I TEACH STUDENTS, NOT SUBJECTS - TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS AS CONTEXTS FOR SECONDARY LITERACY

THIS ETHNOGRAPHY focused on how and why a high school content area rea cher and her students engaged in literacy activities. Based on analysi s of data collected over a 2-year period, the author argues that the r elationship established between the teacher and her students motivated them to engage in literacy activities. Because the teacher cared deep ly about her students' success, she searched for pedagogical strategie s, in particular, literacy strategies, that she felt would ensure such success. Students sensed and appreciated the teacher's caring for the m and responded positively to the strategies she taught, although they did not always use the strategies in the same way, nor did they trans fer the strategies to other content classes. In this article, the auth or provides details of literacy uses in this classroom, and interprets the participants' experiences and beliefs about reaching and learning , the meanings they made from their classroom interactions, and how th ese interactions led to the development of relationships that contextu alized their literacy practices. The power of this teacher-student rel ationship illustrates how literacy practices and strategies are social ly constructed and constituted. As a result, the author raises questio ns about the implications of these findings for literacy teacher educa tion, research, and reform. Specifically, she argues that we need to c onduct more research on literacy practices, rather than isolated liter acy events, in actual content area classrooms so that we can better un derstand how secondary literacy teaching and learning are shaped by th e unique contexts of secondary schools and classrooms. Moreover, the a uthor asserts that research on teachers' beliefs and practices about c ontent area literacy must be reconceptualized so that we examine not o nly teachers' beliefs about literacy, but also their beliefs about the ir content areas, their students, and the social and political context s in which they work.