marked by therespect of the latter for the former. Each command, for instance, is launched with “please” (e.g. “Please show the two videoslinked below”). Further, commands are structured in clear-cut, step-by-step fashion and are thus accessible to teachers withlittle advance time to read the memo. Three of the four steps listed in the text are structured as follows:[Temporal marker (“As” or “After”)] + “students” + [action], + “please” + [command].

for example:After students have reviewed the handout, please read the letter below to your advisory group.

Thus, teachers are presented with easy-to-follow, politely phrased instructions for running the advisory meeting.

6.2.2. The letter to students and discussion questionsThrough its use of nouns and pronouns in the letter and in the discussion questions, the memo evokes different identities.

These include: “New Bristol Students;” “you” (students and advisory teachers); “The Human Rights Activists Alliance;” “we”[HRAA (“We are trying to raise awareness. . .”) and actors in the Global North (“If we do our part. . .”)]; “The Girl Effectorganization;” “women in our own nation;” “women all around the world;” “girls in the developing world;” and “one girl ina small town.” By using these nouns and pronouns, the text invites its audience to take on certain identities (e.g. actors inthe Global North) and to imagine themselves in a world populated by others inhabiting other identities (e.g. “one girl in asmall town”).

In this world, actors are construed as performing specific tasks and as relating to one another in specific manners. HRAAand NBHS students are figured in multiple and, at times, conflicting ways. Most generally, they are positioned as speaker andaddressee. More specifically, they are construed as advertiser and audience. The letter, for instance, uses commercial languageto announce “[t]his advisory is brought to you by the Human Rights Activists Alliance” (emphasis added). Moreover, the letterdrums up excitement for the pitch by concluding the first paragraph with one of the two exclamation points employed in thetext (the other is used to call attention to the iPod Nano awarded the winner of the ping pong tournament). Thus, relative tothe instructions addressed to teachers, the letter speaks in a language that is more dynamic (or at least more exclamatory)and that is potentially more appealing to students.

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The crux of HRAA’s pitch is a request for “help.” Specifically, students are told “[o]ne way you can help is by attending theHRAA Ping Pong tournament. . . Another way to help, of course, is to join HRAA and make a difference.” In these sentences,“help” takes on different meanings: in the first instance, it means something like “provide financial support,” while in thesecond instance it means something like “strengthen the human rights movement.” This appeal for help, it is argued below(Section 7), may have special resonance for those students who practice an “ethic of care” similar to that of HRAA.

While the relationship between HRAA and NBHS students is construed in terms of speaker/addressee and adver-tiser/audience, it is also figured in terms of those who know/those who do not know. In the second paragraph of the letter,for instance, HRAA is presented as “trying to raise awareness about women all around the world.” Although, perhaps outof politeness, it is not stated whose awareness needs raising, the fact that HRAA is sponsoring the advisory makes clear thegroup thinks NBHS students are unaware of the struggles of women in the Global South. Further, the first question posedto students assumes the information presented in the handout and in the videos is “new” to them. And while subsequentquestions solicit students’ thoughts about larger and larger social units (from “you” to “everyone everywhere”), they askonly about what “you believe” and what “you take away,” not what you know. Still, the letter figures the “new information”presented in the advisory as open for debate and as potentially unimportant (see Question 2). In this way, the memo softensits didactic tone and equalizes, if slightly, the relationship between HRAA and its audience.

Continuing, the letter builds relationships between and assigns tasks to one girl, the world, you, HRAA, and The Girl Effectorganization. The letter sets the context for these relationships and actions by linking human rights and women’s rights. Inits first sentence, the letter states, “This advisory is brought to you by the Human Rights Activists Alliance.” Thus, at the veryoutset, the letter builds a human rights frame around the advisory. Next, the letter exclaims, “It’s women’s history month!”In this way, it builds onto the frame of human rights an additional frame of women’s rights. These conjoined frames setboundaries within which students can make sense of the information to be presented in the meeting and the facts listed onthe data sheet they received upon entering the room.

In its second paragraph, the letter asserts “[o]ne girl can change the world.” By using the quantifier “one” and the modalverb “can,” the letter emphasizes individual girls have potentially unlimited power to alter their own and others’ conditionsof existence. This phrase has a felicitous double meaning. It may be understood as saying the world can be changed by onegirl in the Global South or one girl in the Global North. Given that HRAA is comprised mostly of young women and given thatthe club uses the advisory meeting to recruit new members, the statement “[o]ne girl can change the world” may promptyoung women at NBHS to consider joining HRAA.

The letter’s focus on the individual is maintained and modulated in the remainder of the second paragraph: “The GirlEffect organization is all about helping one girl in a small town, and then that one girl thriving and helping the town thrivewhich will create a positive domino effect. The Girl Effect is a solution to poverty.” Once again, there emerges an emphasison the individual, cast in even more humble terms: the “one girl” in question lives “in a small town.” Shifting its originalformulation of change, however, the letter notes that large-scale transformations, such as the end of poverty, can come from“that one girl thriving and helping the town thrive.” Thus, the letter’s initial, strongly individualistic formulation is alteredslightly to posit that change occurs when individuals “help” others “thrive.” In this section of the text, then, the memo worksfrom and builds a Discourse model of change that blends individualism with a sense of mutual aid, of wanting to “help”others.

This dual focus on the individual and on “helping” others is also evident in the group’s construal of The Girl Effect andactors in the Global North. The former “is all about”—all its efforts are focused on—“helping one girl.” Elaborating on thisvision, the letter states, “If we do our part, 600 million girls in the developing world will do the rest.” In contrast to “girlsin the developing world,” “we” denotes actors in the Global North. Further, “we” are asked to do “our part.” The singularconstruction of the latter suggests our “part” will be small and contained. Indeed, “we” are simply asked to “enjoy, think aboutit, discuss, and spread the word.” In the next paragraph, students are invited to “help,” to do their “part,” by participatingin the ping pong tournament and/or by joining HRAA. The letter tells students, via an if/then construction, the execution of“our part” will allow “600 million girls in the developing world” to “do the rest.” Crucially, in this formulation, “we” act first.Only then can others do “the rest.” Unlike “our part,” though, “the rest” is a potentially large and multifaceted category. Theletter then speaks for “[w]omen around the world,” assuring students they will “appreciate” the “help.”

6.2.2.1. Discourse models. The memo builds the advisory by mobilizing a range of Discourse models. These include:

• Human rights are violated in “the developing world” and it is the obligation of those in the Global North to “help” and“save” the less fortunate.

• The human rights of women are regularly violated, making women’s rights human rights.• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of individual opportunity (however, by working to thrive, individuals help

their communities thrive).

Not circulated in the memo, though, are other models employed at other times and places by HRAA. These include:

• The obligation of those in the Global North to help often goes unmet due to ignorance and/or apathy, especially on thepart of the young.

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• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of basic supplies.• Human rights problems are, at heart, matters of global politics and economics.

Why, though, does the letter mobilize the first set of models, but not the second? What does this say about what HRAAknows/believes about advisory sessions and about the school, in general? These questions are answered below in a largerdiscussion of the group’s knowledge and beliefs (to avoid awkward terms such as “knowledge/belief,” “knowledge” is usedto refer to both).

7. Discussion

Much of HRAA’s work involved adapting and utilizing genres such as: teacher’s e-mail to colleagues; student’s note toteachers; the advisory memo; and advisory materials (e.g. handouts and videos). The group adapted and employed thesegenres to build the advisory in line with its Discourse. To carry out these tasks, HRAA mobilized its knowledge of (a) the waysadvisory work is assigned to and resisted by educators at NBHS and (b) the interests and commitments of students at theschool. In the following paragraphs, I examine what the group knows about these two matters. I consider the assumptionsthat structure this knowledge and I discuss how the group mobilized this knowledge in its work with school genres. Byaddressing these matters, I provide answers to my research questions about (a) the group’s efforts to use cultural andinstitutional resources to prompt action (Sec. 1, Questions 1 and 3) and (b) the group’s attempts to figure themselves, othersat the school, others in the Global South, and human rights (Question 2).

7.1. Knowledge of workplace politics

Critical to the group’s efforts to set up meetings was a key resource: knowledge of teachers’ perceptions of and resistanceto advisories. Indeed, the group composed texts for teachers ready to blow off advisory meetings as superfluous, uncom-pensated, and poorly planned work. With this audience in mind, HRAA designed texts that were concise, easy to follow,and politely worded. Moreover, they created texts that played on teachers’ different sympathies: Tom’s e-mail evoked theirsense of collegiality; the group’s handwritten notes called on their affection for and support of students; and the memo,with its ambiguous author, played on their support for students as well as their sense of duty to administration.

This understanding of workplace politics, however, was not developed by students alone. While they drew upon theirown firsthand knowledge of disengaged advisory teachers, they also relied upon educators’ understandings of how and whysome teachers resist advisories. This insiders’ knowledge of workplace politics helped the group select and adapt genres toset up the meeting. Tom and Ellen, for instance, both emphasized that teachers are given little time to prepare. For this reason,they pressed the group to compose texts that were “short and sweet” and “paint-by-numbers.” Thus, HRAA’s knowledgebase—its set of cultural and institutional resources—was supplemented in important ways by the adults with whom it works.

7.2. Knowledge of students’ interests

Also crucial to the group’s work were its understandings of students’ interests in the Global South and human rights. Inits efforts to present the former in ways students would find plausible and sympathetic, HRAA provided advisory materialsthat present the South as a region that is racially other and that is unable to address on its own problems such as povertyand violence. The otherness and helplessness of the South is evoked, for instance, by the absence of facial features on thecentral black figure in the video and by statements such as “When a girl turns 12 and lives in poverty, her future is outof her control.” By selecting these materials, the group indicates it sees NBHS students as identified fully with the North(the “we” in “[i]f we do our part” hails the listener as such). Put differently: the group was not addressing students whosefamilies immigrated from the South. For many of these students, people of the South are not other or helpless, even if theyface serious problems. While these latter students may object, the former may recognize and accept a Discourse model thatposits: (a) human rights are violated in “the developing world;” and (b) it is the obligation of those in the North to “help”and “save” the less fortunate.

Given its low estimation of students’ general knowledge of the South, HRAA was concerned students would know andcare little about the specific issue of human rights in the region. Indeed, one of the group’s key Discourse models asserts thatthe obligation of those in the North to help the less fortunate often goes unmet due to ignorance and/or apathy, especiallyon the part of the young. However, they knew that if they centered this model in the advisory, they would insult their peersand turn them off from the meeting. So while the letter and the discussion questions occasionally position HRAA as the oneswho know and students as the ones who do not know, they also keep the meeting open and solicit students’ ideas abouthuman rights in the South.

Similarly, given that HRAA sees students as unconcerned with human rights and turned off by advisories, it works to buildthe meeting as a dramatic and affirming experience. As noted above, the group made sure to select materials that would “rileup [students’] emotions” and lead them to think, “Yeah, these girls are in trouble! We can do it!” To encourage this sense ofagency, though, the group felt it had to frame human rights problems in ways that would make sense to the average student(as the group imagined her). More to the point, HRAA could not frame human rights problems in ways that challengedthe average student’s view of the world. Thus, the group backgrounded models of global politics and economics—models

260 R. Collin / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 250– 261

that implicate the North in the troubles of the South—and foregrounded a model of individual opportunity (adapted toacknowledge how individuals “help” their communities). This model of individualism conforms to dominant Western andNorthern views of the world (see Heller, Sosna, & Wellbery, 1987; Macpherson, 2011). Further, it shifts attention from theNorth’s role in rights violations in the South. With this reality occluded, students could feel good about doing their smallpart and leaving it to individuals in the South to “do the rest.” Once again, though, some students from the South might findthis model a poor fit for the realities they or their families have experienced.

Finally, while HRAA thought few of their peers knew or cared much about human rights in the South, they built theadvisory to appeal especially to young women. The latter, HRAA believed, were its natural constituency insofar as girls runHRAA and other clubs at the school and “the human rights issue, like, just relates directly to women.” Thus, in the advisory,the group centered its Discourse model framing human rights as women’s rights. The group: defined human rights as anappropriate topic to explore during Women’s History Month; asserted that “one girl can change the world” and end poverty;and asked the audience repeatedly to “help,” to work from an ethic of care and press for human rights.

7.3. Reflections

To adapt school genres to bring the advisory in line with its Discourse, HRAA mobilized knowledge drawn from theexperiences of educators and students. More specifically, the group used its knowledge of workplace politics and students’interests to make decisions about selecting/adapting texts and mobilizing Discourse models. Some of this knowledge, though,works from troubling assumptions about race and the global other. Particularly troubling is that certain of these assumptionsbear out in provisional ways at the school: many students do appear to view human rights as having only to do withindividuals in the South, not with global relations of power. Hearing otherwise in a twenty-minute advisory meeting mayserve only to turn these students off and leave them to retrench in their beliefs. Thus, HRAA faced the difficult choice of(a) keeping most students engaged or (b) making arguments that are more nuanced, troubling to many students from theNorth, and potentially truer to the experiences of students with connections to the South. Each course of action was markedout by certain openings and certain limits.

8. Conclusion

Crucial to HRAA’s literate practices are the group’s facility with school genres and knowledge of the situations these genresmediate. The group drew upon this “knowledge how” and “knowledge of” to select and adapt tactics of communication. HRAAand other activist groups might take a closer look at the generation and deployment of such knowledge. They might work,for instance, to expand what they know about the features of and the possibilities for action within different situations. In sodoing, they may discover ways of adapting genres to circulate alternate Discourse models and to speak to more and differentpeople. For example, HRAA might work to study the advisory situation and the genres used to mediate that situation. Throughsustained research, they might find ways of adapting genres to build advisories that (a) include students from the South and(b) address the global, systemic dimensions of human rights abuses. By carrying out this kind of research, moreover, studentactivists may learn to use social and linguistic analysis to study and, ultimately, transform the world.

Appendix A. Advisory memo

ADVISORY FORWEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011

The Human Rights Activists Alliance is sponsoring today’s advisory.Advisory Teachers: Please follow the instructions below:

1. As students enter the room, please distribute “The Girl Effect Data Sheet” and ask students to take a few minutes to review the information to previewthe problem under discussion today:

http://www.girleffect.org/uploads/documents/1/Girl Effect Fact Sheet.pdf2. After students have reviewed the handout, please read the letter below to your advisory group.

Dear New Bristol Students:This advisory is brought to you by the Human Rights Activists Alliance. It’s women’s history month!We are trying to raise awareness about women all around the world, and in this case, girls. One girl can change the world, as you will see in the videosfrom The Girl Effect organization. The Girl Effect organization is all about helping one girl in a small town, and then that one girl thriving and helpingthe town thrive which will create a positive domino effect. The Girl Effect is a solution to poverty.If we do our part, 600 million girls in the developing world will do the rest. Please enjoy, think about it, discuss, and spread the word. Women aroundthe world will appreciate it.One way you can help is by attending The HRAA Ping Pong tournament on Thursday, March 17th at 2:30 pm in the Small Cafe. We are holding this eventto raise money for The Girl Effect organization. To participate, sign up in the Commons, during lunch periods any time between March 11th and March17th. The entry fee is only $2.00 and the winner will take home an IPOD Nano! Another way to help, of course, is to join HRAA and make a difference.

R. Collin / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 250– 261 261

ADVISORY FORWEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011

Thanks,The Human Rights Activists AllianceFor more information contact: Mr. McCann, Mr. Caltagirone, or Zoe CarrHRAA meets on Mondays, 2:30 in A325

3. Please show the two videos linked below4. After students watch videos, please discuss:

•What new information did you learn from the videos and handout?•Is this issue important to you? Why or why not?•Do you believe that women in our own nation still do not have full equality? Why or why not?•Do you believe that improving life and opportunities for women will have a positive effect on everyone everywhere? Why or why not?•What do you take away from the information presented today?

The 1st video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4 KMNw&safety mode=true&persist safety mode=1The 2nd video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg&feature=relmfu&safety mode=true&persist safety mode=1

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