










































Georgia Journal of Literacy 
2024, Vol. 46(1), pp. 34–48 
https://doi.org/10.56887/galiteracy.138 
ISSN: 2833-7611 

Practitioner Article  

 
 

 

CONTACT Dr. Leah Panther, Assistant Professor of Literacy Education, Tift College of Education, Mercer University, 
Atlanta, GA; email panther_lm@mercer.edu. Caitlin Hochuli, Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, Mercer 
University, Atlanta, GA; email Caitlin.Hochuli@live.mercer.edu. 
 

Looking for It: Language, Literacy, and History in 
Place 
 
Leah Panther 
Tift College of Education, Mercer University, Atlanta, GA 

Caitlin Hochuli 
Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, Mercer University, Atlanta, GA 

 

ABSTRACT 

Within this article, we explore how teachers, researchers, and community 
members—including youth—worked in collaborative conversations and place-based 
projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their local Georgia 
communities. By examining the process of “looking for it,” as one youth researcher 
puts it, this article explores three inquiry practices Georgia youth use to identify and 
sustain community language and literacy practices: personal storytelling, walking 
histories, and breaking bread. These community literacies resulted in youth having 
a stronger sense of self and community and understanding the relationship between 
them. Additionally, the practices spurred critical thinking, historical inquiry, and 
socioemotional learning. Community exploration through community literacies 
created the foundation for place-based language, literacy, and history research to 
take root and flourish. 

KEYWORDS 

place-based 
learning; 
community 
collaboration; 
community 
literacies 

 
I want to see people understand that educations not something that’s boxed in, not 
something that you can all put in a book. You have to go out there and look for it.  

–Naiser, 15 
 

aiser, a self-selected pseudonym, defines education as “not something that’s boxed in” or 
“you can all put in a book”, rather, at the heart of her advice is moving beyond the 
traditional four walls of a text, classroom, and school building. This advice comes from 

two years as a youth co-researcher in the Linguistic Justice Collaboration (LJC); a collaborative 
whose mission is to identify, design, and sustain the languages, literacy practices, and histories of 
Georgia’s diverse geographical and cultural communities. This work means putting teachers, 
researchers, and community members—including youth—into collaborative conversations and 
place-based projects to explore the languages, stories, and histories of their communities. Within 
this article, we explore how eight different LJC projects have gone “looking for it”, as Naiser puts 
it, and what youth have taught us about identifying and sustaining community language and 
literacy practices in our middle and high school English classrooms. 
 
Where We’re Rooted 
We (Leah and Caitlin) are current and former classroom and community educators, researchers, 
and active community members within Georgia. We, like the LJC collaborators, are committed to 

N 

mailto:panther_lm@mercer.edu
mailto:Caitlin.Hochuli@live.mercer.edu


Panther & Hochuli 35 
 

schooling that centers local communities and remains accountable to community goals above (and 
sometimes in opposition to) standardized goals for learning. In other words, we view schooling as 
spaces that prepare youth for college, career, and community. Preparing learners to be active, 
current citizens in their own communities includes an active exploration of community languages, 
literacy practices, and understanding the histories that both create, erase, and sustain these 
communities. These beliefs are summarized in the guiding framework: Georgia languages, 
Georgia races, Georgia histories, and Georgia places (Figure 1). 
 
Figure 1: Linguistic Justice Collaborative’s Framework  

 
 

Language and Linguistic Justice 

What is currently the state of Georgia is a snapshot of the language and linguistic diversity across 
the United States of America, with 10% of residents born outside of the country and 13% of 
households speaking a language other than English at home (American Immigration Council, 
2023). In addition, Georgians who speak English represent a range of linguistic varieties from 
Geechee Gullah along the Atlantic coastline (Turner, 1969) to Appalachian “mountain talk” in the 
north (Clark & Hayward, 2013, p. 106) to Black Language throughout the state (Dillard, 1973; 
Smitherman, 1999; also called Ebonics, African American English, African American Vernacular 
English, and Black English), particularly in the Atlanta metro area where over 50% of residents 
identify as Black or part of the African diaspora. Though, this is not to suggest that all Black 
Georgians speak Black Language nor that all Black Language speakers are Black, particularly 
given the intersectionalities between race and English language learners (Cooper, 2020). 
Furthermore, Georgia represents a long history of languages outside of voiced traditions, as well, 
including one of the first schools for Deaf Education in the country (Gallaudet, 1886).  
 The classrooms throughout Georgia reflect the language and linguistic diversity in its 
communities: learners are their language (Anzaldúa, 1981) and bring their full repertoire into 
learning spaces regardless of how schooling systems do—or often do not—acknowledge, celebrate 
and sustain these languages and literacy practices (García et al., 2021). Language and linguistic 
justice (Baker-Bell, 2020; Hudley et al., 2020) collectively refer to creating systems, structures, 



36 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

and pedagogies that value languages and linguistic varieties outside of voiced Mainstream White 
English as the dominant language.  
 Throughout history, what is considered effective communication has been shaped by the 
languages and literacy practices enacted by cultural groups with power, from the erasure of 
Indigenous languages within boarding schools to anti-literacy laws and literacy tests to block civic 
participation for Black Americans to English-only policies (Spolsky, 2022). Each geographic and 
cultural community develops, adapts, and sustains language and literacy practices that reflect these 
unique histories and purposes for communicating that are at threat of erasure when they deviate 
from the myth of a standard English that is associated with proximity to White, middle class, 
Midwestern ways of speaking (Baker-Bell, 2020; Lippi-Green, 2016; Maracz, 2018). Language 
and linguistic justice honors each community’ languages, language varieties, and literacy practices 
as ways to sustain individual identities and community identities and prepare learners for more 
than college and career but for active civic participation in their own communities (Mirra & Garcia, 
2017). This is not to suggest learners would not have full access to learning and growing in English 
and its various varieties, but rather an expansion of how power is understood within 
communication practices (Cushing, 2021) to identify and abolish racist, ableist, and classist 
listening practices (Baker-Bell, 2020; Rosa & Flores, 2017). This necessarily demands challenges 
to the way we conceptualize, study, and teach language and literacy if our goals move past college 
and career readiness and into sustaining selves and communities (Maracz, 2018). 
 
Language and Literacy in Places 

Broadly, place-based education uses local phenomena and students’ lived experiences to make 
education meaningful for learners (Gruenewald, 2008; Smith, 2002). According to Sloan (2013), 
this approach is “conditioning the mind to inquire about the placement, patterns, and origins of our 
surroundings [in order for] learners to acquire a deeper understanding of culture and place” (p. 28). 
Youth are conditioning their own minds to see how the geographic space of their communities 
came to be a meaning-filled place over time. Furthermore, educators who leverage place-based 
education facilitate opportunities for learners to inquire about interdisciplinary patterns: the 
ecological, social, cultural, and historical aspects of society, and connect these meaningful places 
and their embedded knowledges to themselves (Gruenewald, 2008). Ideally, as students connect 
their personal experiences to problem-solving in their communities, they are using community-
developed languages, literacy practices, and stories to share their ideas and suggest solutions 
(Smith, 2002). As a result, place-based education has emerged over the past several decades as a 
transdisciplinary approach to learning that draws from language, literacy, social studies, and 
science in order to solve problems in youths’ communities. 

Within our Georgian communities, as youth engage in local place-based work, language is 
the basis of that communication: how Georgians tell the stories of self and others, and how 
community members connect to share and develop those stories. This means intentionally working 
in multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual teams to ensure the community stories, histories, and 
problem solving represent the full range of community members’ perspectives, experiences, and 
valued actions. Thus, we draw from place-based learning practices within our work, which can 
lead to deeper community connections and personal growth through the development of shared 
language and literacy practices for civic empowerment (Silbernagel et al., 2015). Exploring 
language and linguistic justice through a place-based lens ensures youth explore and interpret the 
historical and cultural contexts of their community more thoroughly than a textbook or curricular 
resource alone could provide (Sedawi et al., 2021). As learners interact with their communities 



Panther & Hochuli 37 
 

through hands-on, problem-based exploration, there are more opportunities to connect for youth 
who previously felt disconnected, better understand their individual identity, and find their place 
within their community (Donovan, 2016; 2013; Sedawi et al., 2021).  
 
Unboxing Education: Language and Linguistic Justice in Place Based Education 
The Linguistic Justice Collaborative (LJC) is a research-practice partnership where teachers, 
teacher educators, community members, and youth collaboratively identify, design, and sustain 
the language and literacy practices. The work of identification and design of community language 
and literacy practices is through sustained, participatory action research within communities that 
is led by community educators and/or youth. Within this manuscript, we draw from two 
participatory research projects to illustrate these findings (Table 1). 
 
Table 1: Place-Based Projects 

Project Name Original Program Advertisement Additional Context 

Storying Tucker: 
Who is Tucker? 

This free summer literacy program is available 
for youth aged 13-17 in the Tucker area. 
Tucker became a city in 2016, but it was a 
community long before that. What is the 
history of Tucker? Who is Tucker today? And 
what could the future of Tucker be? A small 
group of Tucker youth will be co-researchers 
to record and capture Tucker’s stories, voices, 
and community histories. The end results will 
be guided by youth co-researchers, but may 
include creating podcasts, open access digital 
archives, adding to Tucker’s existing GIS Map, 
drafting a white paper for the Tucker city 
council, or book. 

This project was in its second summer, 
and in 2023, ten multiracial, multiethnic, 
and multilingual youth explored the 
history of Peter’s Park, a historic Black 
community within Tucker, Georgia, the 
history of school desegregation within 
the city, and a broader look at the 
transnational entrepreneurs who make 
up the economic life of Tucker, Georgia. 

In the Shadow of 
Stone Mountain: 

Historicizing 
Shermantown 

This free summer literacy program is available 
for youth aged 12-18 in the Stone Mountain, 
Tucker, Smoke Rise, Mountain Park, Lilburn, 
and Clarkston area. Youth will record and 
capture the stories, voices, and community 
histories of Shermantown, an African 
American community within Stone Mountain 
Village. This will be guided by youth co-
researchers, but may include creating 
podcasts, open access digital archives, a white 
paper for the Stone Mountain city government, 
or book. 

This project was in its second year, but 
2023 was the first year with youth co-
researchers. The five youth represented 
multiracial and multilingual youth who 
explored Shermantown, Stone Mountain, 
Stone Mountain Park, and the Atlanta 
History Center. 

 
Collaborators regularly translate the findings of our place-based research projects into 

traditional schooling settings to sustain community languages, literacy practices, stories, and 
histories. Holistically considering the results of LJC projects from the past three years, we (Leah 
and Caitlin) offer the ways we have translated place-based into curriculum and instruction that 
sustains individual and community identities within our roles as a literacy teacher educator and 
community language researcher (Leah) and community-based educator and place-based researcher 
(Caitlin; see Figure 2). These practices consider how to (a) engage youth in exploring their local 
communities, (b) analyze the historical and media narratives surrounding their communities, (c) 



38 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

develop their own inquiry processes, and (d) share their work to support change.  Within this 
article, we narrowly explore three community exploration practices using examples from three of 
our most recent projects (Table 1) to consider how community becomes the central curriculum 
within Georgia literacy education. 
 
Figure 2: Participatory Process for Curricularizing Language and Linguistic Justice in Georgia 

 
 
Community Exploration 

Curriculum describes what knowledge, what language, and which literacy practices are most 
valued: it is what is explicitly taught, assessed, and ultimately sustained (Giroux & Penna, 1979). 
Intentionally placing communities at the center of a curriculum is an intentional move to sustain 
the language, literacies, and valued knowledges of local communities (Paris, 2021). Youth are not 
future citizens in training but current community members, capable of posing questions, observing, 
and interacting with their communities. This asset-based understanding of youth results in co-
construction of a community-based curriculum with youth through practices such as personal 
storytelling, history walks, and opportunities to authentically “break bread” with community 
members and elders. 

Personal Storytelling. Through personal storytelling, learners use their experiences from 
the community to share their existing knowledge, explore areas of curiosity, and understand 
multiple perspectives, ultimately setting up an environment for youth to tell stories of themselves 
and their communities. During a program exploring the history of Shermantown, an African 



Panther & Hochuli 39 
 

American community within the city of Stone Mountain, youth began by telling stories about their 
experiences living in Stone Mountain, visiting Stone Mountain Park, and the histories their family 
members and neighbors had already passed down. Completing a similar project in Tucker, 
Georgia, the youth walked down the city’s main street, stopping in front of each building or 
greenspace to recall memories of visiting each place, the people who worked there, and the history 
of the space. The storytelling centered youth languages and language practices as their his 
collective storytelling sparked additional memories and stories from others where they would take 
up generational language practices (e.g., Leah learned what it meant to be streets ahead figuratively 
vs. literally) and translanguaging. Additionally, youth made connections to history, examples of 
valued languages, patterns of valued literacy practices, and raised questions to guide further 
inquiry.  

Starting with youth storytelling in and through community exploration creates space for 
youth to understand themselves, the history of their community, and the relationship between the 
two. For example, after participating in LJC projects across two summers, Nasier reflected, “I 
think if you’re coming into a community, you’re bringing something with you, like you’re bringing 
another identity or like another piece to the community with you, making the community bigger 
and stronger.” Each individual identity has something to add to the overall community, and these 
identities build a stronger community.  

These individual identities work together to build unique communities. According to Bud, 
a self-identified Lakotan, communities “have their own way of operating, by, um, knowing 
everybody. The people, the places, the language, the religion. Just, like, things that connect them 
as a community that other communities wouldn’t have. Something that like, um, makes them 
different.” These differences both connect and draw in others while also creating points of 
difference that lead to unique community language and literacy practices. 

Considering how personal storytelling leads to connections between individuals and 
communities, Fantasma describes the importance of racial identities and intersections of language 
as part of understanding communities and self. He explained, “I feel like race and language plays 
a big part of it . . . if you share the same ethnicity with your community, I feel like you’ll bond 
easier than the other community that’s a different race or this a different ethnicity.” As a 
multilingual Hispanic high school student, he explained how he saw himself in signs written in 
multiple languages, hearing his youth co-researchers move between Spanish and English in their 
personal storytelling, and his desire to find Hispanic community members to conduct interviews 
for his project in Spanish. Shared racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities within the stories of co-
researchers and within the community strengthened Fantasma’s sense of self and self of 
membership within the community.  

Returning to Bud’s explanation of communities having points of “difference” that construct 
the uniqueness of community, personal storytelling spurred initial community engagement that 
spurred conversation around points of difference. For Naiser, it was questioning why Black history 
was a part of her family’s memories of the area but not a part of what her White co-researchers 
were taught around their dinner tables. Or why Bud had visceral memories of what Stone Mountain 
Park, the world’s largest monument to the Confederacy, represented, and others had happy 
memories of school field trips and family reunions in the same geographic space. These points of 
difference revealed different valued knowledges that served as the central curriculum for each 
place-based program. Additionally, the differences in language usage to describe personal 
memories—what one person describes as a corner store another calls a bodega—and differences 
in literacy practices enacted in the storytelling—from narrative structures to rhetorical devices.  



40 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

Recognizing language and linguistic differences in personal storytelling reinforces youth 
connections to their own racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural communities (Berry et al., 2014) 
and sustains pluralistic communities by centering youth language, literacy practices, and valued 
knowledge (Paris & Alim, 2017). By engaging in personal storytelling, youth also found 
connections between their stories and the stories of the community, further strengthening their 
relationship within their learning. Youth also had space to explore their personal narratives, 
building confidence and self-perspective on their role in the community (Berry et al., 2014). 
Through this exploration, youth found a greater sense of belonging and understanding of their 
community. 

Walking History. Within our place-based programs, youth were learning in their 
communities by being in their communities: walking throughout neighborhoods, traveling to 
historic locations, and retracing the literal steps described during storytelling. Rather than 
prefacing these walks with a mini-lecture, PowerPoint, or reading on the history of the locations 
we were visiting or walking past. Instead, the walk itself became the setting for authentic dialogue 
and artifact-based historical learning, resisting traditional approaches to history education.  

For example, stopping at street signs to pose a question about the meaning of the street’s 
name before offering the story (Figure 1), pausing on a walk to observe changes in buildings’ 
facades to make predictions about eras of economic growth in the area (Figure 2), or responding 
in the moment to question evoked during a personal storytelling session, such as providing context 
to who the United Daughters of the Confederacy were when youth did not have personal stories to 
tell about a location on a walk (Figure 3). 
 
Figure 3: Using Community Resources, Example 1  

 
Note. Here, a street sign is a curriculum for learning history and historical literacies. 
 
 
 
 



Panther & Hochuli 41 
 

Figure 4: Using Community Resources, Example 2  

 
Note. Here, architecture is a curriculum for learning economics and financial literacies. 
 
Figure 5: Using Community Resources, Example 3 

 
Note. Here, a donated monument is a curriculum for learning history and critical literacies. 
 

As youth walked through their communities—and therefore through community 
histories—they engaged in various language and literacy practices: speaking and listening 
with community members, photographing their experiences, writing down questions in their 
research notebooks, and tracing maps using GPS and GIS technologies. These moments 



42 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

leveraged their existing language and literacy practices to explore historical contexts and 
connect them to the present-day community. Dr. Squiggles, a rising junior, described herself 
as “not much of a reader” but took great pleasure in interviewing community members about 
a range of topics, particularly when she was the one taking notes and relistening to the audio 
to catch details her youth co-researchers may have missed. Bruce enjoyed taking the lead in 
asking the questions, and Bando explained, “I silently collected data. I wasn’t asking 
questions like that. I was listening. I’m like, just, if you just sit and listen to that person instead 
of asking a lot of questions, it usually helps.” As a team, the youth drew from one another’s 
existing strengths: speaking, listening, and note-taking to create historical narratives that 
Lizzie scripted and Fantasma directed: he guided Lizzie and Bud to perform the scripts in the 
same locations described in the narratives and where initial interviews took place. The youth 
created YouTube shorts that functioned as a public digital archive of their research, which 
was collected, analyzed, and disseminated based on history walks: one that sustained the 
history of the town while expanding access to the stories through multiple languages. 
Ultimately, through their experiences with history walks, youth leveraged and challenged one 
another to develop critical literacies through their collective historical inquiry and challenged 
their language communities to be a part of the historical remembering. 

Across programs, the pattern of history walks resulting in community engagement was 
sustained. Garnett, a rising senior who had recently moved into the community, explained the 
importance of attaching new memories and experiences to being within the geographic 
community, “. . . understanding the place that like I’m . . . walking around every day. I’m 
driving by every day. I’m living in, like, I feel so much better knowing now, like more history 
behind it and more of the people and the elders.” She especially appreciated Black community 
members in their 80s being willing to share their experiences with a White teenager:  

And I also just like, love that they had somebody like to talk to, like, like they 
had, like they, all of them said that they like love that like young people are 
interested and like they have young people to talk to. . . I will sit there and listen 
to you talk for hours, like, which I just loved it. It just like made, in like a non-
selfish way, it just made me like feel really good about myself and knowing that 
like I got to know more about the community, but me, too. I love it.  

Garnett loved listening to community elders at prearranged church gatherings, stopping in the 
streets, and being called to join them on their porches as we walked through the neighborhood. 
As a result of these history walks, which turned into extended conversations, Garnett knew 
more about the community, “but me, too.” 

As learners engaged in history walks, they combined experiences of historical sites, 
neighborhoods, and community members’ perspectives to explore the history and present day 
of a place captured in photographs, audio recordings, and videos that facilitated continued 
exploration and meaning-making of these experiences. Through these artifacts, students 
created a story of their place, which in turn made youth more likely to identify as members of 
their community while still bringing their full racial and linguistic identities into the space 
(Donovan, 2016). Place-based learning allows youth to engage in self-reflection and 
discovery while encouraging a reciprocal relationship with the community (Janson et al., 
2013). Learning becomes transformational instead of transactional, and as youth reflect on 
their role within the community, they see how essential they are to sustaining the culture and 
history of their place (Pisters et al., 2023). Walking history was one such practice that created 



Panther & Hochuli 43 
 

literal and figurative space for these transformational moments for youth to find and 
intentionally place themselves in the community. 

Breaking Bread. Youth co-researchers routinely described and defined community as 
more than a geographic area or a shared cultural history, but as a changing and dynamic place 
where people are “known,” “work together,” “help one another,” and—above all—action-oriented. 
Dr. Squiggles described the action as “choosing to be a part of it.” Naiser added, “to learn about 
it” and “be involved in something bigger. . .[being] willing to build a community.” In sum, that 
community is the active choice to build and sustain a place. Part of our place-based program 
prioritized spending time in the community with community members but also actively building 
and engaging with the community. For example, eating meals at locally owned restaurants when 
meeting with community members, economically supporting local businesses where interviews 
took place, and asking community members what they wanted to see the youth create or do as a 
result of their research. Literally and figuratively, community engaged research was centered on 
opportunities for “breaking bread.” 

Breaking bread designs opportunity to talk and interact with community members and 
elders where the elders feel most comfortable in the community to break down potential barriers 
and build up meaningful relationships with community spaces. As youth participated in these 
experiences, they saw where they lived differently. Garnett shared how talking with elders left her 
wanting to learn more, sharing, “Give me all the conversations. The elder wisdom. I’ll take it all” 
referring to a porch conversation with a community elder that was in stark contrast to her usual 
experiences in history and English classes: 

I feel a lot like, in a way, like better about myself now. . .I always knew that there 
was so much history here, but like so many books and stuff, well, one, I’m not, I 
am not a huge fan of like reading nonfiction. I’m very bad at reading nonfiction. I 
love to read, but nonfiction is not my thing. And, but I will sit there and listen to 
somebody talk for hours. So I did not wanna leave that woman. I loved her. 

Through breaking bread as part of community exploration, Garnett developed a personal 
connection to a community member, and the community’s history was made relevant. Similarly, 
Naiser explained the identity of the community was “to me is the people, cuz without the people. 
Then you’re not gonna have the business, you’re not gonna have the libraries, you’re not gonna 
have all this because they bring it in, right?” Thus, spending time with the people in the places 
they had created—drinking a smoothie together at a coffee shop or walking on the trail at the 
neighborhood park—made her understanding of the people, the history, and the place that much 
deeper.  

For both Garnett and Naiser, breaking bread led to more than knowledge; it also developed 
socioemotional literacies or practices for listening with empathy and communication compassion. 
Bud similarly found breaking bread with community members was essential to his socioemotional 
learning, stating when “you know about where you are and what people are there and what makes 
it a place. . . [that] knowledge of people allows you to be a more compassionate and kind person.” 
Elisa explained how difficult these moments could be, recalling a luncheon at a local church with 
a group of elders who had different perceptions of the community’s racialized history, particularly 
their interactions with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s: 

On some of the particular interviews where people were just saying stuff that you 
don’t necessarily think is true or believe in, it’s just kind of like challenging to not 
like push their buttons by like asking more about it. . . Like she [a community elder] 



44 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

was just very persistent, straightforward with her answers, and like, you asked her 
a follow-up question, she would kind of just say the same thing, but in like a 
stronger tone in a way. And it’s like, okay, well like that’s not really what I’m 
asking. Like if you ask her about anything, she’s like, it’s just the same answer that 
she’s given the press a million times. Which, like, I get, like you do an interview or 
amount of times, you’re going to kind of just, you know, feed the same information. 
But it’s like, Okay. We’re asking her in-depth questions. Like we’ve actually 
studied, like, it’s not just like, oh, like a reporter. Like we’ve sat here all week and 
studied the town that you grew up in. We’ve interviewed multiple people that you 
grew up with and heard their stories. . . Like just trying not to be like, ‘well, I heard 
different from somebody else’ was just kind of difficult cuz it’s like I don’t wanna 
argue. At all. And I don’t wanna make anybody angry. But it’s also like, okay. I 
just don’t think that that’s true. 
Having heard stories that contradicted the community member’s recollection, Elisa 

struggled to know when to listen and when to ask follow up questions or press a particular point. 
Garnett contrasted the same community elder with another breaking bread experience, getting an 
early lunch with the first woman to desegregate a local elementary school. Referring to the former, 
“And she was like, she clearly had some strong emotions, and she felt like some, you know, some 
negative things. Anyway, that’s what I expected most people to feel like, and I feel like that’s very 
justified,” and contrasted the experiences with the latter community elder: 

But then when we were meeting with [a different community elder] and how she 
was able to take away. . . it shaped her and made her stronger. . . that was a really 
shocking takeaway because, like, I don’t know everybody, they just have every 
right to be angry about the way that they were treated and about the way that they 
had to like, lead their lives, have every right to be angry and she wasn’t. And she, I 
don’t know. I just, I don’t know how I make sense of all the different, um, the 
different react like reactions to the experiences and the takeaways that they had. 
Because like I seriously don’t understand how [the one community elder] was able 
to like, walk away feeling like. . . her being treated horribly, like made her the 
person she is today. . . I don’t have that kind of inner peace. 
Where one community member denied the existence of hard things, and others chose to 

remain angry—justifiably so, according to Garnett—the ability to share a meal with a community 
member who forgave the racist actions of her classmates and framed these experiences as 
formative was difficult to make sense of. It revealed her own struggle to find “inner peace” while 
giving Garnett a model of mercy that appealed to her. 

Finding community through shared language and literacy practices helps learners develop 
social awareness and empathy as they make connections and communicate with each other within 
and across their languages (Venegas, 2019). While the benefits of learning together are significant, 
learning histories with community members helped amplify the development of interpersonal 
literacies (Bone, 2005). Bringing in these moments for interpersonal and intergenerational 
connection across a kitchen table or smoothie from the local coffee shop invited cross-cultural 
conversations and deepened the bonds made in these connections: both to one another, the 
community, and geographic place (Haddix et al., 2016). The shared geographic places also began 
to remove cultural barriers and invited warm, inclusive conversations that, in turn, created a sense 
of belonging (Haddix et al., 2016). Through these inter-generational conversations, youth and 



Panther & Hochuli 45 
 

elders create a space to talk about the history and present day realities of societal challenges with 
kindness and compassion. 
 
From Community to Curriculum 
Engaging youth in placed-based community exploration through personal storytelling, walking 
histories, and breaking bread resulted in youth having a stronger sense of self, community, and 
understanding the relationship between them. Additionally, it supported language and literacy 
practices that spurred critical thinking, historical inquiry, and socioemotional learning. These 
opportunities are not reserved for community education programs but can be translated into 
Georgia middle and high school classrooms, as well. At times, this means bringing the community 
into the traditional classroom due to the constraints of budgets, field trip procedures, and funding 
(Table 2). 
 
Table 2: Place Based Practices in the Georgia Curriculum 

Place Based 
Community 

Exploration Practices 
Connections to Georgia Curriculum 

Create 
Opportunities for 

Personal 
Storytelling 

• Making narrative units multimodal, where learners can integrate video tours, 
photographs, or self-created maps of where the narrative takes place. 

• Bellringer or activator activities in class that use local photographs, maps, and 
landmarks as prompts 

• Using VoiceThread to make text-to-community connections that learners add to and 
branch from, creating a multivocality of personal stories related to required curricular 
texts. 

Participate in 
Walking History 

Tours 

• Use GoogleMaps Street View to “walk through” a street in your city as a class to 
reinforce how to write directions in a “how to” speech while also making authentic 
connections to the local community.  

• Shift to a “living book report” and invite students to video record a conversation with a 
family member, neighbor, or friend as they walk through a place with significance. 

Breaking Bread and 
Porch Talks with 

Community Elders 

• Ask students whom they would like to invite to class via Microsoft Teams or Zoom as 
primary sources while working on a research essay. 

• Invite local community members to your class publishing party to celebrate the youth 
writing—and perhaps the community members!   

 
However, given the potential for community exploration experiences to support language, literacy, 
and history learning and the success of youth participatory action research projects, we also offer 
examples of how Georgia educators can take up community exploration in both small and large-
scale ways to ensure learners’ languages, literacy practices, and historical inquiries take root and 
flourish (Table 3). 
 
Table 3: Engage in Community Exploration 

Action Ideas Examples 

Create 
Opportunities for 

• Create prompts to aid in group discussion 
before visiting a site or discussing a topic 

• Before a community resource walk in 
Stone Mountain, we asked everyone in 
the group: “What are your experiences 
with Stone Mountain Park?” and “What 



46 Georgia Journal of Literacy 46(1)  
 

Personal 
Storytelling 

• While walking through a community site, 
stop in front of each building, monument, 
sign, or street to share stories about 
personal connections to the place or 
historical knowledge. 

• Ensure at least one historical or present-
day community member is included on 
place-based community exploration trips 
to make sure personal stories and 
connections to place are included.  

• Use a physical or digital map to track your 
route and put “pins” in locations 
associated with community members’ and 
youth stories. 

have you heard others share about 
Stone Mountain?” 

• During a community resource walk in 
Tucker, we traced our route on a 
GoogleMaps printout and then added 
our photographs and audio recordings 
to a GISStoryMap. 

Participate in 
Walking History 

Tours 

• Invite community members with historical 
knowledge to lead walking history tours of 
specific areas, including local parks, 
historic neighborhoods, a business district, 
or meaningful geographic sites. 

• Record interviews with historical societies 
or community members to create audio 
walking tours. 

• Photograph and video record sites 
throughout the community to create 
YouTube Shorts, GISStoryMaps, and 
other digital tools that recreate place-
based learning.  

• Use QR codes to let other visitors to 
community places experience the 
community members’ stories, local 
histories, and youth created guides. 

• We audio and video recorded the 
President of the Tucker Historical 
Society during a walking tour of Main 
Street. 

• Youth recorded personal histories of 
community members that could be 
posted next to historical artifacts in a 
local museum to add additional local 
context to displays. 

Breaking Bread and 
Porch Talks with 

Community Elders 

• Work with community organizations, 
including historical societies, local 
government, volunteer groups, and places 
of worship, to identify community leaders 
and elders.  

• Seek to join community elders in their 
preferred spaces, such as attending a 
meeting or event, having lunch, or sitting 
on their porch. 

• Attending community events (e.g., a tent 
at a festival) and being present in 
community spaces (e.g., a table at a 
coffee shop) to invite community members 
to share their stories with youth.  

• Bring technology to record stories (e.g., 
audio and video recorders) and historical 
artifacts (e.g., scanner app, portable 3D 
scanner). 

• Youth brought pie to community 
members and sat on their porches to 
hear the history of the local 
neighborhood.  

• Youth joined a group of community 
elders at a historic community church 
to talk about how present-day problems 
in the community were tied to histories.  

• We created a toll-free phone number 
that community members could call to 
record their stories. 

 
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FUNDING 
 
The research reported in this article was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (#10030359). The 
views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation. 
 
 
Received: January 9, 2024 | Accepted: March 10, 2024 | Published: May 15, 2024 

https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X1769012
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https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1822

	Where We’re Rooted
	Figure 1: Linguistic Justice Collaborative’s Framework
	Language and Linguistic Justice
	Language and Literacy in Places

	Unboxing Education: Language and Linguistic Justice in Place Based Education
	Table 1: Place-Based Projects
	Figure 2: Participatory Process for Curricularizing Language and Linguistic Justice in Georgia
	Community Exploration
	Figure 3: Using Community Resources, Example 1
	Figure 4: Using Community Resources, Example 2
	Figure 5: Using Community Resources, Example 3


	From Community to Curriculum
	Table 2: Place Based Practices in the Georgia Curriculum
	Table 3: Engage in Community Exploration

	References

