The current study seeks to understand the potential benefits of culturally matched cross-age peer mentoring for Black and Latinx adolescent mentors residing in low-income, urban communities. Data for the study were derived from a 4-year longitudinal project examining the effectiveness of community-based cross-age mentoring. Data from the current…

This research study focuses on how the racialized experiences of second-generation Puerto Rican student activists in Chicago during the social movement era increased their political identity to demand structural changes in secondary and college contexts. Drawing from over a dozen interviews and 100 source materials, this research uncovers the…

In Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Spanish Dual Language (DL) programs are caught up in a school choice paradigm, marketed by schools as special features by which to lure prospective families. Out of concern that this approach does not position schools to serve the full breadth of Latina/o/x students, who possess the social, cultural and linguistic…

How might cisgender teachers of color who identify as male problematize social norms connected to race and gender? What privileges, limitations, and possibilities may emerge from such a social location? This essay explores these questions by looking at a number of micro-decisions that I make in an introductory-level undergraduate class. By…

Chosen spaces are community organizations and programs, elective classes, and/or extracurricular clubs that students choose to participate in and have the agency to refuse their membership in. The youth's chosen spaces represent an alternate possibility for what English language arts (ELA) education could look like and how it might better sustain…

This article uses a critical sociohistorical lens to discuss and explain examples of the ways in which young people reflect, refract, and contribute to discourses of gentrification, displacement, and racial, ethnic, and geographic community identity building in a rapidly changing urban neighborhood. The article explores examples from open-ended…

Chicago has long struggled with racial residential segregation, high rates of poverty, and deepening class stratification, and it can be a challenging place for adolescents to grow up. "Unequal City" examines the ways in which Chicago's most vulnerable residents navigate their neighborhoods, life opportunities, and encounters with the…