Literacy for the iGeneration

It was the last night of class that we are engaging in readings. We had a lot to discuss. We clarified the criteria for the literature review presentations. It went smoothly. The students have all done this type of thing before so they were pretty straight forward in what they wanted to see. So that was all hammered out.

I did a minilecture on the Miner (Nacerima) Yosso and McDermott & Varenne readings. Just to clarify some of the main points, then set them to discuss the other readings. It was fascinating to see the different groups dig into the different readings. Some groups really got into Recitatif (my personal favorite) whereas others spent time on the Young book (also powerful, but very different) and then another spent time on the grocery shopping activity (shopping using SNAP allowance). Each used a different text and approach, but each got to an interesting place.

We then spent a brief time workshopping the personal narratives they’ll be performing in two weeks. There were a lot of questions as to what those should look like. Several students asked if they could do a multimodal type of presentation rather than an oral presentation. I thought about it and remembered my digital story, so I said yes and showed them mine. Luckily I still have it in my file space. I hadn’t watched it in quite some time, and realized it’s a bit too fast, but I’m still proud of it. It serves its purpose. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a little self indulgent, but I think it serves its purpose. I realize doing it served a particular purpose, but I’ve moved on from it. But it remains a decent example of a digital story and I think I’ll include it in the syllabus next time I teach this class.

We then headed over to the Golisano gateway for a presentation by the Teen Empowerment group. Wow. knock my socks off. They started out with some introductory work, explained who they are and what they do, and then several members presented oral works or just talked about their lives. Mindblowing. The rawness of their emotion and their pleas for teachers to be advocates and activists is powerful. I am so impressed by their willingness to put themselves on the line – to be vulnerable in front of strangers. What an incredible group of people.They took my breath away and in the short hour we were with them they probably had more effect on the students than my whole semester with them did.

They also showed a movie about the school to prison pipeline. It was eye opening for me. I was unaware of the connections between school suspensions and kids winding up in juvenile detention and jail. I’ll be a little less flippant about suspension issues from now on. Following the movie they did a fishbowl where the youth first brainstormed what stood out in their minds about the movie and then went into deeper detail. I had to leave at that point, but it was fascinating watching the students work through the film. It reinforces my belief in the power of the fish bowl and of discussion for understanding a text.

I wish I had known about this in advance. I would have changed my syllabus to include it so that the students could stay for the whole thing. In fact, a few of my students did.

So the TE folk owned the night. I was fortunate to have attended, and I think my students felt the same.

We started class off with a discussion of APA style. I handed out an APA checklist and then went over APA reference style. APA is new for many of the students. I think it was well worth spending the time going over it. I do have to clean up the slide. There are a few little errors and one of my eagle eyed students caught the errors.

We decided that rather than a final exam we’re going to do presentations of the literature reviews. They’ll break into two separate groups (a mix of topics) and share for 10 minutes and discuss for 4. They’ll also upload their abstracts to the course wiki so that they can see what others have written.

They also decided on the grading scheme. They will get an A in the course as long as they complete all the assignments. I have to post what they’ve done on Blackboard (haven’t done that yet). They will also reflect on their learning in the last chapbook entry and will hand in their chapbooks on the last day of class. That won’t give me time to read and comment. I’ll just be able to read. I think that’s ok. I don’t have to comment on everything.

I had alloted only 15 minutes to discuss the Thompson article (Tiffany, Friend of People of Color), but our conversation went on for a long time. This group has good inquiring minds. We didn’t get to the Young book. Next week.

We ended with a brief sharing of their dialect study. I want to do more with that next semester. Not just accents, but also grammatical and lexical differences.

Next week we’re also going to workshop the personal narrative. I wanted to take them to the Teen Empowerment presentation at 6:30, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. There’s just too much to do. The strange thing is, class is almost over. Between me being gone for AERA and them attending capstone night, thenn two nights of presentations (personal narratives, literature reviews) there are many meeting nights left.

Crazy. The semester went really fast.

There is much I want to change in the course to make it work for me, but in hindsight, I’m glad I did it this way. It helped me to see what does and doesn’t work for me. It also gave me a greater appreciation of what a great group of students I have. They’ve really rolled with things.

One of the things I’m not happy about with this course is that it seems like a “diverse group of the week” approach. Plus, there’s still not a clear enough link to what the course is supposed to be about – language, literacy, and diversity. This week was “gender and sexuality week.”

There was a lot of good conversation. I love the Audrey Lorde piece, but we didn’t talk about it as deeply as I would have liked to. I’m kind of ambivalent about the Loutzenheiser pieces.The two videos we watched were good, but again we really didn’t do enough with them.

What was interesting was to hear various students’ experiences with homophobia and gender construction. For some students it was almost a nonissue because they had been raised in an open accepting environment, others admitted to play “smear the queer” and others said it was in conflict with their religious beliefs.

The issue of religon really complicates matters of homosexuality. More than any other issue within diversity studies, homosexuality runs smack against fundamental religious values. Then again, people were using the Bible 100 years ago to support racism and miscegenation. And we talked about that a bit.

What really came out though is that people are afraid to take action and stand up for marginalized groups because of fear for their jobs. And I think that fear is only going to get worse in this economic climate, which could lead to backsliding in our movement toward a more humane society. That fear is a tool of the intolerant. More than anything, I think we have to fight against that fear.

It was a bit of a hodgepodge of a night. I felt quite disconnected, but in the end it all came together – sort of.

We started out with a presentation by Mrs. Sigler on what is available in our library and how to conduct a literature search. Although our library is small, we have a fabulous set of electronic resources. Our most valuable resources though are people like Mrs. Sigler. She knows so much, is so good at her job, and is incredibly supportive of our students. We are fortunate to have her. I hope the students make good use of the library in all their classes.

After Mrs. Sigler’s presentation, I asked the students to use the behavior rating sheet I gave them last week to identify patterns in their behavior and to set a goal. It is to be private and something for them to work toward and track in their chapbook. We then took some time to identify topics for the literature review and to begin seeking some articles.

Following break we spent some time discussing the experiential assignment (either looking into what facilities are available for the hearing impaired at movies or the shopping experience of a little person). What amazed me was the number of people who connected the little person assignment to the tv show (which I’ve never seen). I’m not fond of the experiential assignments, but I think they were effective for raising awareness of how the environment disables people. I think too that the students got it when I talked about what constitutes a “norm” and how norms shift based on the population.

Then yet another shift to talk about the readings. A lot of interesting things were raised about the Elliot video and Gatto’s article. I don’t particularly like the Gatto article. There’s not a lot to it in my opinion. I’ll have to shop for something different that accomplishes the same thing. Interestingly, some of our own stereotypes and beliefs are starting to come out in the conversation. It will be our task, over the rest of the semester to openly, honestly, and supportively examine those beliefs that arise.

We ended with workshopping the narrative analysis assignment. I shared an exemplar with the students, but didn’t go over it. I figured they could read it. It’s actually quite straight forward. We spent the time in partners analyzing one of the strips of talk provided by Dr. Sangmeister using the five dimensions. The students did a really good job of analysis. What I most enjoyed seeing is that they backed up their analysis with evidence from the talk. What we didn’t get into though (and that’s my fault) was the “so what.” What does the analysis tell us. That’s something I’m going to have to do better in the future.

I also gave the students the option of selecting which Loutzenheiser article to read. They are both good articles and are different, yet I think the two of them are similar enough that reading one is sufficient. Next time I teach the class I’ll just use one and find another article that addresses the same issue from and eled perspective (Loutzenheiser focuses on secondary). I love the Lorde piece. It’s short, but so rich. When I read it, I can just feel the words rolling around in my mouth. She’s so angry and really takes white feminists to task, but does so in such a powerful way.

I’m beginning to feel better about the course. More in control of the structure of the course. I’m feeling much better for having taken out the media analysis and the experiential assignment number three. I hate giving assignments and not supporting students adequately in their completion of the assignment. As I told the students, I’d much rather have fewer assignments and do them well than have lots of assignments and just pass over them. I know there are arguments for having the students engage in lots of different writing and writing genres, but it just doesn’t work for me. That’s why it’s good for students to get different instructors throughout their program.

We had a guest speaker on Tuesday who shared her work in an urban school and how a group of exemplary teachers spoke to their students and the way those words helped the students develop a sense of agency or power in their world. I will definitely have her speak in the future.

We spent the second half of class going over Living Narrative with me explaining the five dimensions and just what narrative is.

Honestly, I’m frustrated. Not with the students, but with the course as it’s written. It’s not working well for me and I feel as if I’m constantly scrambling to make it work. I wish I could just pitch the syllabus and start over.

First change: Living Narrative needs to be front loaded. The students had little frame of reference on which to hang the text. I was pleased that a significant number soldiered through it and made sense of it. But it was tougher than it had to be. I commend those students who stuck with it.

Second change: The experiential assignments. Pitch ‘em. In the future we’re going to do community mapping. I think that will be much more meaningful especially in light of the literacy focused class. But we’ll see what the students come up with. I have faith that they’ll make lemonade out of lemons.

There will be more. I’ll capture my thinking in this blog and hopefully will be able to create a course that works for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this course is a highly personal course and necessarily reflects the instructor. Of all the courses, it’s the worst one for following someone else’s syllabus. Taking up the 620 syllabus last semester was easy. Taking up the 670/690 syllabus in the past was easy. But this one is really really hard.

But I’ll tough it out. I hope my students are kind in their evaluations at the end of the year.

We didn’t have class on Tuesday and instead joined two other sections of the diversity class (the weekend, initial certification students) for a presentation by AIDS Rochester. I wasn’t sure about the utility of going to this presentation since it really is geared toward people who haven’t taken a diversity class before, and all my students have (I assume at least), but I learned a great deal and there were good questions asked. I was a little disappointed in that we didn’t get a chance to talk much about the implications of AIDS/HIV for children, either as youth with HIV or who have family members affected by the virus. But we did have a good conversation about advocacy after the presentation, so that in and of itself was worthwhile. One of the issues raised is the sometimes difficulty in speaking up against bigoted statements or discriminatory practices. I posted to Blackboard a collection of material from Teaching Tolerance that provides some tools for doing just that. You can also access them directly from their website.

I’m looking forward to Tuesday’s class. We’re going to hear Dr. Karen Sangmeister talk about the pedagogy of respect and how it’s instantiated in teacher talk. Then we’ll spend the rest of class wrestling with the concepts in Living Narrative and doing some analysis of various talk and text using the 5 dimensions as well as some discourse analysis (deictics and modals). I’m interested in seeing what connections the students make to literacy and language acquisition.

This semester I’ll be blogging about my experiences teaching the Language, Literacy, and Diversity in American Schools course. This is the first time I’ve taught the course, and I’m a little nervous about it. The course was designed by Kenny, who’s taught some iteration of it a lot. It’s tough following in his footsteps. I’m using his syllabus with minor adjustments and while there’s a comfort in that, it’s also a little disconcerting because I want to make sure I’m true to the intent of the course yet realize that I interpret things and present things differently than Kenny does. He’s gracious about sharing his thinking with me, so it’s not like I’m in this alone.

Plus, as I told the students, we’re in this together. We’re figuring this thing (not the course – the ideas) together.

Last night we started out with going over the syllabus or more precisely me going over the changes I made since it was originally sent out and answering questions. I actually like doing it better this way – and having changes, because it forces the students into the syllabus and to make sense of the class on their own instead of me just going over it point by point. I don’t like doing that. These are intelligent people I teach, I don’t need to read the syllabus to them. Just provide clarification.

One of the biggest concerns was the chapbook. It’s a collection point for student thinking throughout the course. Because of problmes in the past, Kenny designed a very clearly deliniated set of requirements for what needs to be in there. That of course intimidates the highly conscientious student. So I hopefully made clear that the intent of the chapbook is for them, as a place to collect their thinking. That yes, I will be using it for accountability purposes (to make sure they’ve done the readings), but more importantly to provide them with a place to work through their thinking about the readings.

We then listened to the Toni Morrison Nobel prize speech and I gave them about 10 minutes to discuss it. I struggled with how much time to spend on the speech. I thought it important that they hear her read it (especially since they’ll be doing their own reading at the end of the semester). But I wasn’t sure how much time to spend discussing it. 10 minutes seemed to be sufficient although we could have spent the whole night on her speech really pulling it apart bit by bit. It’s such a rich and multilayered piece. At the same time, I’m hesitant to do so because it can take away the beauty of a piece. So what I intend to do is return to it throughout the semester. Prehaps select salient pieces from it as framing for a night’s discussion.

The next activity was the “I am from” poem. I seems Joellen used that poem as an icebreaker in her 634 class. Sigh. Next time I teach the class I’ll have to come up with something else. The intent of doing the poem was yes – introductions, but it was also to start the discussion about class/cultural/ethnic, etc. markers. I didn’t do much with it except to introduce the idea. I wasn’t happy with the way it went. Not because of the students – because I really didn’t ask them to do anything with it. I’m hoping to pull it back in when we meet again.

Next week we won’t be meeting because of the AIDs Rochester presentation.

I need to be deliberative in this course about returning to things that are started in previous classes. I need to keep the spiral path in mind. This course isn’t about marching through content – it’s about the exploration of ideas and self and self in relation to ideas and to others.

We ended with a discussion of the readings. I was quite pleased with that. The students seemed to dig into the readings and made good sense of them.

Thus ended the first class. I’m feeling pleased because I have what appears to be a great set of students who are willing to dig into the texts and think. I’m still feeling uncertain about my own facilitation of the materials. I’m glad my students are all teachers because that means they understand the challenges of teaching and that just like love, the course of teaching never does run smooth.

I haven’t started reading the end of semester essay/literacy philopshy papers, but I have been rereading the comments people made on the blog as well as the “terms and people to know” comments.

I wish I had done a better job of responding to comments. There were a lot of really good ones made, and I did read them and think about them and use them to inform instruction. They are incredibly helpful to me. I know asking students to comment on the blog is “one more task,” but it has become an incredibly meaningful one for me.

I really appreciated Kayleigh’s comment about how much the annotations ended up helping her. That’s exactly what the intent of that assignment is. Thank you for sharing that. I know it can be an onerous assignment at times, and I am glad everyone hung in there.

Another comment I really  appreciated was made a few weeks back by Michelle — about five minutes of phatic conversation at the beginning of class. She’s absolutely right, and honestly I intended to do that (I did it on the second night of class), but it got lost in the shuffle of everything else. So thank you for reminding me of that. I will make sure I do that in the diversity class next semester and when I teach 620 again.

There were so many other helpful comments as well in terms of order of events in class, pacing, etc. I may not have explicitly addressed each of those throughout the semester, but I did read and think about each one. My task in the future is to make my response to those comments more explicit in order to let my students know that yes, I am listening and responding.

I’m going to be making changes to the “terms and people to know” assignment. I’m not convinced of the utility of that assignment. The intent was to build a shared glossary for students to refer to when writing. I didn’t make that explicit enough. I’m also going to be making changes to the “wiki page” posting assignment. Once again it was intended to support the students as writers and to create a shared text. I don’t think we achieved that. Those are two things I have to think about more. Maybe some day I’ll get it right and teach the perfect class.

I am looking forward to the final essays and meeting with individuals. As people have commented, it was a tough, but rewarding semester.

Wow. The semester is over (well sort of – still have the final essay). But class meeting are over. As exhausting as teaching this class is, I’m really going to miss it. I just love the content. And this group of students truly was exceptional. I gave them the first hour of class to discuss the readings and they really dug into them. They had great insights and strong connections. The questions they asked really showed they were thinking – they weren’t just procedural questions. I can’t express how pleased I am with the growth I’ve seen this semester. I think a few weeks ago was the nadir, but they came through it and really pulled it together. I’m really looking forward to reading the essays.

I spent some time lecturing on Lankshear & Knobel. I didn’t really want to lecture, but it seemed appropriate and I tried to keep it short. I catch myself repeating myself on occasion during those lectures. I know it’s because I’m not used to it. Some of my undergrads said I’m a boring lecturer. Yeah, maybe, but I take that as a compliment. It means I haven’t done it enough to get good at it.

We spent the last hour of class workshopping the essays. I did my colored pencil routine of underlining thesis, evidence, stance (interpretation), transitions, and vocabulary. A few of the students use the method. I hope it helped them.

I’m really going to miss this group. I’m glad to hear that some of them will be in my diversity class. It’s my first time teaching it, and it’s a demanding course, so it’ll be nice to have familar faces and existing relationships to build on.

Conferences next week. I love those too.