their multilingual texts and diverse perspectives were viewed as meaningful contributions to the "fanon" or collective body of fan knowledge (Black, 2005). As ELLs, this acceptance was important to focal participants' literacy and language socialization for several reasons

The dissimilarities between the girls' fanfics and English language arts practice essays might have offered an interesting entry point for discussion about how different communicative contexts can narrow the range of Available Designs to draw on.

In such a setting, a more self-consciously "hybrid" text like a fanfic would serve the writer poorly.

Instead of writing Eileen and Rhiannon's texts off as derivative, we began to see them as contributions to an ongoing, intertextual conversation about such issues as friendship, loyalty, power, and sexuality.

At times, however, it appears that both gifts could have benefited from the assistance that contact with their teachers or classmates might have provided.

Noticeably absent from Eileen and Rhiannon's fanfic audience were their teachers.

Among the numerous points that resonated for us in the framework was the authors' contention that schools and other dominant institutions have historically privileged language, particularly written literacy, over all other modes of communication, thereby neglecting the possibilities of those other modes.

We hope that insights about out-of-school literacy practices that deeply absorb adolescents may help us devise new ways to make school literacy more meaningful and engaging.

As a form, fanfictions make intertextuality visible because they rely on readers' ability to see relationships between the fan-writer's stories and the original media sources.

Rhiannon reported devoting far more time and energy to her fanfics than she did to school assignments she dismissed as "the essay part of my writing"

What they were less likely to say explicitly, but what seemed clear to us, was that fanfiction writing also helped to develop and solidify relationships with various friends, online or otherwise.

Rhiannon herself showed ambivalence about bringing her personal writing into school when we asked if she had ever shown her stories to one of her teachers: "[No, and] I don't think I'd want her to read them anyway," she replied, "because they're in a fashion that she probably wouldn't understand even if I tried to explain it to her. I just think that she isn't open-minded."

fanfictions could be included in the range of texts teachers consider for diagnostic purposes in order to get a sense of what individuals can do as readers and writers, as well as what they value.

While the counters on these sites indicate that they did not receive many visits, Rhiannon did report that they were visited by friends she met online who lived as far away as North Carolina and New Mexico in the United States.

Writing was seen as a way to have fun, exercise one's imagination, and avoid boredom.

. In that school, where every student had a laptop, teachers' attempts to honor students' online-created content were often in conflict with centuries-old notions of what constitutes "quality" information.

What is surprising, however, is the scarcity of research that examines the potential of new tools for showing and telling in the school curriculum.

new tools for working with various modes of communication are producing a change in the way that young people are choosing to construct meaningful texts for themselves and others in their affinity spaces.

audience appeal (e.g., having a space in which to affiliate with others who share interests or goals) and time for in-depth discussions around a finished text (perhaps one that was collaboratively authored) are the main factors in young people's decisions to create content destined for informal sharing after school.

I propose that young people's engagement with these kinds of ideological messages and materials is central to their becoming the critical readers and writers we say we value.

When school work is deemed relevant and worthwhile, when opportunities exist for students to reinvent themselves as competent learners (even rewrite their social identities), then literacy instruction is both possible and welcomed.

Content area teachers and teacher educators who are open to considering the implications of this finding could incorporate into their regular class assignments opportunities for students to integrate subject matter texts with available online texts.

Because many young people growing up in a digital world will find their own reasons for becoming literate--reasons that go beyond reading and writing to acquire academic knowledge-it is important to remain open to changes in subject matter learning that will invite and extend the literacy practices they already possess and value.

In sum, these young people's penchant for creating online content that was easily distributed and used by others with similar interests was facilitated in part by their ability to remix multimodal texts, use new tools to show and tell, and rewrite their social identities.

The storylines through which young people exist in online spaces are highly social as are the literacy skills they employ.

English-language learners (ELLs) who affiliated around a common interest in fanfiction--a term for stories that fans of an original work (e.g., Harry Potter) write by using the settings, characters, and plot from the original to imagine and create different situations that sometimes include curious mixes across genres and media.

From a researcher's perspective, is there merit in studying how learning is accomplished in a participatory culture where young people collectively pool their resources?

Do adolescents' online literacies have implications for the research and teaching of literacy?

Why not simply accept those literacies for what they appear to be--something apart from formal schooling and best not co-opted by us, no matter how noble our intent?

Chandler-Olcott and Mahar's (2003) study of two adolescent girls who shared an interest in fanfiction that featured Japanese animation (anime).

This mindset should be reexamined to include students who only use English, including multiple varieties of English.

Studies (e.g., Pratt et al., 2023) show that when language and literacy activities are related to their home culture, family events, and family experiences, multilingual learners are more engaged in learning.

this challenge should not prevent minoritized students from learning standardized English since withholding access to the dominant variety of English may do a disservice to raciolinguistically diverse students (e.g., Delpit, 1995; Tardy, 2016).

teachers may consider de-universalized assessment criteria by prioritizing negotiation with learners' unique aspirations, desires, and linguistic tools.

the texts written and illustrated by Latine authors by and about Latine excellence, experiences, and stories served as culturally sustaining identity texts for Latine students.

Yet, educators may also feel obligated to help students access the dominant variety to pass high-stakes tests, for example, where hegemonic and monoglossic understandings of language use are pervasive and the power of white standardized English is perpetuated.

normality, as well as the monoglossic, raciolinguistic ideologies framing our understanding of normality, should be critiqued and challenged in order to decenter Eurocentric theories

language is viewed as an ideological symbol, beyond a pragmatic skill and tool, which is represented by the English Only movement and its colonial history.

Progressive scholars claiming that we should resist white standardized English and English Only policies are complicit in reifying these norms when we write and present in only English

Unless we accommodate white standardized English, it is almost impossible to succeed in a dominant society, as (1995) would argue.

unless systemic racism is eradicated--which would require significant structural changes--racialized students will continue to suffer from raciolinguistic stigmatization.

However, this approach was critiqued by educators such as Lisa Delpit (1995) for its neglect of social, linguistic, and economic disparities that disadvantaged racially minoritized students

they view languages as discrete rather than reflecting the fluid language practices that exist in multilingual communities.

monoglossic ideologies inform policies that function as gatekeepers of linguistic and cultural capital (Gomez, 2015).

DLE has been criticized for perpetuating raciolinguistic inequality between white bilingualism, which is highly valued, and racialized bilingualism, which continues to be positioned as deficient

misrepresented DLE as "Spanish-only" programs that result in underachievement, although research has shown that developing both Spanish literacy and English proficiency can lead to higher success in English (MacSwan et al., 2017)

Although these laws were often symbolic, in some cases, they have curtailed multilingual services and led to English Only education policies, which have impacted raciolinguistically diverse learners in literacy contexts

Language policies are often based on raciolinguistic ideologies, which can mediate covert linguistic racism, i.e., linguistic practices that connect to political-economic structures from which bias emerges, resulting in projects of racialization and white supremacy (Kroskrity, 2021).

The linguistic resources of raciolinguistically diverse individuals are viewed from a deficit perspective because of the hegemony of white standardized English.

For instance, language expresses the identities of individuals, which influences their literacy learning in a positive or negative manner

all languages are seen as inseparable entities for learning (Garcia, 2009), and students' home languages and cultures are valued.

theoretical perspectives on additive multilingualism, which is based on heteroglossic language ideologies that view languages as integrated, diverse, and multidimensional.

Consequently, emergent multilinguals may withdraw from participating in literacy activities when white standardized English is normalized and their linguistic and cultural differences are not accommodated (Yoon, 2008) or when they are excluded from the dominant culture and classroom (Souto-Manning et al., 2021).

studies also demonstrate inequities for raciolinguistically diverse emergent multilinguals, whose heritage languages are often treated as obstacles to English proficiency that need to be eliminated (Yoon, 2015) while learners are expected to "assimilate their language practices towards idealised whiteness" (Cushing, 2023, p. 1).

The discourse on diversity in literacy education is often framed by race and ethnicity, but racial and ethnic identities can be more fully understood when we consider how historically minoritized learners are positioned linguistically within literacy instruction.

this approach legitimates the power of white standardized English and fails to address the fundamental problem of racism.

When reading to learn, also called study reading, it is never enough to sit back with your reading material, move your eyes across page after page until you’ve reached the end of your assignment, and expect to remember what you just read, let alone actually learn what you needed to or were expected to from the reading. Therefore, you need to be an active reader.