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This three-year qualitative case study examined how an African community-based organization, Sauti Yetu's Girl's Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (GELI), leads, bolsters, and transforms the literacy development of African immigrant girls who are identified as English Language Learners (ELLs) and Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) in New York City schools. In particular, the study addresses how community-based literacy practices mobilize multilingual African immigrant girls to strengthen their communities. The study drew upon critical perspectives of literacy and community-based practices to examine the approaches GELI has implemented to address the academic and social needs of African immigrant girls in public schools. Funding for this research was supported by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Fellowship.

In this article, we examine one teacher's enactment of critical literacy pedagogy in a 7th-grade English language arts classroom in a New York City public school. By conceptualizing critical global literacies in relation to preservice and in-service teaching practices that reflect neoliberal interests, we attend to pedagogy inclusive of culturally, linguistically, and socially diverse learners intended to create equitable and globally contextualized learning opportunities. Through a qualitative case study, we analyzed one teacher's pedagogical enactment of critical global literacies. Our analysis led to four overarching themes: 1) critically understanding that literacies are always globally situated, 2) demonstrating global relevance to students' lives and curricula, 3) incorporating multimodal literacies for multidimensional student engagement, and 4) cultivating socially responsive dispositions through critical reflection and action. These interrelated themes demonstrate pedagogical choices that affirmed students' local lives and experiences in relation to global, international social issues, which are always connected to one another. Findings provide teacher educators nuanced insight into how critical global literacies are extended through critical understandings of literacies, the multimodal nature of literacies, and opportunities for social response, each of which are particularly illuminating for English language arts teachers.

In this collaborative autoethnography, written by multiple stakeholders involved in a teacher residency program, we address the complexities of preparing and supporting social justice-oriented teachers. We identify three tensions faced in the design and (re)development of the teacher preparation program. These tensions include preparing teachers to work in a specific context, collaborating with mentor teachers to support social justice-oriented practice, and offering university-based induction to support novice teachers' work. We describe the ways in which we attempted to navigate these tensions, and we highlight the difficulties and possibilities of the work. We offer implications for the field and, for us, as teacher educators, to continue to grapple with concepts of social justice.

This personal perspective piece examines the researcher's positionality through the stance of humanizing research in multiethnic youth communities. Drawing on Paris and Paris and Winn's notions on humanizing research, this article reexamines positionality by revisiting two subjectivities in a three-year qualitative case study with African immigrant girls. This reexamination considers the ways in which the research and the participants participated in dialogic consciousness-raising that were personal and interconnected. Overall, this personal essay analyzes the ways in which the researcher and the participants fostered relationships while transforming their communities to reflect and act upon the world around them. In doing so, they explored the humanizing nature of what it means to "have a voice" together.