i love to do my homework

digital language experience approach

2008-04-27T12:50:00.005-05:00

check out Labbo's research on digital literacy in Kinder... fun!

oops, I mean, "rigorous play!"

(multimodal) composition

2008-04-27T10:38:00.010-05:00

"One major consequence of the shift to digital is the addition of graphical, audio, and video elements to the written word. More profound, however, is the book's reinvention in a networked environment. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by time or space. It is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors and texts. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is never finished: it is always a work in progress." (Institute for the Future of the Book)

I love this idea of writing that is unfinished - like what Burn and Parker (2001) describe as "digital inscription... a kind of text-making that is highly plastic, fluid and reversible" (177). This new world of composition opportunities puts an interesting spin on my thinking over the semester about author-audience relationships. As these authors suggest, the 'interactive' nature of digital text makes any viewer a "potential remaker" and might shift the balance of power of between author, text, and audience in intersting ways (neat place to do more research...). I'm enjoying this sort of postmodern thinking about what a book is - moving from the individual to the collaborative, from the static to the constantly shifting, from one author to many.

Our readings on multimodal composition this week also invited me to question my own privileging of the traditional printed word. I might have realized sooner my own bias toward written pen and paper kinds of 'composition,' but never so much as I do as of late. It feels awkward in some ways to imagine that the kind of 'composition' I've spent my lifetime exploring is giving way to new modes with tremendous speed as digital technologies evolve. It is a new journey for me as a reader, writer, scholar to embrace the variety of semiotic sign systems we might use to represent ourselves (thanks, ELA friends, for the links to examples of Shipka's activity-based multimodal theory this week).

I notice that we seem to have gotten more comfortable and intricate in our digital compositions on our blogs over past two semesters. What's next? Digital dissertation?! Check out this article about Virginia Kuhn's multimodal dissertation, "Ways of Composing: Visual Literacy in the Digital Age." Apparently it made waves back in 2006 because it couldn't be printed in hard copy for inclusion on ProQuest.

Before you go, check out this online research presentation of some of Shipka's other research findings - a way to present academic content that respects the visual elements of her research AND makes it readily available (and easy to read quickly online). Smart!

Mental Detox Week

2008-04-21T08:14:00.003-05:00

No, wait. Maybe you shouldn't be responding to my blog (nor me updating it) this week...
It's time for Mental Detox Week (formerly T.V. Turnoff Week).

I love new literacies and technology, but stepping back to question the 24-7 wired lived kinds of lives we lead seems like a good idea, too. Of course, shutting down would have disastrous effects for getting my homework done. Maybe we love this idea in THEORY!? Anyone want to practice?

Cybergirl Avatar

2008-04-18T17:59:00.003-05:00

My second attempt at writing a succinct blog posting:

When I need to use an avatar (not often), this is the one I use...

I made her look like me,

down to the mole on her face.

Let the psychoanalysis begin...

Gender Meets New Literacy

2008-04-18T17:20:00.004-05:00

I'll try to keep this blog on digital literacy succinct. Here's why:

Last night, I was typing an email - the kind you feel like you need to word carefully, very carefully. I read it to my husband who said,"That email is way too long. It doesn't have to be all flowery. People don't read email that way. They read the first few sentences. Keep it short."

Eureka. He was right. And now that I think of it, the emails I write are frequently longer than the emails I receive. I can spend hours answering emails. It's something of a writer's dream - daily opportunities to write to an audience who will respond. But writing these kinds of emails takes a lot time. And for that matter so does writing my blogs. Blogs seem designed to accomodate for short bursts of writing, right? Well, that's a challenge for me, too.

Reading Thomas' (2004) Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl, I started to wonder more about gender differences in digital writing. As Thomas notes, a girl's talk in virtual reality is like speech written down, only more refined. The refining seemed to serve identity formation: "[cybertalk] serves to empower her to thoughtfully shape the identity she reveals through text" (368).

I read a snippet in Newsweek last fall from a female executive who recommended that other female executives keep their emails short and to the point - like men's emails often are. Huh. One the one hand, then, I could stick to the facts and keep it short and perhaps be more in line with the brief sorts of communication that is typical of email. One the other hand, I could stick with my version of emailing and blogging - perhaps like the girls in the palace. We're making meaning over here and, according to Thomas, shaping identity, working on empowerment, originality, exploration, and reinvention. This takes time and (for me) a lot of words.

You can see I've got a long way to go if I'm decide to adapt to a medium that loves the brief burst kind of writing. Do you think online writing environments more conducive to the way men stereotypically write and think? Do you mom's emails look different than your dad's?

Stopping here. Have I been succinct?! Maybe next time... or never?!

If we took a holiday... Some time to celebrate...

2008-04-13T19:49:00.011-05:00

Well, it wasn't quite a holiday weekend,

but it was a Halliday weekend.

Facets-Aquamarine's link to Halliday and social justice was the third time Halliday and I met up this weekend [don't tell my husband!]. Here's how it went down:

Friday, 9:30 p.m.: TGIF.

In bed reading Kamler's piece on Gender and Genre in Early Writing:

Kamler associates Halliday with systemic-functional linguistics. From a Hallidayian framework, she says, linguistic patterns reveal and construct social realities. Language gets its form by realizing particular social functions. For example, Kamler draws on Halliday when she starts in on the fine-grained analysis of clauses and labels the actor/goal/recipient parts. I'm not pretending to understand all of this. But, essentially, I understood that Halliday is used to look at how language functions.

Saturday, 9:10 a.m.

Sitting at the SALSA conference (with other friends from our class), it's not even 24 hours laters and here's James Gee talking about Halliday, too. Gee's talk (super interesting!) used linguistic analysis to examine what "academic language" reveals and conceals. From what I understood, Gee was referring to the Halliday camp as representing a functional perspective on language, contrasted with others in the field who take an ideological perspective on language. In the example of academic language he studied, Gee found it to be both functional and ideological. He suggested we do more studies of particular uses of academic language in classrooms, to see how it is functional or ideological or both, leaning toward interesting questions to consider about equity and social justice. Neat stuff. Anyway, this gave me the idea that Halliday fit in the "functional" camp.

Sunday, 7:00 p.m.

Reading F-A's blog, I'm struck by a new adjective: Hallidayian. Apparently, I just can't get enough Halliday this weekend. It is taking shape in my brain how much I appreciate sociolinguistic analysis for the light it can shed on who we are and what we value as individuals inside of social groups. I think this is why I like the Kamler piece - because it uses language to reveal what otherwise lies beneath the surface of our consciousness. As Kamler says, she makes "gender ideology visible so that it may be questioned, challenged, and resisted." And why I liked Gee's talk - asking us to consider the political and social issues that rest beneath the surface of langauge. Funny, that's what I liked last week, too, as we read Godley et al.'s critical discourse analysis - that same notion of examining how our language functions and then asking in whose interest it seems to function.

Good holiday/Halliday weekend.

Slowly sinking in (or, A new doc student sees the light)

2008-04-06T22:20:00.004-05:00

Sometimes on the steep learning of becoming a doc student, there are things that don't quite fit in yet with your thinking. Things you haven't connected to other things yet. Terms you've heard but barely understood. I know you've been there, too, right?

Doing my reading at 2 a.m. on Friday night (like only a crazy doc student would), I had one of those a-ha! moments. Alas, the term "ethnography of communication" suddenly started to make sense...

The wheels in my brain starting turning as I find myself highlighting with abandon in Godly & Carpenter, and Werner's (2007) description of the methods they used to explore the classroom routine of Daily Oral Language ("I'll speak in in proper slang": Language ideologies in a daily editing activity," RRQ). Generally, this was an ethnography of how teachers and students understand language in this classroom. But, more specifically, it was concerned with describing pattern of language use that is considered appropriate communication in this particular context. For this reason, the authors consider this an "ethnography of communication." [I know you more experienced grad students might be laughing at me for not having figured this out sooner. Like, duh, right?] It's ethnography and discourse analysis all in one!

Who else is having flashbacks to sociolinguistics last semester? We did some reading in that course about "ethnography of communication." This brings me back to my first point. I didn't really having anything to connect that term when I first heard it, and I felt like it went over my head. So now, dragging out my binder, here's a review of what I didn't fully understand the first time around about:

* Dell Hymes extended sociolinguistics (what he called "ethnography of communication") to include the notion of communicative competence. He endeavored to understand the rules of speaking within a community. Thus, his analysis of speech communication analyzed speech situations, acts , and events. This was a really different methodology than the Chomsky-inspired linguistics that looked at isolated sentences. (see Jaworksi & Couplan, 1999)

* According to Hymes, ethnography of communication must investigate the use of language in the context of the situation. It must take as its context a community and investigate its communicative activities. Key ideas: look at ways of speaking, fluent speaker, speech situation, speech act, components of speech events and acts, rules of speaking, and functions of speech (see Hymes, 1994).

* This all has to do with how groups of speakers using language in socially and culturally appropriate ways (for their group).

Having at last read some ethnographies, it suddenly makes a lot more sense what "ethnography of communication" means. Neat.

But it gets better. Godley, Carpenter, & Werner (2007) also pull on Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the macrolevel context (social, cultural, historical). They say that combining ethnography of communication with examination of ideologies is a "recent trend." Wow. Talk about smart.

Other "ethnography of communication" pieces that I'm enamored with lately:

* Diane Downer Anderson's (2008) "The elementary persuasive letter: Two cases of situated competence, strategy, and agency." Research in the Teaching of English, 42(3), 270-314). This one also takes a sort of critical perspective. I'm still processing it all... Fantastic.

* Debbie Rowe's (1989) "Author/audience interaction in the preschool." This one documents social interaction around the preschool writing table and indicates what students learn about the roles of author and audience. Brilliant.

Can I grow up to be as smart as Debbie Rowe?
Will I ever be smart enough to do an "ethnography of communication"?

For now, I'll settle for understanding what it is. Let is slowly sink it...
For later, I'd like to figure out how to do it!

Back to Brandt and Blogging

2008-03-30T22:44:00.005-05:00

Oh, but I DID miss blogging these past few months. Found my blog again today like an old shoe that had gotten shoved back in the closet. Cute shoe I'm looking forward to trying on again. Checked my friends' blogs, too, who've been better at keeping up with their online lives than I have. Hello, again, friends!

And speaking of returning to good things, I was pleased to see Deborah Brandt turn up in our reading for this week. I think she's brilliant. This article, "Sponsors of Literacy" (1998), introduces the concepts that she expanded on in her amazing book of historical literacy research, Literacy in American Lives. I love how her historical perspective, using the lens of sponsorship, gives insight in to the greater economic context of profit-making and competition in which literacy learning takes place. Viewing literacy as a socially-situated practice, I am becoming more and more conscious and curious about the larger forces beyond school walls that support and constrain our literacy. Remember Caughlan & Beach's (2007) piece about the role of neoconservative and neoliberal discourses shaping the standards in Wisconsin? Talk about sponsorship! Like Brandt, they seemed to be peeling back the layers to find the social and economic forces that shape and constrain our literacies.

Given our interest in writing in this course, I returned to Brandt's book to a chapter on writing called "The Sacred and the Profane" that gives insight in to how writing in particular has been sponsored historically. Writing has not enjoyed the broad sponsorship of reading, writing has been less explicitly taught and valued. She notes that writing does not fit as well in to the traditional "sacred" roles of student/teacher in reading instruction. More associated with commercialism and trouble in the history of American education, writing is now becoming a key force in the information economy. This economic shifts thus creates the issue of how writing (a tool that is productive, interpretive, creative, and has been used historically for rebellion and development of critical consciousness) can or will be sanctified or controlled, as literacy has always been:

"Misappropriation" is always possible at the scene of literacy transmission, a reason for the tight ideological control that usually surrounds reading and writing instruction" (179).

How will the powers that be control our writing?

"Perhaps the question today is how to instill a dutiful writing while constricting the other, latent powers of writing. How will the "profane" skill of writing be sanctified and controlled? It should be an interesting era." (Brandt, 2001, p. 148).

I absolutely agree. As writing becomes a tool of the masses in this new era of online writing and information technology, who are the new sponsors? With the sort of democratic, easily accessible, international opportunity to have conversations so freely, how will the powers that be find ways to control or sanction writing (protecting the dutiful while preventing the profane or rebellious)? I love the notion of writing as the sort of black sheep, the rebellious and productive twin of reading, who is harder to constrain, who will keep us guessing.

For more on the historical sponsorship of writing in the United States, see"Writing for a living" (Brandt, 2005).

Online Concept Mapping: Keeping Score...

2008-02-03T12:03:00.000-06:00

It's February and time to get back to doing our homework!

I had a (small) meltdown trying to print out my concept map re: English/Language Arts research. Really, I shouldn't even try to print this... Reverting to 2 dimensions strips my concept map of the hyperlinks. Score one point for using online multimodal media. Note: online media has also incurred a penalty point today for costing me a precious hour trying figure out how to print my concept map so I can put it in an (offline) portfolio.

You win some,

you lose some.

Late night with Bob Fecho

2007-12-03T01:14:00.000-06:00

Fecho sounds like a really caring, thoughtful teacher. I'm down with the critical inquiry stance. I love Rosenblatt, Freire, and Delpit, too, who he sews together so nicely (maybe too nicely?). I like you, Bob. I like your message. So much so that I'll forgive you for the following bits of prose:

* "the summer institute had me wading waist deep and then diving through the swells of pedagogy"

* "As I let the waves of ideas... wash over me, I managed to catch hold of a starfish or two."

* "dialogue with colleagues... served to knit my various skeins of understanding into an intellectual comforter that knew no end" [I'm a knitter, and even I hated that line]

And did anyone else notice his penchant for making goofy reversals like:

"not all questions are inquiries, and not all inquiries are questions"

"in search of wise beauty and beautiful wisdom"

Seriously, though, there are so many beautiful, quotable lines in this book. My favorite today, as I tore my hair out over my syllabus, was this quote from Aaron in Chapter 8:

"You can make your decisions, but you just got to make sure you can back them up."

Don't remind me...

NRC recovery

2007-12-02T01:24:00.000-06:00

Hi friends,

Well, NRC was amazing. I'm in recovery mode, paying the price for skipping out from writing papers this week to see the rock stars of the reading research world. Seeing Donna Alvermann speak about popular culture and literacy was the best field trip for this class! She absolutely sparkles. Deborah Dillon and David O'Brien were so gracious (and, neat, they're married!) I got to tell them about my Deer Hunter blog, and they told me about their adolescent daughter, who recently came to terms with deer hunters. Did anyone go see Alfred Tatum?...

At one point, I found myself sitting at a round table of English teacher educators, talking about reader response theory and how it can be use to transform the thinking of preservice, Mormon teachers in Utah. At Utah State, the English teachers have around 4 semesters of methods courses, so they have time to spend an entire course exploring Reader Response theories in depth (they read Stanley Fish and Judith Langer, in addition to Rosenblatt). The teachers at my round table recommended a book called Critical Passages (for teaching teachers how to get away from the 5 paragraph essay) and Reading the Media (which, apparently, is a meaty sort of look at how using multimedia has been shown to improve reading skills).

Even as I write to you at 1:43 a.m., trying in vain to catch up with my work, I loved this week. Rock on.

*Bonus!* 10 points for any one of you fellow NRC-goers who can explain what the 'spirt of sankofa' means...

The Storm after the calm: Blogging from the end-of-semester Contact Zone

2007-11-24T10:39:00.000-06:00

I swallowed my last bite of turkey, watched re-runs of the Muppet Show, sang and played the cowbell by the fire with friends, drove out to Lago and gave my parents a hug, and brought my happy husband home clutching the day's fresh catch from the fishing well. And life felt calm... All the fish in a row...

and then this morning, it was back to Teaching in the Contact Zone... With so much to think about and write now, does anyone else feel like they are living in the Contact Zone, "where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other...?" (p. 9) I'm writing a paper today about mentoring toward equity and social justice and, while brushing up on my Freire, I find that I can't stop thinking about Gaughan. So I'm giving up and blogging, grappling...

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." (Paulo Freire)

It strikes me that this is just the sort of thing Gaughan is doing by "reinventing English" as a place to tackle important social issues through critical discussion around topics like race, gender, and sexuality. I love how this fits in to our semester-long discussion of English as quality conversation, appreciating differences, and listening with empathy to other voices in a democracy, creating space for thoughtful citizenship with the potential for social transformation.

I think Gaughan does a nice job of integrating classroom vignettes with practical teaching strategies - just the sort of thing we might hope to put in the hands of preservice teachers who are striving to envision a classroom that embraces healthy conflict.

Thinking toward the syllabus for LA methods, I'm wondering about the possibilities and problems of arranging the course thematically like Gaughan does (and as our students might inside of their own classrooms) around one or more issues that the class could explore in depth over the semester. I'm remembering the first day of my undergraduate "Children's Literature" course with poet Lucille Clifton, in which she said told us all matter-of-factly that this course would be a critical conversation about race and, yes, we'd look at some children's literature, too. Brilliant.

I wonder if I would choose one issue (or a couple) to frame my methods class around. Would it be possible to "cover" what I need to in terms of English methods within a larger conversation framed around one theme of issue? And which issue(s) would I choose? Or ask students to choose and explore in literature circles or small groups? I fear spreading it too thin by trying to take on too much. Would it be better to go deeply in to one issue and draw arrows from there? Anyone else thinking along these lines? Write me...

Gotta run. Seriously, the fish is ready, browned in the buttery pan, smells so deeeelicious...

Return of Deerhunter!

2007-11-21T08:42:00.000-06:00

Okay, how cool is this? Preparing for NRC next week... Putting together bios for the session I get to chair... But wait, why do these names sound so familiar?!?! Wait, remember Deerhunter?! We loved reading and wondering about O'Brien's "'Struggling' adolescents' engagement in multimediating: Countering the institutional construction of incompetence" (a.k.a. Chapter 2 in Alvermann et. al.). Also loved Dillon's Chapter 5, "Adolescent identities as demanded by science classroom discourse communities." Somehow I didn't put together that I'd be introducing people whose work I've been reading until just now...

I feel a little star struck this morning, waking up to find an email from Deborah Dillon in my inbox. I'm so looking forward to NRC!

The Syllabus Genre

2007-11-16T08:24:00.000-06:00

Really, I just want to to use the word syllabi, again and again.
Soft like lullaby
(shhhh... syllabi).
Or strong like you might shout it over the top of cymbals:
syllabi! syllabi! syllabi!
Love the sound of that word...

But what I'm working toward is a syllabus (which sounds slightly more serious, don't you think?). About that, seriously...

I've never written a syllabus for a course. Makes me thing that I'll need to undertake my own sort of "genre study" (something my preservice LA teachers are learning about this week, too!). Of course, studying the syllabus genre isn't studying mysteries, or pictures books, or feature articles with my kiddoes in discussion on the carpet in front of a language chart (oh, the memories...). But the basic idea of genre study is the same: the need to read examples, to discuss and notice features, and to try one's hand at writing in the genre.

Starting with reading within the genre then:

So far, I've seen Smagorinsky and Whiting's examples in How English Teachers get Taught. It's helpful that they've compared syllabi from across a variety of English classrooms and suggested important considerations for teachers (including the structure of the class, activities, assessments, theoretical issues, etc.). I'm excited (if slightly daunted) by the endless possibilities...

I find myself attracted to features from a variety of approaches. For example, in my 2nd/3rd grade classroom, I used Writer's Workshop (primary focus on individual language, language as expression, natural development) as well as lots of discussion and group work (primary focus on language as socially-constructed, language use in context). I also used instructional scaffolding at times (focus on language as development). I'm still wrestling with the new understanding that these are based on different (and often competing) theoretical positions. But, as the S & W suggest, these can also be complimentary. As a teacher, I find myself pulling from multiple approaches, making room for complimentary ideas that all make sense within our particular learning community. Sort of a principled eclectic approach, but with a primary emphasis on learning as a sociocultural endeavor.

Getting back to our examples of model syllabi:

* We get 5 in the back of the S & W book. (Who else found #3 and its volume of "Petulant Notes on Prose Style" a little bit (okay, a lot bit) ridiculous?)

* Given that these syllabi are also from 1992, I think it might be important for my "genre study" to explore more recent examples to help me envision how technology has changed the face of the syllabus...

* Where might we find more examples? Thoughts? Thanks!

P.S. I see the 12 NCTE standards but I can't find any guidelines for teacher education like the ones the S & W cite. Thoughts? Thanks again!

Out with the old, in with the new?

2007-11-11T14:26:00.001-06:00

What kind of world are we preparing our students for? I'm intrigued by this student-created media literacy video (see my post below for a description of Just Think curriculum). It reminds me of the video Michelle posted a few weeks ago, but from a student perspective... I don't know about you but I think there's something frightening about this image of the world coming from a young person. My last post argued that we are slow to change (as teacher and policy makers)- and here we have a sort of opposite point of view that (uncritically?) welcomes every change that comes. Out with the old, in with the new, for a minute, and then out with that, too, we won't miss be missing you. Yikes.

Did anyone else sort of cringe at the notion of preparing students to become "Shape-Shifting Portfolio People" (as described by Gee in Chapter 9). Gee admits some hesitation about this: "I am not arguing that the demand to become a Shape-Shifting Portfolio Person is good (ethically); I am arguing that it is an identity to which young people today are 'summoned' by our modern world" (Alvermann et. al., p. 166). Hmmm... I'd argue that becoming literate must include a critical examination of what we are heading toward. Again, in the words of poet Lucille Clifton, oh pray that what we want is worth this running,
pray that what we’re running toward
is what we want."

"Flipping the Script"

2007-11-11T10:25:00.000-06:00

Our New Literacies chapters in Alvermann et. al. (2006) got me thinking back to Myers (1996)and that painfully slow transition we're still trying to make between decoding/analytic literacy to transactional/critical literacy. Wilder and Dressman (Chapter 11) illustrate the important point that merely adding technology to classrooms doesn't (and hasn't) led us to major reform in teaching and learning. Instead of a revolution, we've just assimilated digital technologies into the "existing logic and design of educational programs" (p. 210). We (teachers) unwittingly continue to reproduce cultural and social inequities. Stevens (Chapter 15) points out how policy makers, too, are working from an outdated model of what it means to be literate:

"...policies that are drawing on traditionally school-sanctioned literacies and their accompanying measure may in fact be preparing students better for the 1950s (days of blackboards and chalk talk) than for the life pathways they are likely to encounter in a digitally mediated word (citing Gee, 2002) (p. 302).

So how do we interrupt the cycle of reproduction? What production might we do that will allow us to capitalize on the promise of New Literacies?

Angie's blog highlighted the powerful possibilities for policy that empowers educators at the local level to conduct inquiry based on local issues. I love this idea, too. Meaningful change won't happen via any "reforms that essentially by-pass the potential for teachers to become powerful contributors to positive change rather than ignored, regimented, or vilified as the source and essence of the problem" (p. 258). Nor (I'd add) will reforms be successful that by-pass students potential to become powerful contribuotors.

What does it look like in classrooms where empowered teachers have made the shift to transactional/critical literacy via technology? This morning, I explored a project online called Just Think, a non-profit group that supports media-literacy education based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. This project frames literacy education within the context of students' need to critically evaluate the deluge of media in their lives. I got completely absorbed by the student-produced videos on a range of topics for critical conversation and production, including:

* "Flipping the Script" by exploring media around hip hop culture and music (this is a nice tie to our Tatum book, lots of resources here)
* finding Hidden Heroes in your own community (including comparing the characters you see on TV to those in your own life) (see Hunters Point Heroes)
* examining media messages related to body image, violence, nutrition, etc. (see Get Naked)
* deconstructing media messages surrounding race and violence

I was fascinated by the videos students produced in order to tell their own stories in ways that reflect critical understanding of who they are and what they hope to stand up for in this multimedia world. Not that you'd want to buy this curriculum in a package, but it's an inspiring model that invites students to write their own text through video production. Note that the production element of this requires a certain level of teacher knowledge about video production, placing this is a sort of "media literacy" category. This implies that teachers of literacy, if they are going to break away from the decoding/analytic model, need to have a must stronger grasp of how to use new technologies AND how these technologies might be used to purposefully interrupt traditional school-based literacy norms. Not just assimilating, but staging a revolution. I'm all for Flipping the Script.

Multimediating, Adolescent Literacies, and Deerhunter (Part 6)

2007-11-04T07:58:00.001-06:00

DEER HUNTER 2005 BLOOD OF THE DEER: REVENGE: PART SIX

Who else is a little, um, troubled by this? I'm thinking of David O'Brien's chapter on multimediating and the example he uses of Tania, who brings her outside literacies in to school by making a PowerPoint show of screen shots from her favorite game, Deer Hunter (Alvermann, p. 39). Tania's example is used to illustrate the notion that students may find writing through digital media easier than writing print-centric reports.

This fits in with some of the general themes raised in Alvermann's (2006) Reconceptualizing Literacies in Adolescents' Lives. Young adults have multiple literacies and multiple texts (not just print)that may appreciated and incorporated in school environments.

So, bring it on, right?
Deer Hunter.
Ouch.
Watching this (I think)really troubling video in light of our theories about adolsecent literacies makes me wonder:

1) would I invite this in to the classroom? and in what context?

2) is there a way to frame a discussion around Deer Hunter to move a Tania toward critical consciousness of this cultural text?

3) if I invite Deer Hunter with my own critical agenda, I am truly valuing what she brings?

4) does it matter it matter if I personally value a cultural text like Deer Hunter before I invite it in to the classroom space?

My first response to this video was something like nausea. But it got me thinking... and I have suspicion that it might do the same inside of a classroom.

As O'Brien points out, it's not enough to just use technology, but to think about how we use it as knowledgeable teachers in ways that aren't "detrimental" (p. 42). As teachers, we need to make "a concerted effort to think deeply about literacy, learning, and technology together in critical, cultural, ways" (p. 42).

So, sitting Deer Hunter in the critical, cultural context of classroom discussion... Worth a shot?

Reconceptualizing Literacy Instruction: Literacy for who? In what context?

2007-10-29T08:23:00.000-05:00

Lots to like about Tatum's book, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males (2005)...

For starters, he reconceptualizes literacy based on a particular group of learners. The question then becomes not how do we teach reading, but how to we teach reading in ways that are responsive to the needs of a particular group of students. Literacy for who? In what context? (This reminds me of Rosenblatt's notion that there is no "generic" reader, but only a "particular reader at a particular time and place.") I like this idea. It makes sense to me that if learning always takes place within a particular social and political context, that we'd be foolish as teachers to ignore the context we're teaching in. Who are our students? What do they bring? What do they need as learners within the context of this class?

Tatum defines literacy "more broadly, and more meaningfully" than just a decontextualized set of skills (p. 46). This literacy encompasses the whole person (for Tatum's black adolescent males, it includes academics, cultural-social-emotional needs, discussions of identity-masculinity, and ways to overcome obstacles) (p. 41) These learners "want to know that teachers care about their lives as well as their literacy" (p. 49).

As do all different kinds of learners, right? I enjoyed Treavor's musing on how this might extend outside of the English classroom:

But the structure and content of a course isn’t always responsive to the particular populations that enter it. While I think English classes should use literature to address the issues important to this population, educators in other disciplines are somewhat constrained unless they re-conceptualize a course for a particular population.

I agree that we can't be alone as English teachers in thinking that our curriculum should be shaped in ways that are meaningful to the particular learners in front of us. As a teacher, I always tried to link my science and social studies content to local concerns, whether that be recycling at our school, helping out the family whose house burned down, or creating an environment for the birds that roost in our school's chimney. Of course, I'm using an elementary school kind of example (that's the context I've got to work with). Tatum gets in to much deeper sorts of social issues with older students, more appropriate to their developmental needs...

I guess what I'm getting at is that every teacher, of every subject, I would think, must need to know their students, to respond to who they are as human beings, and shape the curriculum accordingly. As teacher educators, this means helping teachers (preservice or in practice) to reconceptualize the meaning of literacy for their own, particular students.

Almost off the soap box... but, wait, we can also apply this to ourselves. Tatum makes an important connection to teacher inquiry - a process of planning, acting, and reflecting - to address our particular needs as teachers in a particular classroom. Very particular. Very smart.

Texas Book Festival: I'm coming for you Knuffle Bunny!

2007-10-28T12:55:00.000-05:00

Taking a break from midterm writing... a short break... maybe I need a long break... brain is turning mushy...

I hear that it's fall, and that it's beautiful outside. Must mean it's about time for the annual Texas Book Festival. What are your picks for this year's schedule?

I like the sound of "Windows into my world: Latino youth write their lives" on Saturday. But I think Sunday will probably be my day, schedule TBD according to which readers I bring along with me this year (dad? nieces? teacher friends?) Interesting how my day will shape up differently depending on what group of readers I choose to navigate the day with...

But my main agenda is to find a copy of Knuffle Bunny Too and hopefully Mo Willems to sign it on Sunday. Knuffle Bunny (part one) is the most important book in the life of my niece, Alivia, who is likely dragging her copy around Fiji as we speak. Can't wait to surprise her at Christmas with the next in the series. I haven't read the new one yet, but I find it lovely that Trixie (the main character) seems to be growing up at the same rate as Alivia... I'm coming for you Knuffle Bunny!

Cafeteria French Fries: From Theory to Practice

2007-10-19T20:33:00.000-05:00

Middle-schooler Matt Manzione, center,
and buddies joke around about cafeteria french fries.
(Michael Williamson - The Washington Post)

This week our reading (Kylene Beers' When Kids Can't Read) invites us back to middle school. Ahh, middle school. Beers' classroom vignettes and letters to her struggling young 'George' open the door for us on what feels like a real world peek in to the middle school classroom. I love this window in to the classroom. Indulge me a related snippet from a reporter who peeks in on SSR...

It's silent reading time in Mr. Ruble's seventh-grade class, and Matt Manzione is not silent, and he's not reading.

"Matt, come here please. You have a book to read?"
"Yeah, right there." He swats at the Lois Duncan mystery on his desk.

"Get started."

Matt gets started. Not on his book, but on one of those maddening displays of exhibitionism endemic to seventh-grade boys.
It's a paradigm that middle school teachers know too well: a murmur that feeds upon itself, escalating beat by beat toward commotion.

Matt begins to read--aloud. His hand taps the chair.

Across from him, his best friend, Matt Bolster, also begins to read aloud. He's making gulping sounds and frog faces. He turns the pages, one by one, without looking at them. Across the way, their friend Brian fans the pages of his R.L. Stine book and wipes eraser dust off his shorts. The girls read silently. The other dozen boys read silently.

Matt B. shakes his head. "I read so fast." He turns the book sideways and looks at it that way. He turns the book upside down and looks at it that way. He slaps his own face.

Brian gets up and pulls a chair out next to Matt B. until Mr. Ruble looks up.

Matt M. glances from the clock to the book to the clock, his feet propped up.

Matt B. crams his torso under the desk, while still sitting in his chair. "Ooooeeeeoo," he groans.

Matt M. pages through his book.
Backward.

Mr. Ruble hears the rumbling, then looks up and sees the rumbling.
"You guys are in trouble," Ben Ruble says, as sternly as he can muster. "You just lost points."

Matt B.--who doesn't care much about points--runs the pages through his mouth.

Matt M.--who doesn't care much about points either--rests his head on his shoulder and closes his eyes.

Most of the class has stopped reading by now, because who can concentrate when Matt B. is with great ceremony lying down flat across two chairs?

Brian laughs.

Matt B. laughs at Brian laughing.

Matt M. laughs at Matt B. laughing.

When the bell rings moments later, Mr. Ruble is not laughing...

(By Linda Perlstein Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday , June 13, 2000. I see that she's since published a narrative book or two on her observations in schools. I haven't read these...)

I like these narratives of middle school as a sort of jumping off point as we brave our way from Rosenblatt's theory to the lively reality of classroom life.

We get to tuck our Kylene Beers under our arms - and take a closer look at what and how our Matt Manziones are reading - and smell those cafeteria french fries...

push b(l)ack unicorn

2007-10-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

The Black Unicorn

by Audre Lorde

The black unicorn is greedy.

The black unicorn is impatient.

'The black unicorn was mistaken

for a shadow or symbol

and taken

through a cold country

where mist painted mockeries

of my fury.

It is not on her lap where the horn rests

but deep in her moonpit

growing.

The black unicorn is restless

the black unicorn is unrelenting

the black unicorn is not

free.

In the brilliant, heartbreaking novel Push, the young, black Precious protagonist writes in her journal:

Ms. Rain say we got to write in now in our journals. Say each of our lives is important. She got us a book from Audre Lorde... Say each of us has a story to tell. What is a black unicorn? I don't really understand the poem but I like it." (p. 96)

Reading Push was something like that for me, finding someone else's story, wanting to understand, like Precious, liking the idea of the black unicorn who pushes against oppression, who is restless, who resists and challenges myth...

I almost wish I could say that I read this book aesthetically first. I started to anyway... I closed my door, pulled up the covers, and prepared to enter this fictional world, looking forward to getting absorbed in the novel, much like someone offered me an afternoon off from my life, to see through someone else's eyes. Nothing like a good transaction. And I did, at first, couldn't put it down, lived in it all afternoon. But in truth, I couldn't stay in that lived through moment. No purely aesthetic experience... no escape fiction here...

Instead I found myself thinking about the teacher's role (like Treavor), stepping out of the book into my educator stance, admiring in an efferent way Ms. Rain's culturally-relevant model of literacy acquisition. I was all over the place, aesthetic here, efferent there, caught in Rosenblatt's two concurrent streams of response, evoking, reacting, marking things I loved, feeling my heart swell, then finding patterns, then crying, then wondering what I'd post (yes, that bit from school that you can't forget - that you'll be doing something with the book afterward, couldn't help but shape my reading experience).

I felt so small when I was done reading, so tiny, so protected and naive. I didn't want to post right away. I wanted to let it settle, to create some space between that lived through experience and see what would become of the book as it grew in my mind. And then comes the interpretation...

I'm still working through that, finding connections. mostly to how the experience of the book might change who I am, how I see difference, how I teach, what I teach... Like Anna, I found some connection with Peter Johnston, who spoke to us on Saturday about the value of putting yourself next to someone who is different than you, opening up to difference as a place for learning from each other, doing democracy now in our classrooms, so that our students can do democracy in the future. It's what Precious does in this book as she grapples with understanding drug addicts and Rita who has AIDS, who "Was one of dese pepul an she is GOOD. I luv her." (p. 106). And then I come back to Rosenblatt, to the empowerment of the reader in a democracy, who learns to make a critical reading of his wor(l)ds.

I don't fancy myself a literary critic (I don't think I meet Rosenblatt's qualification of greater proficiency and professionalism - p.161), but I did do some "shuttling between the two modes" for sure. I did "mingle" the "aesthetic evocation with efferent analysis" (p. 173). In my interpretation of the transaction, I couldn't help but want to step outside of the book, to find out what the black unicorn was, to feel that resistance, to ask what Precious has to do with me, to discover what kind of teacher of teachers I'll be in this democracy.

"The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives." - Audre Lorde

Push.

The Reader, The Rosenblatt, The Rock Star

2007-10-07T09:16:00.000-05:00

Friday night at Stubbs... I'm standing in sweaty, smoky crowd, sandwiched between happy strangers who are screaming and swaying their way through the lived experience of a Sonic Youth show. It's the

"condition of music to which the literary work of art should aspire: a complete absorption in the process of evoking a work from the text, and in sensing, clarifying, structuring, savoring, that experience as it unfolds" (see Rosenblatt's The Reader, The Text, The Poem, p. 29).

Admittedly, I have to shift away from my own evocation, from the aesthetic end of the continuum toward the efferent, to notice this. I'm hopeless (I know): thinking about Rosenblatt at the rock show. But as I watch the faces of these happy strangers, living through this moment, I think of the primacy of the evocation, with "what happens during the actual reading event" (p. 24). It's easiest to achieve with music, Pater suggests, but Rosenblatt reminds us that this experience is at the heart of the aesthetic transaction with text. It all starts here, at the meeting of the text and what we bring to it... and, undoubtedly, each individual has a different experience of that text, including the last 20 minutes of the controlled chaos of amplifier feedback noises. Wicked.

Of course, this metaphor only goes so far... Rosenblatt, as always, brings us back to the text, to the language, that "essential trait of literary art" that points to something outside of ourselves (p. 29). When thinking of literary text, then, we are constrained by a "closed" form that is open to diverse interpretations (p. 88). More boundaries here than the more subjective experience of the rock show.

After the "evocation," I came home and looked up Sonic Youth on Wikipedia. Having only limited prior knowledge of the band (this was my husband's choice), I shifted in to a more efferent stance, wanting to see other people's responses and interpretations of this body of work and this genre of music (sometimes called noise rock). I sought out the background knowledge to have a vision of the larger context (beyond my personal response) - the purpose of my efferent reading here being to enhance and extend my own aesthetic experience.

I chastised myself for being such a nerd, for interrupting my lived-through experience with thoughts that are too analytical for a Friday night. But Rosenblatt wouldn't judge me:

"The reader may stop at times simply to register more fully the experience that has been elicited - to savor the qualities of the images or state of mind produced, to clarify the relationships that have been sensed, or to see implications." (p. 68)

So there I was standing in that crowd of concurrent responses, evoking and reacting. It was a raw, sweaty, lived-through, aesthetic kind of experience, followed up with some efferent thinking that actually makes my Friday night more interesting by the moment. Rock on.

Louise Rosenblatt in 1938

2007-09-29T11:31:00.000-05:00

Rosenblatt was only in her mid-thirties when she wrote Literature as Exploration. Wow. Anyone else feeling humbled?!

"In a turbulent age..."

2007-09-29T09:36:00.000-05:00

In honor of Rosenblatt, my first response to Literature as Exploration draws on my aesthetic experience with this text, my (almost) private meaning-making as I draw on "personal associations, feelings, and ideas being lived through during the reading" (p. 292). It took me back to a "turbulent age" - high school American History class...

I was 16. I thought about my new driver's license. I thought about my teacher - who I thought was pretty attractive for being a social studies teacher (oops). I read from the glossy 500 page textbook, I took notes on lecture after lecture after lecture after lecture, I bubbled on Scantron tests, I dozed off a little, I held tiny scraps of notebook paper over the air conditioner to watch them take flight. I came out of that class with an A but not one interesting or creative thought about America or democracy. Despite getting my education from one of the most highly ranked high schools in the country, situated right outside of the nation's capitol, it would take a lot more living, more experience and exposure to important ideas and conversations, before democracy was important to me personally - before they were translated into my actions as a teacher and so into the lives of my students...

Coming back around, here, to Rosenblatt: This idea of meeting real social needs in a democracy by translating the literary experience into actual life is so important that she begins with it:

In a turbulent age, our schools and colleges must prepare the student to meet unprecedented and unpredictable problems... And knowledge about humankind and society that schools can give him should be assimilated into the stream of his actual life" (p. 3)

And she ends with it, too: the "broader purpose, of nurturing men and women capable of building a fully democratic society" (p. 297).

I think this gets to the heart of how the transmission or decoding/analytic mode fails, how it failed me as a young citizen in social studies class and how it continues to fail today. I didn't connect as a human being to the experiences described in my textbook, which precluded any possible translation of my understanding in to behavior, into the "stream of actual life."

Preparation for another "turbulent age" - Where do we do from here?

"How can the student come to assimilate the scientific approach to humankind and society so thoroughly that it will translate itself into the very attitudes, decisions, and actions that constitute his own life?" (p. 229)

I hear Rosenblatt saying:

* to use literary experience to build students emotional response, understanding of self and others, reflective thinking, emotional and intellectual capacity, etc. so that they may "later be assimilated into actual behavior" (p. 217)

* to help students recognize the how abstract ideas can be applied to "specific concrete situations" (p. 169)

* to draw from literature and the social sciences to "arouse in the student a desire for social understanding" and move "toward a framework of ideas that will make possible constructive social action" (p. 126)

I've always been a practical sort of girl. Perhaps this explains in some part why I am so attracted to these ideas, of transaction with literature as having a broader social purpose that can meet the needs of citizens in a democracy to think flexibly, critically, deeply, broadly, about the self, about the other.

As a teacher, I want to build students' capacities by not only shaping the way that think, but by making that leap to changing what their behavior, their actions in the world. I'm thinking here about social action projects that draw from conversations in the classroom around literary experiences, but then make the next step into translating that into the world whenever possible. I think all of this is very beautiful and practical preparation for young people facing yet another "turbulent age."

Getting to the nitty gritty of curriculum planning: Pacesetter English

2007-09-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

First, I admit it. I loved Applebee. Not just because this book was concise, written in clear, intelligible prose, or used subheadings (sorry, Myers). 'Curriculum as conversation' is a compelling framework. I wanted to (and actually did) take lots of notes. As pointed out by michigeese, Applebee also does a good job of getting to the implementation phase. I like the courage involved in moving from theory to the nitty gritty of what this all might look like in actual classrooms. In fact, I liked it so much that I went on a long tangent...

I was intrigued by the Pacesetter English curriculum model (p. 93-98). Sounded like it had a lot going for it: student-centered, constructivist, collaborative, empowering, integrated, involving students in debates and extended explorations of significant topics and issues, etc. While the curriculum must have had its own set of issues to work out, it was clearly a significant departure from the traditional twelfth-grade English course. At the time of this writing (1996), Applebee notes that Pacesetter English was "still a work in progress." To be successful, Applebee writes, "will require new ways of thinking about the issues these texts raise... as well as changes in approaches to teaching and testing. Only time will tell whether teachers are ready for such shifts, or whether curriculum and assessment will be redefined in more traditional terms" (p. 98). So where are they now?

So time has told. It's a sad story, get ready. A quick Google search reveals that the Pacesetter curriculum has nearly reached oblivion. What was a hot topic of debate in the English Journal in 1995, was apparently not a financial success in the end for The College Board, who administered the final exam for profit (pretty out of keeping with the goals of this curriculum) and eventually discontinued the project after 2004-2005. You'd almost never know from their website that Pacesetter English ever existed. However, I did find one voice asking that the curriculum be re-issued as open content for teachers. Or you could scour the Internet for bootleg copies, I suppose.

I don't have any illusions about their being one magic curriculum. But I find it telling (if sad) that this promising curriculum, as a representation of a lot of what Applebee is describing, was ultimately not valued. Not 'profitable.' "Only time will tell whether teachers are ready for such shits, or whether curriculum and assessment will be redefined in more traditional terms." Guess time has told us to keep waiting...

Back by popular demand

2007-09-20T21:55:00.000-05:00

You History of American Reading Instruction buffs thought we'd left him back in the recitation period but, now, he's back, by popular demand, our favorite character of the Recitation Period...

The Young Speaker!

Recitation isn't as easy as it looks! The Young Speaker's got me thinking about Applebee's (1996) notion of bringing the traditions of the past forward in ways that are relevant to the present and to the future. There is a lot we don't like anymore about those elocution lessons: rote memorization, lack of comprehension, stand & deliver only to be judged lacking, etc. You could argue that this form of literacy really wasn't all that relevant to most people's lives even when it was popular in schools. But if we look for the relevancy of the tradition, as it has been passed down today, I venture to suggest that there were a handful of nice things about this tradition. Like knowing a poem by heart, building fluency, working cooperatively (there are parts for 2 speakers!), building community through shared texts, incorporating the body, and, well, those of us that tried it, I think, thought they were fun. At any rate, more motivating than sitting silently at your desk and bubbling in answers to silent reading comprehension sheets (which came in to fashion in the next period and kept the kids reading silently until, well, gee, until today). I think of how the tradition of elocution in schools shows up in the "Reader's Theatre" in classrooms today: a tool for building fluency, community, comprehension, and motivation. One good example, perhaps, of how we carry on traditions, while at the same time transforming them...

change: friend or foe?

2007-09-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

So let's talk about change.

Bits from Myers:

"the central problem in literacy theories is the problem of change - when,how, and why do people shift from one literacy to another" (p. 16)

"literacy is not an unchanging absolute" (p. 282)

"each shift in the nation's dominant form of literacy has been a battleground" (p. 102)

Myers comes back again and again to this pattern: each time we meet a standard, there is already a new standard waiting in it's place. Changing social needs result in changing needs in education. This summer, several of us read about this in Nila Banton Smith's history of American Reading Instruction (2002). Her timeline of shifts in thinking about reading instruction are somewhat different than Myers (for example, she defines 4 distinct categories of cultural shift between 1916 to the present for Myers 1 d/a category for the same period). But the notion of change as a constant in education is shared by Myers and Smith.

The "problem of change." Isn't this the human condition? We exist in a condition of wanting. Each time we achieve one goal, we've got a new one already in it's place. What we know to be true our own hears (that constant striving) is also true of our society and of the world. We can't stay still.

Is that a problem?

I'd say it's potential.

what is english? translation and democracy

2007-09-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

As an undergraduate English major back in Maryland, I came out of college believing that English (and education generally) was primarily about living "the examined life." And I still believe that. In class on Monday, we discussed English as "personal growth." But it goes so far beyond the individual, doesn't it? On my list of or "What is English?" ideas, I wrote about English as a tool for democracy. This has been a dominant theme in my teaching over the years: education as a platform for creating citizens who are not only careful "readers" of the world, but who are also empowered to "write" their world. Which bring me back to Myers' and the aims of translation/critical literacy:

"This goal in English of establishing a cultural conversation based on democratic principles has become, for many, one of the central goals of English... an effort to prepare citizens for engagement in productive public discourse" (p. 147).

And how do we go about teaching this? An essential piece to the English curriculum is what Myers describes as the ability to "translate" between different sign systems. We do this a lot in my classroom, moving frequently and fluently between choices for reporting, painting, mapping, modeling, drawing, drama, etc. to show what we know. But there is another aspect to this translating business, I think, that is key to democracy. And that is the ability to translate between what happens in the classroom and outside of it, to reading the texts of school and reading the text of the world at large. Not just as preparation for 'real life,' but as the practice of it. For example, when we create a class business that raises for money for a community project. When we create poems or plays to entertain old folks at the retirement center down the street. When students participate in action projects to start recycling on campus or to educate their peers about global warming. This is translation, isn't it?

I'm tacking this idea of translation on to my "what is English" list and my "what does it mean to be a better reader" list. If I can't translate, for example, between this Myers book and my actions and experiences in the future, it would be lost. He does give suggestions here and there about how t/c literacy might look in practice. I'd like more translation here...

changing my mind: crocodile hunter edition

2007-09-13T08:49:00.000-05:00

"when we change from one form of literacy to another,
we change our minds, in both senses of these terms"
(Myers, p. 302)

I'm a new student. So let me be the first to admit that I had a hard time entering this text. I'd pick it up, get irritated, change my mind, put it down. Then I'd change my mind, pick it up again, try, try, again. All the while changing my mind, "in both senses of the term." It wasn't the ideas that threw me (most of it was familiar). It was the prose, I think. The lack of subheadings. The forbidding diagrams (see p. 135 - ouch!). The circuitous route to the point. The sensation of following Myers word by word, step by step along a meandering path through each chapter, trying desperately to put it all together and understand, and then - at last - here comes the clear statement of his argument in last sentences of the chapter. So my first order of business then, as a reader, was to get over all that. To do some "self-fashioning." And I did. Let's see how...

By way of coming back to our conversation in class: What makes us a better reader? Tolerating ambiguity, confronting difficulty. Blau (quoted in Myers, p. 144) says, "It is our willingness to confront such problems and our courage in working them out -- not our defenses against having them -- that define and exemplify our literacy..." Mike Rose (quoted in Myers, p. 145) describes an experience with a teacher who helped him read difficult texts while "gaining confidence that if [he] stayed with the material long enough and kept asking questions, [he] would get it. That assurance proved to be more valuable than any particular body of knowledge [he] learned that year." So there I was, too. Becoming more literate, talking to myself, asking questions, admitting difficulty, wrestling with my reading like the crocodile hunter takes down a croc, until my literate self felt victorious as I closed the book at long last on page 302. I'd changed my mind, refashioned my literate self from a passive, then frustrated reader, to a active meaning-maker. Crikey!