Being seen and heard: Listening to young women in alternative schools

This interview-based study examines nine young women's perceptions of their disconnection from high school and reconnection to school in an alternative program. Rather than focusing on a fixed notion of what "at-risk" students "need," the students and author note the importance of working with the messy, partial, and complicated sense of students', identities to gain better under,standings of the schooling experiences of marginalized, youth. With an eye toward practice- and theory-oriented representations and sense-makings, this article presents theoretical constructions of student disconnection and connection, student testimony as one useful pedagogy, and-policy implications for schools.