As a consortium of individuals, programs, and agencies that embrace the power of collaboration, the Washtenaw County Literacy Network works to shift conversations and practices surrounding literacy and literacy inequities. Using an emergent strategy lens, the authors describe the partnerships at the center of the network and the collaborative work that has emerged from these partnerships. The authors also analyze the adaptations recent events have generated in terms of the relationships and interactions that center the work, and they explore ways to rethink the idea of assessment for community literacy initiatives. Ultimately, the authors posit that emergent strategy helps networks like the WCLN navigate change in thoughtful and sustainable ways.

This snapshot describes and reflects upon two case studies of community writing projects between Emerson College and Boston Public Schools. Emerson College students were asked to tutor 10th grade BPS students for the English Language Arts portion of the state standardized assessment. Through both quantitative results and qualitative reflection, this paper suggests that approaching such standardized tests as a distinct genre of writing can not only help students to gain awareness for multiple genres, but also to recognize their own writing as an empowered and meaningful political form of social action.

In Slam School: Learning Through Conflict in the Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Classroom, Bronwen E. Low argues for the significance of critical hip-hop pedagogies, particularly when engaging with racial and social conflicts in educational settings. Low collaborated with a teacher at an urban arts magnet high school in the northeastern United States through a performance poetry course that was taught using a hiphop and spoken word curriculum. Overall, Low's book is useful for community literacy scholars as an application and assessment of a popular practice and growing pedagogy in schools and community organizations.

This essay revises Paula Mathieu’s call for relationship-based tactics of engagement over institution-based strategies. Because engaged scholars operate within institutional contexts, they should utilize both tactics and strategies to make the academic institutional paradigm more conducive to relationship-based engagement. In supporting this long-term goal, community-literacy practitioners can adapt Brian Huot’s theory of instructive evaluation to enable collaborative assessment of community partnerships. One possible mechanism for such institutional invention would be the establishment of quasi-strategic, quasi-tactical Community- Literacy Associations.

The field of adult literacy is complex. This complexity poses many challenges for literacy programs. This paper addresses the challenges of collaboration, diversity, attendance, assessment and professional development as they apply to adult literacy programs. Recommendations for increasing the success of literacy programs are provided.