The second theme that became evident was the foundational role of teachers' relationshipsand
youths' relationships with other individualsin supporting student writing success. These young adults valued teachers who interacted with them as people and who cared about them as more than one of the dozens of students teachers meet in a day. They don't want us to be their friends Cartier Pasha Replica but rather to respect them as human beings and to engage with them in richer ways. Teachers' relationships with students were almost synonymous with youths' relationships to writing tasks.
Samantha's image of her softball teamcoached by her English teacherillustrated the power of such relationships for young adults' willingness to engage with school writing tasks. While every educator may not need to interact with their students in the boundary-crossing way that Samantha's coach did, they need to appreciate the relationships they develop with adolescents and the peer networks that result from these teacher-facilitated extracurricular as supports for students' writing engagement:
"It's About Passion"
Team sports, in many ways, help you succeed and to accomplish your goals. If I didn't have Softball, there would be something missing. Every day before I go to school...I am thinking about Softball. I am thinking Cartier Replica Watches about plays, about Ms. Zak, my coach, and about how to help another player when they are having a bad day. Softball is such a big part of my life...[and] some of my teammates might drop out of school without it.
Samantha's reflection exhibits that although these socially oriented pursuits occur only during a few months; youth continuously rely on the networks these activities enable. Teachers who develop deeper relationships with students and who engage with them even during one sports season might call on these connections to support young adults' engagement with writing tasks.