Professor Valerie Kinloch (The Ohio State University) will present at the CWS Colloquium Series. Her talk will be titled "Youth Literacy Practices in Schools and Communities: Promises and Possibilities" Focusing on the literacy lives, practices, and experiences of young people across local and global contexts, this presentation investigates ways to collaborate with youth to create critical literacy opportunities in classrooms and communities. Youth literacy narratives about community and schooling, about academic success and academic underachievement, for example, will be discussed in ways that challenge us to listen to (and center) the perspectives of young people in curricular decisions and in community involvement. In so doing, this presentation argues that stronger connections be made between school and community sites and practices as these connections have serious implications for the literacy lives of young people.