Working to Change the World: An Examinationof One Child’s Social Activism

Lisa Simon

Published online: 17 September 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract There is wide recognition that children’s lives are directly affected by

inequitable practices in relation to aspects of identity such as gender, ethnicity,

class, and citizenship. Yet, despite this acknowledgement, few scholars have

explored how children are challenging inequities. This examination of the actions

and stories of one-nine-year-old female addresses that silence. Data analysis illus-

trates the ways in which she was enacting social activist tenets. Also illuminated are

the hurdles inherent to adult recognition of children’s activism. These findings

underline the problematic role that deficit framings of children play in our under-

standing of their perspectives and capabilities.

Keywords Social justice � Girls � Urban settings

Introduction

‘‘But what if you’re nine?’’ Leah asked. Her question came after my brief

presentation to her camp cohort about the literacy/art group that I would facilitate

for ten- to twelve-year-old girls at the camp. This group was to be a central part of

the study I was conducting on how preadolescent girls interpret their worlds. Guided

Lisa Simon is an Assistant Professor in the Transformative Literacy Program at City College-City

University of New York. Her research and teaching interests examine approaches that can support

children and youth’s access in educational settings. Particular emphases include critical multimodal

literacy and the cultural resources of children’s health management.

L. Simon

Transformative Literacy Program, City College of New York, 138th Sreet & Convent Avenue, NAC

6/207, New York, NY 10031, USA

L. Simon (&)

Childhood Department, City College-City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

e-mail: lisimon@ccny.cuny.edu

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Urban Rev (2010) 42:296–315

DOI 10.1007/s11256-009-0133-2

by the definition of preadolescence widely accepted in the literature at the time,

I had come to Leah’s urban summer day camp to recruit participants between the

ages of ten and twelve.

Her question, ignored by the ten year olds who were busy signing up to

participate, was attended to by the other nine year olds who, along with Leah,

waited for my response. Facing these children with the echo of Leah’s words, I was

forced to recognize the arbitrariness of the age range. The field of educational

psychology within which I work required that I establish age criteria for a study of

preadolescence, even though there was no agreement in the field as to when

preadolescence began or ended. Choosing criteria was further complicated because

the camp had its own informal age criteria—nine to twelve—which it had used to

group the children. Further, from years of working with children in formal and

informal settings I knew that age was a construct used to establish convenient

organizational divisions (Connolly 2008; Lesko 2001). Thus, while in the abstract

my selected age criteria had seemed a necessary but harmless decision, Leah’s

question showed me that it was not. If I clung to it, I would be denying children

access to a literacy/art group they wanted to join.

‘‘Have someone in your family call me tonight,’’ I finally answered, giving each

of the nine year olds a permission slip. As the girls left to go to the next camp

activity, Leah came up to confirm that the number listed on the slip was the one her

mother should use and then a final question: ‘‘What is a good time for her to call you

tonight?’’ We agreed upon a time and then she was off.

The clarity of Leah’s actions in this anecdote belies the complexity of the work

she was engaged in. In our first interaction, Leah had quickly read her current

context, identifying as problematic the practice of denying access based on age.

That recognition informed her initial question in which she directly probed the

mutability of my inequitable practice. Leah’s question also referenced an alternative

and more inclusive vision: that nine year olds could be included in this group.

In these ways, Leah was engaged in a process with many parallels to the work of

others acting for change. Like other activists, she critically read her world,

identifying and bringing attention to an inequity (Freire 2001; Ginwright and

Cammarota 2002; Norton 2005). Her awareness, both of the mutability of a current

practice and of alternatives, was involved in guiding and sustaining her efforts to

transform identified inequities (Banks 2003; Freire 2001; Ginwright and Cammarota

2002; Ginwright et al. 2005). Her critical reflection was closely linked to the actions

she took to disrupt the inequity. Moreover, her efforts emphasized increasing access

not only for herself but for all the nine-year-old girls in her group (Ginwright and

Cammarota 2002; Ginwright et al. 2005; Norton 2005).

Further, Leah drew upon several skills to create and sustain the change she

sought. In addition to her ability to envision alternatives, she was able to command

adult attention, find significant information in texts, and commit to a course of

action. When Leah’s mother called that evening, the range of Leah’s skills was

extended to include her ability to strategize and marshal valuable resources. Her

mother made clear in our conversation that she had carefully read the permission

slip and understood what was involved. She addressed all of my concerns, adding

that Leah was a strong reader and writer and had scored in the 97th percentile of her

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grade. In the face of this combination of interest and advocacy, I found it impossible

to justify the arbitrariness of my study’s criteria for participant’s age. More

importantly, I was led to recognize the inequity that would result if I maintained it.

Thus, in less than 12 hours, Leah’s actions both challenged and disrupted an

inequitable practice, resulting in increased access to opportunities not only for

herself but for the other nine year olds in her camp cohort.

As I detail in this article, this opening anecdote was not an anomaly. In the stories

Leah shared and in the behavior I observed there are multiple instances of her

involvement in identifying problematic aspects of her context and of working to

change them. Further, as I posit in this article, Leah’s actions and the perspective

that informed them have significant parallels to the tenets of social activism.

However, as I also discuss, the import of her understanding and behavior is easily

missed, obscured by adult misconceptions of children’s reactions to the inequities in

their world.

One factor that makes it difficult to recognize Leah’s social activism is the

developmental framework consistently used to interpret children’s perspectives.

Within that framework, individuals of Leah’s age are understood to inhabit a

discrete phase of childhood dominated by concrete thinking and a focus on

exploration (Erikson 1968; Piaget 1968). Preadolescence is understood to be a time

of latency when children are unaware of and unaffected by institutionalized

inequities (Brown and Gilligan 1992; Erikson 1968; Piaget 1968; Pipher 1994). In

this framework, development is understood to be linear and progressive and children

are seen as less logical, skilled, or cognizant than adolescents and adults (Lesko

2001; Walkerdine 1990). As a result, children’s awarenesses, beliefs, and actions

are consistently described as transitional—characteristics or perspectives likely to

be lost in adolescence (e.g., Bardige 1988; Brown and Gilligan 1992; Pipher 1994).

Consequently, the courage and complex understanding that underlie children’s

challenges to inequitable practices are easily misinterpreted as naıve or problematic

(Norton 2005).

It is a central position of this article that by recognizing the ways in which children

are acting to change, to transform, their worlds we can expand the human resources

available for that necessary work. This recognition will also enable adults—

educators, researchers, and activists—to develop approaches that allow us to not only

recognize but support, sustain, and contribute to children’s efforts to create a more

just world. To do this, however, we must first overcome the limitations imposed by

traditional developmental understandings of childhood. In this article I propose that a

critical literacy social activist framework provides a valuable lens for that work.

Using that framework, I analyze Leah’s efforts to explore her activism as well as the

implications of the alternatives she advocates. This analysis in turn allows a

consideration of how her abilities could be further supported in the ways she both did

and did not engage in collaborative and collective action.

Critical Literacy and Social Activist Theory

This examination of one child’s social activist work is situated first within a critical

literacy framework. This complex framework has a long history that continues to

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unfold. While I draw upon the insights of many scholars working within this

framework, the following theorists most directly informed the perspective taken in

this article: Freire (2001), Janks (2000), and Norton (2005). Their work helped me

highlight the following tenets as key to working with this theoretical framework: (1)

attention to the forms in which individual’s agency are expressed; (2) awareness that

agency can but does not always involve resisting, undercutting, and/or challenging

inequitable practices; and (3) recognition that agency involves the critical reading

and writing of one’s world and that, therefore, literacy is a part of agency.

My work with this theoretical framework helped me to recognize some of the

characteristic ways that Leah was enacting her agency. This understanding in turn

pushed me towards an overlapping theoretical framework, social activism. While

these frameworks have many similarities, the social activist framework provided me

with the analytic tools to deepen my understanding of the ways in which Leah

expressed her agency. Particularly instrumental were the framework’s articulations

of praxis and collaboration in relation to creating change (Ginwright and

Cammarota 2002).

Praxis

Critical consciousness or, in Freire’s (2001) framework, conscientizacao, refers to

individuals’ awareness of the widespread, embedded presence of inequities in

educational, social, and economic systems (Cochran-Smith 1999). Those working

within social activist or critical literacy frameworks recognize how historical,

societal, and systemic forces limit and constrain the opportunities of certain peoples/

groups while perpetuating the privileges of others (Ginwright and Cammarota

2002). This critical awareness also involves the understanding that such forces are

not immutable but can be changed (Freire 2001; Ginwright and Cammarota 2002).

Within both critical literacy and social activism, critical consciousness is coupled

with action (Ginwright and Cammarota 2002). Social activists critically read their

world, identify inequitable practices, and formulate an alternative vision. This

vision serves as a guide to sustain their actions and to transform identified

inequities. Critical consciousness motivates and sustains their efforts to challenge

this dominance (Cochran-Smith 1999; Janks 2000; Nieto 1999).

Although the above description suggests that the connection between critical

consciousness and action is a sequential one, it is not. Nor, other than for the

purposes of discussion, are they separable. Their relation is symbiotic: awareness of

systemic oppression can trigger action; actions can result in consciousness of the

mutability of conditions. This relationship is evident in the reflections of U.S. civil

rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer on a turning point in her activism:

One night I went to the church. They had a mass meeting. And I went to the

church, and they talked about how it was our right, that we could register and

vote. They were talking about we could vote out people that we didn’t want in

office…. That sounded interesting enough to me that I wanted to try it. I had

never heard, until 1962, that black people could register and vote. (McMillen

2000)

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Both critical consciousness and action are involved in this story. The act of going to

the meeting led Hamer to realize that the historical disenfranchisement of her

community was mutable, ‘‘that black people could register and vote.’’ That critical

awareness, in turn, led her to begin her voter registration work which, in turn, led to

expanded consciousness. Often referred to by the single term praxis, critical

consciousness and action mutually support each other and both are necessary

components of activism.

Collaboration

While historical accounts of successful activism will often emphasize the

contributions of a single person such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., or

Fannie Lou Hamer, biographies of these individuals evidence the significant role

that collaboration with others played. Effective social activists necessarily

collaborate to formulate and take action (Ginwright et al. 2005). Collaborations

provide key resources for challenging entrenched interests.

In the above excerpt from Hamer’s reflection, collaboration between visiting

activists from the North and the church community created a pivotal turning point

for Hamer. Collaboration continued to have a strong presence throughout her work,

even as her fame as a speaker and activist increased. Its connection to her vision for

change is embedded in her famous response to Democratic leaders’ offer of two

tickets to the 1964 Democratic National Convention: ‘‘We didn’t come all this way

for no two seats’’ (Mills 1993, p. 132). This comment, coming at a time when the

media spotlight highlighted her individual story, underlines her commitment to the

group with which she had come from Mississippi and their long term vision:

integration of the Mississippi delegation. In the context of that collaborative vision,

two open access seats were meaningless.

These snippets of Hamer’s activism indicate the range of forms that collabo-

rations can take in activist efforts. Collective actions such as the protest Hamer was

involved in as well as walkouts, marches, and sitdowns are some of the noticeable

enactments of collaboration (Ginwright et al. 2005). Key collaborations also

involve engagement with diverse perspectives and needs in order to formulate a

vision for change relevant for more than one individual. Collaboration is also

relevant to the influence that one’s communities, present, past and future, have on

the choices made and actions taken. Such connections with others are crucial both in

posing effective challenges to systemic inequities and in maintaining the courage

and energy to do so.

In this article I seek to document one child’s efforts to disrupt the systemic

problems she identified in her immediate context. My goal in this articulation is to

expand and strengthen our conceptualization of social activism. Currently, that

conceptualization highlights the activism of adults and, occasionally, adolescents.

Children’s capabilities to recognize and challenge inequities are consistently

neglected or misunderstood. To address this gap, I argue for the need to bring

attention to the ways in which children are enacting activist tenets. That focus I posit

can engender: (1) a deepened understanding of the skills and energies required in

such efforts at any age; and (2) a more multifaceted awareness of the ways that

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systemic inequities are manifested. As I discuss below, this position is supported by

a small body of scholarship that spotlights children’s activism. As I discuss in the

following section, it is also grounded in the experience gained through the process

that informs this study.

Researcher Positionality

The anecdote with which this article opens provides a crystallized example of the

ways that many of Leah’s actions at the camp paralleled tenets of social activism. It

also illuminates the ways that my interactions with her pushed me to reflect on and

question my assumptions and decisions. Yet, though drawn directly from field notes

and artifacts, like all data representations the anecdote is filtered through the

researcher’s perspective. In this particular case, that perspective is one that is given

focus by hindsight.

The data that Leah’s and my interactions provided me with were pivotal in the

development of my understanding of critical literacy, social activism, their overlap,

and their significance. But it is important to acknowledge that that development was

a slow and difficult one. When I began, I knew too little about these theoretical

frameworks to understand their relevance for the data I was collecting. Growing up

in a family and community that generally accepted White middleclass discourses,

I was raised to believe in the value of individual ownership and a selfhood that was

singular and consistent. Individual responsibility, moral choices, and fairness were

important considerations in my life, often debated and explored with close family

members. But the connections these themes had to the privileges I accessed as a

White person or the inequities I faced when our family’s economic struggles

increased were not articulated. My knowledge of social activism came from reading,

not from observation or experience. Until I was an adult, I knew no one personally

who had engaged in effective actions for change.

This circumscribed knowledge made it difficult to understand the decisions I

observed Leah make during the study. In particular, I was fascinated and perplexed

by the ways she more than once risked significant social repercussions at the camp.

My field notes, analytic memos, and interview questions are filled with attempts to

understand her reasoning and motivation. Ultimately, by drawing on the

frameworks that were available to me in the mainstream discourse of educational

psychology, I focused on Leah’s stories. This framework helped me see the

interconnectedness of her views of agency and responsibility.

While that interpretation enabled me to complete the study, however, it limited

my ability to account for or deeply explore the courage and commitment I had

observed in my interactions with Leah’s data. Over the years, even as Leah moved

several times and I lost contact with her, the significance of what I had learned from

her stayed with me. Her ability to sustain her commitment to a course of action

despite obstacles and risks continued to inspire me. And I was haunted by a

recognition that these important aspects of her data had been left out of the data

write-up. Eventually this concern helped me see that this gap spoke to what Dyson

(1995) calls ‘‘dangling threads’’, data with the power to push the boundaries of

researchers’ conceptualizations. I came to see the need to find a theoretical

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framework that could help me to understand these neglected data in ways that

brought them to the fore.

In this way, Leah created an entry point and purpose to the dense and challenging

theory that is critical literacy. This entry was facilitated by scholarship that

emphasizes the relevance of this framework to children’s perspectives and actions.

In particular, the scholarship of Norton (2005) and Vasquez (2004) which directly

linked children’s critical literacies to social activism helped me see the relevance of

these theories to Leah’s data. Their research is contextualized and discussed in

detail in the following section.

Children’s Activism

Many educators and scholars understand children’s activism as a potential that can

and should be developed (e.g., Banks 2003; Laman 2006). Particularly in the

context of the problematic realities many children face, scholars highlight the need

for teachers to teach students how to analyze and challenge inequitable practices

(e.g., Finders 1997; Jones 2004; Nieto 1999). In so doing, teachers can provide

opportunities for children to work together in naming inequities and in identifying

actions they can take to work for change (Banks 2003). In this understanding of

children’s activism, children’s skills in praxis and collaboration are seen as valuable

but, implicitly, conditional. Consistently, scholars assume that the instruction of a

teacher is required before children can develop these skills.

The scholarship that focuses on the facilitation of children’s activism provides

vivid documentations of children’s capacity to work together to create envisioned

change. Often, these efforts occur outside the purview of the teacher. For example,

Heffernan describes how she learned after the fact about her students’ decision to

desegregate the gendered division in the lunchroom (Heffernan and Lewison 2005).

Analysis of her students’ reflections on this activism ‘‘revealed the complexity of a

project that took place over several months and involved strategizing, recruiting,

conflict, and compromise’’ (p. 108). Yet, even as the authors recognize the

independence of the students’ activism, they consistently link the cause of its

emergence to Heffernan’s curricular focus on social injustice.

Similarly, Ellis-Williams (2007) links children’s self-initiated collective action to

their teacher. Her examination of children’s activism portrays how fourth graders

organized an extended protest against the lack of choice at recess and created a

proposal articulating their desired changes. Like the children in Heffernan’s class,

these participants implemented a complex plan based on their identification of a

systemic problem without the direct support of school adults. Yet, even as the

significance of their efforts is applauded, the credit for their skills and vision are

given to their teacher: ‘‘The ‘recess protest’ occurred during the same time in the

marking period students were learning about the 1960s resistance movements in the

south…. They were clearly taken by [their teacher’s] lessons and level of

engagement’’ (p. 115).

Without question, teachers who are committed to and knowledgeable about

social justice can provide valuable resources and structures to support children’s

activism. Yet, the assumption that children come to the classroom without skills,

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capacity, or experience relevant to social activism is problematic. The handful of

studies that work against that assumption offer compelling evidence of the value of

those efforts.

Coady and Escamila (2005) provide an example of one such study. Their analysis

of bilingual elementary students’ writing demonstrates how these children

combined critical consciousness with formulation of action. Asked to write in

English or Spanish in response to the prompt, ‘‘If I Could Be Someone Else for a

Day,’’ several children described how they would offer help for poor people, fair

wages and reasonable work hours, and a warm place for children to wait before

school officially opens:

[If could be the principal] I will come early to school and open the door…. At

lunch I will let all the persons who cook to have a break for five minutes. At

the office I will tell the persons who work there to take a break (p. 466).

As in this example, many of the writers not only named problematic social realities

but also articulated actions they would take to change these inequities.

Coady and Escamilla’s research illuminates the capacity these children had to

read their worlds in critical ways. Without prompting or teacher instruction, the

children recognized the mutability of systemic problems and envisioned alterna-

tives. But this research also highlights how adults’ inability to acknowledge the

specific inequities the children face can marginalize the recognition of children’s

activist efforts. For example, understanding how the proposal to open the school

door early is relevant to activism requires readers to recognize that the children who

received free breakfast often had to wait in the cold outside the school. Although

85% of the school qualified to receive free breakfast, the cafeteria opened after the

time parents needed to leave their children to get to work. As a result of the

families’ economic needs, work requirements, and the school policy, children often

began their day waiting in the cold for the school to open (Coady and Escamilla

2005, p. 466). This inequity, however, may be invisible to or dismissed by busy

administrators even when, as in the above example, it is specifically named. Thus,

accessing the complex understandings that underlie children’s articulations requires

a respect for their ability to engage in praxis.

The imperative of that recognition is evident in Norton’s (2005) analysis of a

second grader’s, Pam’s, refusal to sit on a dirty rug for classroom meetings. While

school authorities describe her refusal as inappropriate and problematic for

classroom procedure, Norton demonstrates Pam’s actions are more accurately

understood as a challenge to an inequitable practice. Pam’s resistance, which she

maintains even in the face of verbal abuse from adults, is informed by her awareness

that the policy ignores the reality many children face: a limited number of school

uniforms and limited access to laundry facilities. Pam’s refusal to conform to the

rug policy ‘‘makes visible the realities of poor children who have different life

experiences than children and/or teachers with money.’’ (Norton 2005, p. 121). Yet,

without the recognition that Pam’s efforts are activist in nature, aimed at addressing

a systemic problem, the significance of her efforts and the courage required to

sustain them are easily dismissed as a behavior problem.

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The value of attending to the possibilities of children’s activism, evident in both

studies discussed above, is further developed by Vasquez’s (2004) work with four

and five year olds. As with Pam and the writers in Coady and Escamilla’s study, the

identification of inequities and the vision for alternative, more equitable worlds is

initiated by the children. But in this case the students also received teacher support

in developing strategies to work towards their visions. Vasquez’s curriculum

centered on helping students identify the tools that would be most effective for their

purpose, and provided materials, technology, and instruction that supported their

construction of texts that could effectively advocate for change. For example, when

the children learned their grade was seen as too young to be included in an

otherwise all-school event, they conducted surveys of the other kindergartens to

document their reactions, created a petition, and wrote a letter to the principal

advocating for their inclusion. Like Pam and the writers referred to above, the

children in Vasquez’s class formulated and worked towards a more equitable vision,

one that aimed at collective rather than individual benefit. That Vasquez’s students

were more effective in overturning exclusionary practices than were the children in

the two previously cited studies is due, in part, to the opportunities they had for

direct collaboration—with each other and with their teacher.

Taken together, these examinations of children’s reactions to societal inequities

offer compelling evidence that many children do not need to be taught as much as

supported and given opportunities to formulate actions for change. The children in

these studies were involved in envisioning outcomes and initiating actions that have

strong parallels to the work of adult activists. For example, the young writer who

would open the school early shares a vision with the Free Breakfast for Children

program initiated in the 1960s by the Black Panthers. Pam’s advocacy for her right

to be treated with respect in relation to where she sits echoes the actions taken by

many activists in the 1960’s to integrate restaurants throughout the United States.

And the children in Vasquez’s classroom collected data and constructed texts that

document the inequities of a policy and the justice of their challenge, much like U.S.

civil rights activists in the 1960s did to demonstrate the institutionalized inequities

of Mississippi’s voting system. Separately and collectively, these studies highlight

the need for research that analyzes children’s activist efforts within a context that

does not reduce or dismiss their actions as childish.

Method

The data that informs this discussion comes from research I conducted on

preadolescent girls’ understandings of their world. Data were collected in two

stages. During the first stage, I facilitated a literacy/art group at a summer day camp

located in the heart of a large urban area. The camp, close to many of the city’s

office buildings and businesses, attracted children from families who worked

nearby. Reflecting the tremendous diversity of the city’s population, the children at

the camp represented a range of ethnic, economic, geographic, and spiritual

backgrounds. Fourteen girls between the ages of nine and twelve volunteered to

participate in the group and in the study. During the eight weeks of the summer

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camp, we met weekly to read, write, tell, and act out stories as well as create images.

During this phase of the study, data collection emphasized: audio taping and

observations of the weekly two-hour focus groups, artifact collection, shadowing

participants throughout their camp day, and informal interviews of the camp

director and counselors.

The second stage of data collection occurred three to four months after camp had

ended, after in-depth analysis of the first stage’s data. Reflecting the research focus

on girls’ understandings of their world, analysis sought to identify recurring themes

and emphases in the ways the participants described and interpreted their worlds

(Bruner 1991; McAdams 1993). In one-on-one interviews, I was able to explore the

relevance of these themes for the participants as well as to develop and clarify my

understandings of aspects of the data that I found confusing.

As this description suggests, data analysis was recursive. Using traditional open

coding methods (Ely et al. 1991; Strauss and Corbin 1990), in conjunction with the

member checks provided in the interviews, I was able to identify some of the central

themes in participants’ stories about their worlds. For example, teasing and

interactions with counselors had a strong presence across the data. The resonance of

these themes was also indicated in the range of meanings they had for each

participant. These themes then guided the narrative analysis which was the focus of

the next stage of data analysis. Participants’ narratives were identified and analyzed

in relation to their (1) exploration of a core idea, (2) attention to deviations from

perceived norms; and (3) incorporation of story grammar elements (Bruner 1991;

McAdams 1993). Some key insights that emerged through this process related to

participants’ perceptions about cause and effect in interpersonal relations, and their

use of moral belief to achieve personal desires (Simon 1999).

At the time of the study, Leah was nine years old. She attended seven of the eight

group sessions and participated in a two-hour interview. We also had many

conversations outside of these meetings and she regularly provided me with samples

of her creative writing and artwork. I also came to know her sister, had

conversations with her mother, and met other important people in her family.

Through these multiple interactions I learned about several aspects of Leah’s life

and background. A biracial female (Anglo-European American/Caribbean Amer-

ican), she lived primarily with her mother and younger sister and had significant

contact with her extended family on both sides. Leah’s identity as a family member,

particularly as a sister, were aspects of her life she referred to often in conversation

and stories. Similarly, she often drew upon her gendered insights to comment on the

differences between boys and girls. References made in the conversations I had with

her and her mother made me aware that the family had experienced economic

challenges. In our conversations I also learned that Leah was extremely successful

in school and confident about her academic abilities. In contrast to what I learned

about these aspects of Leah’s life, I know very little about Leah’s experiences in

relation to ethnicity, spirituality, health, or sexuality. A limitation of the study was

that I never explicitly asked about these aspects of her life.

Narrative analysis of Leah’s oral and written stories revealed her tendency to take

the stance of an omniscient narrator. As in the following excerpt, her character was

often an observer who interpreted and evaluated other characters’ intentionality.

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Leah: I could tell that Julie felt sorry for teasing Danielle but she didn’t want

to let anyone know how she felt. Because when Danielle was crying, I could

tell by how Julie looked even though she kept on teasing her.

This excerpt also exemplifies another characteristic of Leah’s stories: complex main

characters experimenting with wrongdoing. As this story went on to do, Leah’s

narrator concludes the story by describing less problematic alternative behaviors.

The analysis of the narrative patterns in the collected stories helped me identify

some of the characteristic ways participants were interpreting their experiences.

However, while narrative analysis helped deepen my understanding of Leah’s

perspective, it was inadequate for understanding some of her actions. In particular, it

did not allow a deep consideration of her concerns about and resistance to camp

policies. Her commitment to these challenges, even in the face of peer and adult

harassment showed me how significant these actions were. Yet, while the data pushed

me to articulate the meaning of her actions, my use of a framework that saw children

as unaware of and unresponsive to systemic inequities limited my ability to do that.

As I noted earlier, I continued to interrogate and reflect upon the gap between what

Leah had shared with me and my inability to explore its meaning (Dyson 1995). As

other researchers note, such failures can be powerful, serving as prompts that guide

our reconsideration of limiting conceptualizations (Dyson 1995; Nairn et al. 2005).

In highlighting that which we cannot make coherent, we are able to push past

limitations and simplifications and see where our skills need to be expanded, our

assumptions questioned (Dyson 1995). In my own process, my failure in relation to

Leah pushed me to continually seek out new approaches to analysis. As I developed

my understanding first of critical literacy theory and then of social activism, I came to

see the relevance these frameworks had for the gaps in my understanding of Leah’s

data. Specifically, I saw how in combination they could help me explore the link

between Leah’s stories about the abuses of power at the camp and her efforts to

circumvent the camp’s policies. Towards these ends, I engaged in a second stage of

analysis through the lenses of critical literacy and social activism.

This re-analysis of Leah’s data involved a complete re-reading of her data in

dialogue with social activist emphases. Specifically, these data were interrogated for

their relevance to the following tenets: (1) identification of inequitable practices by

critically reading current context/world; (2) awareness of conditions’ mutability and

formulation of alternative visions; (3) use of that vision to guide and sustain the

work needed to transform identified inequities; (4) involvement in collaborations to

pool resources for change; and (5) formulation and taking of action wherein all

individuals contribute to working for change.

Additionally, to support my developing understanding of this framework as well

as to circumvent the developmental framework’s influence, I drew upon the

activism of the civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer. Using the tenets listed above,

I analyzed historical documents relevant to Hamer’s work for societal change

(Hamer 1964; Hamlet 1996; McMillen 2000; Mills 1993). I compared these results

to the analysis of Leah’s data to identify how Leah’s actions were and were not

relevant to the work of social activists. The findings that emerged from this analysis

are presented in the sections that follow.

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A Critical Observer of the World

Leah’s observations of her world and the people within it had a strong presence in

the data. Her poems, drawings, and stories, as well as her conversations were filled

with details about the context in which she was situated. While these details

included physical characteristics of those environments, they evidenced greater

attention to the interpersonal elements. The following account of an incident that

had occurred at the camp during the study, offers a characteristic example:

Leah: One time when a lot of people, like a whole bunch of people, the girls,

they didn’t want to go to dance, a whole lot of them…. And they [the camp

authorities] didn’t make the boys go to dance either. The teenage boys, they

went to dance but they didn’t make the boys go to dance and that one time

they made us come to the gym and sit there for like almost an hour or half an

hour. Lie down or sit there on the floor doing nothing and we couldn’t talk or

do anything with each other…. And me and Elsa we were inching over to each

other and [the counselor] caught us and he told us to go back and some other

people they were talking with a counselor, they were playing, they weren’t

like talking about something they did, they were playing and he didn’t say

anything to them.

This glimpse into the children’s experience at the day camp centers on an incident

Leah found extremely problematic: counselors using their authority to constrain the

movements and conversation of a large group of girls, punishment for their

expressions of resistance to the camp’s scheduled activity. As she details the actions

of her peers, herself and Elsa, and the counselors’ responses and interactions, she

evidences strong observational skills. Also evident are her analytic abilities as she

interprets this experience by drawing upon her knowledge of the camp’s physical

layout, its policies regarding grouping by age and gender, and the schedules and

expectations for these different groups. These references, in conjunction with the

details in her account, strengthen her point—that the camp’s problematic policies

contributed to this abusive incident.

Leah had introduced the above articulation by saying ‘‘I felt that it wasn’t really

like a summer camp cause the counselors are there to watch the kids, they’re not

there to make them feel bad.’’ The import of this critique was further highlighted as

she concluded the anecdote:

And I felt that it was a summer camp and we didn’t have to do something that

we didn’t want to do and I felt that they shouldn’t do that because if we didn’t

want to do something it was our right to choose, because it wasn’t like school,

it was supposed to be a place where we could have fun.

In her articulation, Leah intertwines her identification of the problematic

components of camp with an alternative vision for what it could and should be.

Instead of a camp where counselors make children ‘‘feel bad’’ and force them to do

things they didn’t want to do, she envisions a camp where counselors ‘‘watch the

kids’’ and children can have fun. She directly names the problematic behavior of the

counselors, including their differential treatment, as an element that would need to

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change. In her observation she also notes the privileged position held by the boys in

her cohort—‘‘And they didn’t make the boys go to dance’’. While her awareness of

how gender and age intersect in relation to camp policies is not further developed, it

serves to explain why only the girls resisted the policy and thus were the only ones

to be punished.

Leah’s observations of the camp, our literacy/art group, and her school

experiences appear throughout the data. Evident within them are strong connections

to several of the tenets of social activism. As in the example above, Leah often took

a critical stance in her attention to and articulation of her context, identifying its

positive as well as problematic aspects. A regular aspect of this critical work was a

focus on policies, particularly in relation to their impact on herself and her peers.

Further, her strategy of comparing the current context to what it could and should be

shows how integral her formulation of alternative visions were to her critical

reflections. ‘‘It was supposed to be a place where we could have fun,’’ she tells me,

drawing upon this vision not only to guide her critique but to emphasize the

mutability of the current problematic context.

In the example above, Leah’s critique emphasizes problems with and her

resistance to adults’ control of children’s bodies. As I discuss in the following

sections, this focus was a strong one in her data, informing her actions as it does her

critical reflection. But it is also her focus on this systemic problem that makes it

difficult for adults to see how Leah’s praxis is activism. As adults, many of us are

likely to be accustomed to the enforcement of policies that impinge upon children’s

bodies. Regularly, we expect children to stay still, to be quiet, to not create what we

label disturbances. These policies draw so fully upon dominant beliefs about

children—that they need to be guided and molded, self-control must be taught and

required—that they are difficult to critique. Doing so requires that we recognize the

problematic realities engendered by our policies (Coady and Escamilla 2005;

Norton 2005). It also requires that we recognize how the ideologies that inform our

policies reflect and sustain our interests (Shaw 2004). The belief that adults have the

right to control children’s bodies is one that demeans children’s perspectives and

privileges adults’.

When Leah describes children being forced by authorities to lie still and silent for

an extended period of time, it is not difficult to be horrified by the incident. But Leah

resisted a range of attempts to control her body, including those that many adults felt

would be beneficial for her. Her refusal to participate in the camp’s dance class was

one such example. To camp authorities, Leah’s refusal was understood as misguided

stubbornness. However, as I discuss below, careful attention to Leah’s actions,

particularly in relation to her context, illuminates the connection between her

resistance and activism.

Refusing to Dance

The year this study was conducted, over 100 children between the ages of four and

fourteen attended this urban day camp. Because the majority of the camp activities

occurred in a single, multi-storied building with rooms and a gym shared with

adults, careful scheduling was necessary. Emma, the camp director, grouped the

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children into cohorts determined by age and each cohort followed a different

activity schedule. Leah’s cohort, the nine to twelve year olds, had a schedule that

assigned them to ‘‘dance or gym’’ twice a week. However, the implication of choice

in this wording was misleading. Only the girls took dance. During that hour, as I

regularly observed, the boys sat in a hallway seemingly for no purpose.

In the second week, they were joined by Leah and, for the camp’s remaining

seven weeks, she refused to attend dance. Months later, she described this

experience to me:

Leah: The boys they would either go to gym during that time or they would go

to another room and just sit there. And I would go with them. Sometimes it

was just me with all the other boys and usually I would read a book or just sit

there till dance was over.

Lisa: And what was that like?

Leah: It was sort of weird because I didn’t have anyone there to play with me.

But like sometimes Danielle would be there.

In addition to having nothing to do and no one to play with, Leah’s decision

triggered other repercussions. More than once I observed peers teasing her about not

taking dance and she faced consistent challenges from counselors regarding her

right to not participate. Additionally, many of the camp administrators and her peers

verbalized their belief that her choice was misguided.

Leah’s refusal to participate in dance class offers an example of resistance to a

named and systemic inequity: differential treatment by gender. Certainly, the earlier

data excerpts evidence her awareness that the policy treated girls and boys

differently. However, differential treatment was not the focus of her argument

against it. While she noted the unfairness of girls having to do something the boys

did not, she several times expressed her agreement with the camp authorities that the

boys would not want to dance. Nor did the gender segregation seem to be an issue—

in the excerpt above she makes clear she did not value interactions with the boys

and she appeared to appreciate the gender segregation embedded in our literacy/art

group. Further, when she talked about her refusal to dance, she did not directly refer

to gender:

Lisa: You said it was more fun last summer at the camp. How come?

Leah: Because the counselors weren’t so mean and like when I didn’t want to

go to dance one of the counselors she told me I had to but I didn’t go anyway

because my mother told me if I didn’t want to go I didn’t have to go and if she

made me go then I would just tell her I’m not going and refuse to go.

Lisa: How come you didn’t want to go to dance?

Leah: Because I felt the teacher was really mean and I didn’t feel I was good at

it.

Leah’s identification of meanness and personal inadequacy as her rationale does not

clearly link to an activist stance. In contrast to her earlier critical observations that

both named systemic problems and articulated alternative visions, here she suggests

her resistance is an individual act of self-protection. On one level, one from which

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many at the camp understood her behavior, her actions were motivated by fear and

problematically enabled by her mother.

Yet, in the above excerpt, Leah indicates how connected her refusal to dance is to

her earlier articulated critique of the camp. Before she refers to the dance policy, she

focuses on the counselors’ ‘‘meanness’’, a term she used frequently to identify

problematic aspects of the camp as well as peer behavior. In this conversation, she

directly links meanness to authorities’ refusal to engage with her perspective or to

respect her right to choose. This echoes the concerns she expressed in excerpts

provided earlier. Further, the right to choose is one that she describes her mother

supporting and providing strategies to protect: ‘‘my mother told me if I didn’t want

to go I didn’t have to go and if [the counselor] made me go then I would just tell her

I’m not going and refuse to go.’’

Meanness, while a term relevant to Leah’s discourse as a young female, is not

one used by adults in identifying systemic inequities. Thus, Leah’s use of it in her

rationale can obscure the significance of her efforts to resist what she identified as

‘‘mean’’ or problematic. Twice a week, for seven weeks, Leah left her friends to sit

and wait an hour with male peers with whom she was not allied. In the second half

of the summer, when she could have reconsidered and joined a new dance class, she

maintained her refusal. Her actions provided a model for other girls, particularly

Danielle who she referred to in the above excerpt. Perhaps because the number of

girls refusing to dance increased, those who refused to dance faced increasing

challenges by the counselors. The following is one of the instances I observed:

The others have left for dance. Leah, Danielle, and I walk to the other room.

We get there and Emilio, a new male counselor looks up and tells Leah and

Danielle to go upstairs, saying ‘‘All the girls are in dance.’’ Danielle says she

doesn’t want to do dance. ‘‘If you’re well enough to be on the swim team, you

can do dance,’’ he says and tells her to go upstairs. The atmosphere is very

hostile. Calmly, Leah says, ‘‘My mom spoke to Emma [the camp director] and

it’s ok.’’ Danielle, speaking with agitation, says ‘‘My mom spoke to Emma

and I don’t have to do dance.’’ ‘‘Get,’’ the counselor says, just pointing. ‘‘Get

upstairs.’’ We leave, Danielle muttering ‘‘It’s not fair. Emilio always does that.

It’s not fair.’’ Leah tells her ‘‘These things happen. It doesn’t matter. We’ll

talk to Emma.’’

Leah’s reactions in this scene were consistent with those I observed throughout the

summer, particularly in relation to her referencing two key adults: her mother and

the camp director, Emma. In this particular incident, she effectively invokes one

policy—parents’ rights to demand modifications for their children—to circumvent

the implementation of the one she resists. Evident as well is her ability to be flexible

in relation to her overall goal and her knowledge of the camp’s hierarchy. She knew

that in the context of dance, Emma and her mother were more powerful than the

counselor, that although counselors could make children go to different rooms or sit

without talking, they could not make her participate in dance.

Leah’s refusal to participate in dance demonstrates her ability to sustain a

committed and strategic protest that involved courage and skill. These actions were

also connected to her critical reflection. Although Leah’s critique does not highlight

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the gendered inequities of the dance policy, it was linked to the inequities that were

systemic at the camp and very important to her: adults’ abuse of power and the

violation of her rights. It also recognizes the mutability of these inequities. As noted

earlier, in this regard her mother provided significant support. Through their

collaboration, Leah seems to have gained valuable material support—the note

written to Emma—as well as strategies to use when her rights were challenged.

Unfortunately, the limitations of the study, limitations directly related to my

inability to recognize the activist nature of Leah’s actions, leave the nature of that

support an unexplored dimension of Leah’s activism.

Collaboration

Effectively challenging entrenched interests is immensely challenging, involving

significant material, emotional, and physical risks. Thus, while praxis involves

individual reflection, within an activist framework it is necessarily a collaborative

process. The visions that guide actions and the formulation of those actions are done

in collaboration with as well as for others. In Leah’s data it is evident that she is

often working towards change that will benefit the group rather than solely herself.

In her critiques of the camp, she articulates a vision for a camp where all children

can be safe and have fun and, in the story that opened this article, she sought access

to the literacy/art group not only for herself but for all (female) nine year olds. This

tendency is also evidenced when, in the interaction presented above, she shared with

Danielle her strategies for resisting dance as well as providing emotional support.

However, these examples reflect another pattern in Leah’s data—her tendency to

initiate and work towards a singular vision, her own, developed without input from

others affected by the inequities. For example, although by resisting dance she was

grouped with the boys and ultimately joined by other girls, she neither sought nor

developed collaborations with these peers. Rather, she described it as: ‘‘just me with

all the other boys and usually I would read a book or just sit there till dance was

over.’’ Even as she devotes significant energies to undercutting a policy that is not

respectful of her needs and rights, she does not seek to join those efforts with others.

In this, the visions she directs her energies toward appear to be formed without

dialogue with others whose experiences are also affected by the problematic

context.

Yet, the data also suggests Leah’s capacity for collaboration, particularly in

relation to goal of finding or creating places where she and her peers made choice

and had control over their actions and bodies. The importance of this goal was no

doubt exacerbated by her critical awareness that the camp’s policies limited those

choices. In relation to that context, the literacy/art group appeared to provide a place

where the problematic camp policies were not enforced:

Lisa: Was our group different from the rest of the time you were at camp?

Leah: Yes and sometimes I wished it was all week instead of just for two

hours.

Lisa: Tell me about how it was different then from the camp.

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Leah: It was different because you didn’t boss us around like the counselors

did and if we felt different about something you would discuss it with us other

than just having it your way. And it was supposed to be a camp where we

could have fun and I felt that the counselors weren’t making it that fun.

The respect that Leah felt I gave her and her peers in relation to choice and decisions

was something she emphasized in her critical reflections on the group. While she

also noted that the openness occasionally went too far and the group got out of

control, she appeared to see it as a factor in making the group feel safe, a place

where, as she explained, ‘‘we could talk to each other about things that were

bothering us and trust each other not to tell anybody else.’’

Opportunities to talk in these ways involved Leah in collaborations, with her

peers and with me, in relation to our group’s weekly agendas and in learning from

each other. As she explained in an interview: ‘‘it was nice to have more people join

because it made it more fun because they gave us more ideas of things to do.’’

However, because others’ perspectives were not always aligned with her vision, her

commitment to the group also required that she negotiate her expectations with the

realities of others’ actions. In particular, she had to negotiate her strong stance

against teasing with the awareness that girls in the group had contributed to the

teasing prevalent at the camp. Until the interview, I was not aware of the import of

this challenge:

Leah: I liked to be with the group more than do something else with the rest of

the camp. Because the people in the group, they were really like the people I

liked a lot in the camp. And the people who joined the group were really the

people who were nice…. They didn’t make fun of anybody.

Lisa: But you mentioned before that Jackie and Sirona [two members of the

group] teased people a couple times, right?

Leah: Yeah, but they apologized and they admitted they felt sorry for doing

that.

Here, Leah suggests the efforts she made to sustain the collective of the group,

particularly in relation to the safety it offered in the problematic context of the

camp. While it seems clear that Leah would prefer to interact with peers who do not

make fun of others, that was not feasible at the camp. Thus, pushed to negotiate her

own vision in relation to others, she develops a more complex understanding that

recognizes the value of acknowledgement and apology. This and her other

reflections about the different values, desires, and intentions in the group suggest

Leah’s ability to more fully enact the collaborative components of an activist

framework than was otherwise evident.

Discussion

By allowing for the possibility of children’s activism, researchers and educators can

extend their understanding of children’s experiences and agencies. Leah’s stories,

reflections, and actions help make clear the necessity of such work. As Leah was at

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camp, so are many children directly impacted by inequitable practices (Campano

2005; Dodson 1998; Dutro et al. 2005; Finders 1997; Jones 2004; Noll and Watkins

2003/2004; Valdes 1996; Walkerdine 1990). Yet, while such experiences are

extensively documented, too little attention has been paid to the ways in which

children are already seeking to challenge and circumvent the systemic problems in

their world. Because educators and scholars persist in the belief that children do not

engage in praxis, they often focus on helping children begin to reflect and act out of

critical consciousness (e.g., Finders 1997; Jones 2004; Laman 2006).

Leah’s stories and actions call for a reconfiguration of this tendency, a call that is

echoed in other work that attends to children’s agency (Coady and Escamilla 2005;

Norton 2005; Vasquez 2004). Educators, particularly those committed to social

justice pedagogies, must recognize not only that children are capable of praxis but

that many will come to the classroom with significant experiences and histories

relevant to social activism (Ellis-Williams 2007). To do this requires adults to look

for and ask about such histories and identify the kinds of resources these children

have access to. Further, in order to increase the learning opportunities for children

who do not have similar access or experiences, teachers need to highlight children’s

histories and talents in relation to activist efforts.

By seeking to learn about the relevant skills children have already developed,

teachers can increase the possibility that children will not remain static, but rather

develop their abilities to work together to name and challenge inequities. In such a

context, Leah’s strengths in critical reflection would not only be recognized as a

resource that can support others. Her skills would also be pushed further,

particularly in relation to collaborating for change, an area that the data suggests

was less developed. This context would also help her expand the resources she can

draw upon in understanding, naming, and working to change the systems that

contribute to the abuse and lack of safety of which she was so aware. Such explicit

emphases are already part of programs working with adolescents (Ginwright and

Cammarota 2002). By stepping outside the developmental frame that positions

children as less than adolescents and adults, it is possible to see how such emphases

could be relevant to Leah as well.

A final, but no less significant implication relates to the development of adults

who work with children. In particular, attention to children’s capacities for praxis

expands our abilities to circumvent the misinterpretations of children’s activism as

negative behavior (Norton 2005). Without an appreciation of the critical reflection

that underlay Leah’s protest against the dance class policy, adults easily dismissed

the significance of her actions. The courage and commitment required to sit out dance

was widely read as misguided, problematic behavior. As a result, with the exception

of her mother, she was unable to explore her concerns about the policy with

authoritative adults. Collaboration and change were, accordingly, limited as well.

While dismissal and ridicule is a frequent response to activists’ efforts, it is a

deeply problematic one in the context of children’s activism. Because of their

positionality, children are frequently in settings in which they have limited control

of their time, space, and, a particular concern for Leah, their bodies (Mayall 1998).

A lack of control over her problematic context may have been one reason Leah’s

reflections on the camp were so focused on critique, why she was able to sustain her

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refusal to dance, and why she was willing to negotiate and collaborate to maintain

the safety of the literacy/art group. Her efforts and courage underline the need for

adults to critically reflect on our negative or dismissive reactions to children’s

behavior. Doing so will allow us to more fully attend to and critique the inequities

we are enforcing with our actions and in our policies (Norton 2005).

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