Yet, in analyzing the accounts of students, a different perspective emerges, one in which students talk about their fear in speaking up and taking a stand. In the text of the ALFA photostory, the students stated that "some of us used to be so shy we could not even speak to people." As well, the Haines Junction students emphasized a link between shyness and not speaking during the production of their photostory. Geoffrey, an Action Read student, also connected a reluctance to speak in groups with shyness. As Geoffrey was speculating about the benefits of the student group, he informed me that "it would help [students] learn to speak. It helps them to get away from their shyness to talk around others. See, it only starts with a group that they know, but then after a while speaking comes naturally." hooks (1988), however, views shyness as a socially constructed phenomenon, placing silence within the larger sphere of social relations, hooks asks the question: "Can their fear [to speak] be understood solely as shyness or is it an expression of deeply embedded, socially constructed restrictions against speech in a culture of domination, a fear of owning one's words, of taking a stand?" (p.17). In the interviews, several students described their fear of talking. Jean, the President of the Haines Junction student group told me how she "couldn't even talk for [her]self, couldn't even you know stand up for myself, like even if I didn't know, I couldn't say no, I ain't going to do this." The data indicate the validity of hook's view that students' shyness or fear of speech may come from past experiences where, as working class, nonacademic people, they were not heard because they did not speak the dominant language of academics and professionals such as doctors, teachers and social workers.

The production of the Haines Junction photostory was a turning point in my awareness of how the students' fear of speech was connected to the social/power relations between the literacy worker and the students. The students at Haines Junction decided that their photostory should be about a critical incident in which they were excluded from the decision-making process in their literacy program. That is, the students were not given a choice or an opportunity to make a decision about something that affected them. Due to the confidential nature of this incident, the particulars and specifics cannot be outlined. The students informed me that they did not protest the decision that was imposed upon them by Liz, the literacy worker, because "we just took it [the decision] because we felt shy and scared. We didn't know if everybody was feeling the same way so we did not say anything."