29 English Journal 104.3 (2015): 29–34 Tis article describes activities and assignments for using a youth lens to critique dominant images of adolescents/ce in young adult literature and pop culture texts. Carlin Borsheim-Black Reading Pop Culture and Young Adult Literature through the Youth Lens and culture (e.g., sweet sixteen parties versus a quinceañera or bar/bat mitzvahs). This discussion also begins to suggest that many of the things often associated with an ideal adolescence are privileges of a middle-class experience. In other words, this example begins to illustrate the central concept of the course: that adolescence is a social construction. These students’ initial comments reflect many common, deficit ideas about adolescents/ce— that adolescents are irresponsible, out of control, controlled by hormones, materialistic, technology- obsessed, and susceptible to peer pressure. Scholar- ship in critical youth studies (CYS) critiques these assumptions as problematic, emphasizing that they contribute to negative expectations for youth (e.g., Lesko; Trites; Vadeboncoeur and Stevens). For example, in English education, deficit think- ing about adolescents/ce has reductive effects on the pedagogical possibilities English teacher can- didates imagine for their future students, as well as for themselves as future teachers (e.g., Finders; Petrone and Lewis). To counter problematic assumptions, I inte- grate a semester-long exploration of adolescents/ ce in a young adult literature (YAL) course for En- glish teacher candidates. Drawing on scholarship in CYS, students and I critically analyze popular cul- ture and YAL texts in ways that make visible domi- nant and deficit ideas about adolescents/ce and help teacher candidates imagine alternative expecta- tions for their future students, as well as for them- selves as future teachers. In this article, I describe activities and assignments that have worked well. Although the course is designed for the college begin a whole-group discussion by writing the number 16 on the whiteboard and asking students, English teacher candidates, to tell me what 16 looks like (Sari- gianides, Lewis, and Petrone). They list “driver’s license,” “tenth grade,” “dating,” and “sweet sixteen parties,” to name a few. They also list “horny little buggers,” “emotional,” “acne,” “obsessed with technology,” and “rebellious.” In an effort to turn the discussion in another direction, I ask the students to tell me what they imagine 16 looked like in 1850. They list “marriage,” “chil- dren,” and “working on the family farm or for the family business,” for example. They observe that 16-year-olds had more responsibility at that time. “What changed?” I ask. They conjecture that devel- opments in compensatory secondary education, laws related to child labor, and changes related to the industrial revolution contributed to the evo- lution of 16. I add that “adolescence” was actu- ally invented in the early 20th century; G. Stanley Hall first used the term in a publication in 1904 in which he characterized adolescence as a time of emotional and behavioral confusion contrasted to the stability of adulthood. Through this discussion, we begin to explore the idea that “16”—symbolic here of “adolescence” more generally—is not a taken-for-granted biologi- cal fact. Rather, what it means to be 16 has changed over time and varies from context to context. What it means to be 16 has been shaped by social insti- tutions, such as schools (“tenth grade”) and laws (“driver’s license”). It is also shaped by social class I