Imagining possibilities with and for contemporary youth: (re)writing and (re)visioning education today

Over the years, each of the authors has explored the lives of young people in a range of sites and settings, from community centers to schools and beyond. They have seen senses of self and community that exceed the narrow and debilitating categories into which they are so readily cast. In this article, they join forces in highlighting two key (though clearly not exhaustive) examples from their recent research ideas: first, black history and generational identity expressed through popular culture at a local community center in the US; and second, the important work done by women in an abstinence-based sex education program in an urban magnet school. Honoring what Maxine Greene (2000) calls the work of the imagination, they focus on the ways in which young people engage in a re-writing of self and future in distinct and overlapping ways.