Written by assistant professor of Language education Betsy Rymes, Conversational Borderlands is about a unique school, City School in Los Angeles, and the community that evolved there.
A charter school that catered to students statistically most unlikely ever to finish high school, City School failed after only a year and a half in operation. This book reveals how the young men and women at City School communicated with each other and with their teachers about their lives.
Through close analysis of the language of this school, Rymes examines the forces that drew these young men and women back to high school to adopt new and mainstream goals - and led some of them to leave school once again. The choices made by City School students - by any students, Rymes argues - has much to do with how the teachers in this school and their students interact. Part of the book addresses the ways that students at City School tell stories and construct their identities through language. (Conversational Borderlands, $50 (cloth), $23.95 (paperback) Teachers College Press)