Ensuring Success in School is About More Than Getting A's: Layered Stories

I begin this paper with a reader’s theatre text that represents the multiple perspectives of a student, teacher, student teacher, and administrator about a high school class schedule change. In presenting a text that portrays multiple points of view upon what would seem to be an everyday experience in an urban high school, I aim to show the complexity of how different people in different roles respond and manage their context in response to a single policy decision.  After the reader’s theater and before I continue with the rest of the paper, I invite you the reader to consider your interpretations of and associations with the text.  I conclude by arguing that we need to be attuned to the complex ways that policy decisions inform and constrain the actions of people within educational contexts.Keywords: policy decisions; effects; urban schools; English language learners; layered stories; reader’s theater