Traveling tags: The informal literacies of Mexican newcomers in and out of the classroom

This article documents tagging as one of several informal literacy practices used by newcomer Mexican youth in a Midwest school and classroom setting. Specifically, it details how tagging travels into the classroom. Using the tool of interactional ethnography to analyze videotaped classroom observation data of an English Learner Science setting, I account for the instructional context in which three newcomer Mexican girls tag the whiteboard, focusing specifically on the social positionings they are able to construct in the classroom with and without these practices. Out of this analysis, I suggest that informal “literacies of display,” like tagging, might, in the classroom, be more productively regarded as “literacies of assistance.” They are proactive requests by newcomer youth for the help they need in developing cultural fluency between their transnational identity and the classroom context [Aikenhead, G. S. & Jegede, O. J. (1999). Cross-cultural science education: A cognitive explanation of a cultural phenomenon. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(3), 269–287]. My account challenges facile interpretations of resistance that marginalize youth's use of such informal literacies.