Request edit access
L.I.T. City Interest Form
L.I.T. City, which stands for Literacy Inspiring Transformation in the City, is a creative Black-centric summer research program/project for High School youth (rising 10-12th graders) attending any NYC school, designed to explore their lives and love of literacy.  This youth-centered collaborative project will engage students in a variety of critical literacy activities that leverage their lived experiences to imagine and construct educational futures that counter the structural regime of antiblackness.

The objectives of this project are to: 1) Engage historically marginalized urban youth of color in critical literacy (reading, writing, speaking, etc.) work for social transformation; 2) Connect urban youth to youth participatory action (YPAR) and justice-oriented research that centers their lived experiences; 3) Uplift urban youth of color as deeply literate students (literacy leaders) and citizens of their worlds; and 4) Catalyze an ongoing coalition of youth researchers and literacy leaders (L.I.T. City) across NYC.

L.I.T. City will take the form of a 3 week summer program during July 2019. Students will be engaged in a youth-centered, youth-driven Sociocultural Literacy curriculum that is central to their lived experiences as Black citizens of NYC and the world. Each week, students will explore different mediums of literacy expression (e.g. storytelling & poetry, photography, spoken word, essay writing, etc.) to document the knowledge which emerges from their lives about self and community. Specific topics these literacy artifacts may potentially focus on include: #BlackLivesMatter, Immigration Bans, Stop-and-Frisk and Police Brutality, Transphobia, Gentrification, and many others. The entire journey of the project will be documented on social media with the hashtag #LITCity to provide space for local, national, and international engagement. At the end of the project, we will host an Urban Youth Literacy Summit, where the students will present their work to educational researchers, policy makers, teachers, community members, and families.

If you have questions while completing this form, please email Dr. Justin A. Coles at jcoles4@fordham.edu 
Sign in to Google to save your progress. Learn more
Full Name
Race and/or Ethnicity
U.S. Born
Clear selection
If born outside of the U.S., what country?
Languages Spoken
Gender Identity
Clear selection
High School
Grade Entering Fall 2019
Clear selection
Age
Are you available to meet on the following days: July 2 (orientation), July 8-11, July 15-19, and July 22-24? The orientation will be held from 11am-1pm. All other days, the meeting times will be from 10am-3pm. L.I.T. City will take place at Teachers College (525 W 120th Street). Students are expected to participate for the entire program.
Clear selection
What interests you about this project? How do you think your individual perspectives and lived experiences will contribute to this community?
What do you believe to be one of the most important social justice issues of this current time? How do you think students can work to create change around this issue?
Please use this space to share anything else that you would like to share with the researchers about yourself?
Submit
Clear form
Never submit passwords through Google Forms.
This content is neither created nor endorsed by Google. Report Abuse - Terms of Service - Privacy Policy
Google Forms