Chapter 9: Life around Literature in an Urban Afterschool Program for Middle School Students

The purpose of this research is to describe the experiences of 15 middle school students in an urban, after school-program entitled Drama Through Reading (DTR), as they co-constructed and recreated their understandings of literature through performance. Through systematic observation of and listening to the students, I described what happened when students evoked and exerted control over the ideas and feelings that they experienced while reading. This setting also provided an opportunity to explore how students’ social interactions shaped their interpretations of texts. The DTR program, which I conceptualized in January 2011, explored how drama informs students’ reading processes and how the life of literature evokes their exploration of themselves within the world. Presentation of the narrative data collected and analyzed during this study brings a nuanced perspective of adolescent reading experiences.