Flipping the “Struggling Reader” Narrative: Leveraging Classroom Interaction to Center Student Affect

ABSTRACT This article explores the affordances of employing an “affective lens” to document bilingual learners' engagement with texts. Drawing from a larger ethnographic study conducted in a sixth‐grade classroom, I focus on the experiences of two emergent bilinguals and how their displays of affect provide insight into their complex sense‐making and nuanced relationships with reading. Analysis of students' interactions highlights how their affective responses are enacted and mobilized in the context of reading activities. Based on this research, I introduce an observational protocol educators can adapt to capture students' affective responses in their classrooms. From a pedagogical standpoint, this lens helps broaden our understanding of reading engagement beyond traditional assessments that measure discrete literacy skills, challenging deficit‐oriented narratives, and offering guidance for more equitable teaching practices.