For many teachers of middle school and high school, the greatest challenge they face in trying to help struggling readers improve their skills can be students' self-perception. When young people do not see themselves as members of the "literacy club," it is not just a simple matter of persuading them that becoming a fluent reader is…

In this article, the authors explore a young child's lived experience of discipline and play with/in a mandated balanced literacy curriculum. Mandating balanced literacy presents an interesting case of disciplining literacy because it is rooted in the progressive tradition of meaning-and-process pedagogies. As such, it avoids the most obvious…