Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

Hello! My name is Lisa Beach. I graduated from Lees-McRae in December 2009 and enrolled in the Reading Education MA the following summer. I have not been offered a permanent position yet, so I am working as a substitute teacher for Burke County Public Schools. I have had two temporary positions this year in Pre-K (from October thru June), so I have stayed busy. Of course I would prefer to have my own classroom, but I enjoy being a substitute and going into many different classrooms. When I go into a new classroom, I always look around the room to notice how neat, organized, and practical the classroom is set up, and I like to get ideas for bulletin boards. Some teachers are so creative (much more creative than I am)! :)

I do not recall how I began reading and writing, but I know that school in general has always been “easy” for me. Although I have always been a fluent reader, I’m really not that into reading. There are many things I would rather do than to sit down and read a book in my spare time. However, I know that it is important that my students want to sit down with a book and read it, so I use read aloud time to try to capture their interests and get them hooked on reading.

About the time I was in the second grade, I began to notice that school wasn’t always easy for everybody else. I noticed a difference in the classroom reading groups- my group read perfectly fine without any assistance, another group needed some assistance because they had difficulty sounding out words and read at a slower pace, and the third group needed more assistance, read even slower, and they had to read easier books. Teachers thought they were fooling us with cute group names like the blue jays or red robins, but we all knew what it meant if you were in a specific group. Throughout my school years I always wondered why things were easy for me, but not for others. How are we different? That is what led me to this graduate program. I wanted to learn about the processes of learning to read and write, how to diagnose problems in either process, and how to correct or improve the problems.

Literacy is at the core of the curriculum, and I believe that this program will help me be a better teacher. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to help my students become the best readers possible. Reading is involved in every content area, so naturally a student who has difficulty reading will struggle in other areas as well. Improving a student’s reading skills will increase his/her chances for success in school, and in society.

Lisa Beach

Hi everyone! My name is Andrea Schlobohm. I started the Reading Education program this past January, and so far I love it. I taught second grade for 3 ½ years in Charlotte, but I moved to Boone in January for my husband’s job and am now going to school full-time to get my master’s degree. Although I really miss being in the classroom, I’m enjoying this opportunity to focus on increasing my knowledge of how children learn and how to best teach them.

As far back as I can remember I have loved reading. I often got in trouble in school for sneaking a book under my desk while I was supposed to be working on math or science! I read anything I could get my hands on… magazines, picture books, chapter books, even cereal boxes. For me, reading was a relaxing and enjoyable experience. Thankfully, this love of reading has continued into my adult life. As for writing, I did have a fondness for writing my own fantasy stories when I was in elementary school, but that fondness faded as I entered middle and high school. I’m sorry to say that I still do not enjoy writing. My theory is that I lost my love of writing because I became aware of all of the rules and expectations associated with it. Reading, however, can just be for pleasure and expects nothing more of me than to enjoy what the author has presented.

I entered the Reading Education program, because I believe that reading is the foundation of learning. Without the ability to read, students will struggle their entire educational career. Although I learned the basics of teaching reading and writing during my undergraduate career, I hope that through this program I will gain additional skills that will enable me to help those students who need it most. I would love to become a reading teacher in an elementary school if the opportunity was available. I started my teaching career at a Title One school with an 85% Hispanic population. After 2 years, I was moved to a middle-class school with a largely white population. These schools presented me with very different challenges in the literacy area, and I sometimes found it difficult to make sure all of my students succeeded to the best of their abilities. I’m hoping that this class that focuses on race and class will help me to gain skills in leveling the literacy field for all students regardless of their background.

Looking forward to getting started,
Andrea Schlobohm

Hi, my name is Carol Holt and I currently work as a Title One Reading teacher for Kindergarten through 5th grade. It’s surprising that I became a reading teacher when I think of my early experiences with reading in school. I do have fond memories of thumbing through Dr. Seuss books at home and occasionally visiting the library downtown. But I don’t remember particularly enjoying reading in elementary school (1st-8th) or high school (9th-12th). As a result, I didn’t do a lot of reading on my own!

In elementary school we always sat in rows of desks and took turns reading aloud. Because I was so nervous about reading aloud in front of the whole class, I would always count the students and the paragraphs and pre-read my paragraph. Then I would continue to take a head count and recount the paragraphs. Needless to say, I would never fully comprehend what we were reading, much less enjoy the story. In high school we sat in rows alphabetically and I just never got into reading.

I did enjoy writing, though. I remember writing lots of stories just for fun and creating little books. I would take the stories when we visited my grandmother and read them to her. She always smiled and told me what a good writer I was. We were able to get a pen pal through school and my pen pal was from Japan. I enjoyed writing to him and sending him little gifts from the United States. It was always exciting to receive his letters and gifts.

It was not until I started a family of my own that I realized I had a passion for children’s literature. I have spent a small fortune on children’s books. I used to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisles at the bookstore and flip through picture book after picture book. I have a BA in Art, so the illustrations would grab my attention just as much as the story. My children and I would read books together any time of day, but we especially enjoyed reading at bedtime after piling into bed and snuggling up with a good book or two.

After graduating from UNC-Wilmington with a degree in Art, I worked in UNC-W’s Printing Services Department as a lithographer. One benefit for employees included being able to take a class a semester for free, so I began taking courses in education. It was a long range goal, but eventually I was certified to teach Elementary Education K-6. Literature for Children was my favorite class! While I was a stay-at-home mom I worked as a reading tutor. Once both of my children entered elementary school, that tutoring position became a full time Title One Reading position. I received my Reading K-12 license from ASU.

I love my job! I get to work with small groups of children who struggle in reading, and I try my best to make it the most enjoyable part of their day. The ASU graduate program has been instrumental in helping me help these students. I have learned so much about reading assessment and how to meet the needs of my students. I understand the importance of creating a friendly, safe environment, and the value of choice in reading. How do I feel about reading now? I think reading is wonderful! I believe reading is the cornerstone of all learning. I thoroughly enjoy children’s literature, and maybe after grad school I’ll check out some good literature for adults. By the way, this is my last class! : )

Carol Holt

Hello. My name is Leslie Rothenberger and I currently teach fourth grade in Catawba County. I spent the first 15 years of my career teaching kindergarten and the last two in fourth grade. I am married and have one daughter.

My mother taught reading and she instilled in me a love of books from infancy. As a small child I knew that bedtime was synonymous with story time. Mom and I would sit in the old green rocker and she would read me a bible story and nursery rhymes. As I began to fall asleep, she would usually end with “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” by Eugene Field. As I grew older and memorized the stories, I began to read them to mom. After this came Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss and Archie comic books. How the Grinch Stole Christmas was one of my all-time favorites. Even when I came home from college, Mom and the Grinch were waiting.

When I was in first grade the reading instruction I received was centered around Dick, Jane, and Sally. We also had a reading center with bean bag chairs and that was where I spent most of my free time. I loved to sit there and read! As I became a proficient, independent reader, I discovered my favorite genre – mysteries. My new best friends were Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. They filled my book cases and occasionally a Hardy Boy would join them! This is still my favorite genre today.

As a teacher, I want to instill this same love of books and reading in my students. I love teaching reading and it always breaks my heart to see a child struggling with learning to read. What is it that makes it so easy for some students and seemingly impossible for others? The desire to reach these struggling readers led me to the graduate program at ASU. I believe that I am a better teacher of reading and that the knowledge I have gained in this program will help me reach more and more of those struggling readers. I am better able to diagnose reading difficulties and differentiate my instruction to address specific problems.

Having taught both kindergarten and fourth grade, I feel that it is easier to motivate kindergarten students to read and write. By the time they reach fourth grade, some of them have become so discouraged that it is extremely difficult to motivate and engage them in reading and writing activities. Grades and standardized testing have taken away their self-confidence and have made them afraid and unwilling to read or write.

I hope that I will be able to use the best practices that I have learned in my graduate studies to reverse these negative attitudes and feelings about reading. I believe that reading aloud is one effective strategy that can be used to help me reach this goal. I just finished reading The BFG to my students and even my most reluctant readers were enthralled. They looked forward to that time each day and begged for more.

Now that I am the mom, I hope that I have instilled this same love of reading in my daughter. Bedtime is still synonymous with story time, but Kinsey does all the reading now!

Leslie Rothenberger

My name is Kara Scott, and I am currently a second grade teacher at Wiley Elementary School in Greensboro, NC. I have taught there for 6 year and 4 of the years in second grade. At the end of this school year I am moving to another school in Guilford Country to teach first grade. I am engaged to a wonderful man named Nathan and we are currently planning our beach wedding.

As a child I loved children’s books. Some of my best memories are with my mother as she would read nighttime stories to me before I would drift off to sleep. Over time I would read along with my mother some of our favorite nighttime stories. The love for reading I had as a young child and the love I have today as an adult didn’t foster from the reading experience I had as a child in school. Reading did not come natural to me and was a difficult task. It was hard to sit in the classroom and see the differences between yourself and other students. My parents did all could to provide me with extra support to learn how to read. Over the years I became a successful reader, but it was my early struggles that made reading my passion as a teacher.

Today as a teacher I see myself in many children, sitting in the class as a struggling reader looking at their classmate complete the effortless reading task. I teach in a low performing school centered in middle of a public housing development. The students come with all different experiences and reading abilities, their parents unlike my own often don’t have the resources to support their child in their educational journeys. I am truly looking forward to taking this class to learn new strategies to use with children who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Kara Scott

Reading is thinking...that's what my third graders hear every day when we practice reading skills and enjoy read alouds together. After working for the airlines for several years, I earned my degree and license from Salem College. I am just finishing my sixth year of teaching and consider my teaching career a working progress. I started the ASU Reading program last fall and am taking the slow route to make sure I don't become overwhelmed. I have enjoyed the classes, meeting professionals from other schools and counties, while gaining new ideas for reading and writing that have been shared in our classes.

I have always enjoyed reading, probably because it was very easy for me. I was a shy little girl in a busy family and spent a lot of my time reading favorites like Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume in elementary school. I loved reading to my own kids when they were little and even after they learned to read on their own. It was after I spent time at my own kids' school that I realized I wanted to be in the classroom everyday. I enjoy watching students internalize reading skills and build confidence as they grow.

I think reading is the most important foundation of our students' education and I want every student in my classroom to feel personal success when it comes to reading and writing. I am confident that the ASU reading program will give me the skills to help them achieve that goal.

I look forward to this literacy class although I'm a little nervous as I have never taken an online class.....

Michelle Carlson

Hi, my name is Stacy Durham. I have taught first grade in Davidson County for five years. It is such a joy to teach students who are eager and willing to learn. The students are a large part of my motivation to continue learning. The master’s program is benefiting not only me, but also my students.

I have always had a love of reading. Some of my fondest childhood memories consist of listening to my parents read bedtime stories. I could not wait to hear the stories and I was always aware if they skipped a page. As I grew older, I enjoyed reading all the time and even to my little brother. It was one of the only times that I recall him sitting still! As a child, I also loved to write poetry. I would write a poem and place it inside a family member’s birthday card every year. Looking back at those poems, it is interesting to see that I used familiar language from some of my favorite books. This shows me that reading plays a role in the writing process, whether you are aware of it or not.

My favorite part of reading as a child was finding new vocabulary words. I remember getting so excited when I read a new word and understood it’s meaning through the context. The book, Serendipity was difficult for me to understand. First, I remember getting help with the correct pronunciation. I practiced saying it over and over until I could say it correctly. Whenever I was uncertain of a word’s meaning, I would run with my book straight to my dad and ask. He would turn my simple question into a history lesson every time, full of facts and analogies. I learned a lot from these talks but I remember tuning him out after a while. This was only because I was so eager to get back to my book!

Reading aloud to my students is a cherished time of day. Every time I begin a read aloud, I am aware that for many, this is the only time they will be read to today. This gives me the motivation (even on a rough day) to put all I’ve got into my read aloud. I want students to see the magic in reading, to feel that they can escape to another time and place for a brief period of time. I really try to play up my excitement about reading and want my students to see that it can be a fun and rewarding experience. It makes me so happy for my students to see them reading on their own and sharing pieces of the story with their classmates. Observing a student truly enjoying and understanding a book is a wonderful sight to see!

Stacy Durham

Hi, my name is Kim Strzelecki. I graduated from a school in upstate New York and moved to North Carolina in 2009 and have not yet found a permanent position, so I have been subbing in the Forsyth County Schools for the past two years. I started the Reading Education MA program this spring and so far I am really enjoying it.

I completed one of my student teaching placements in a reading clinic in New York that served children in grades Kindergarten through third grade because I didn’t think I had taken nearly enough classes dealing with how to teach reading. I wanted to know why it came so naturally for some people, like myself, and not for others. It was a challenge but I was definitely glad that I did it because I was able to work with students with learning disabilities, phonological processing deficits, as well as kids who just had a slow start to learning how to read or other exogenous factors that were affecting their academic achievement. I was able to learn and put into practice exactly how to help these kids be successful with reading.

I applied for the special placement in the reading clinic because reading just came naturally to me as a kid. My mom informs me that I was never without a book as a child, and the same is true today; I still carry one around in my purse that I’m currently reading just in case I have to wait around somewhere and I’ll have a chance to read a few pages. Chances are, that book in my purse is going to be by Stephen King. He has been my favorite author since I read The Shining in 6th grade. I’ve slowly been buying every book of his since then, and I now have a book shelf full of 62 of his books!

Throughout college, I was a nanny to two children who are now 5 and 6 years old. I started working for the family a month after the oldest was born and it was while taking care of these kids that I realized I made the right decision to become a teacher. I loved teaching them new things, taking them places and of course, reading to them! I watched them develop a love for books and I hope I played a little part in that. To this day, every year I send them two books for their birthdays :-)

That is what I hope to instill in my future students-a love for reading. This is not only because it will help them be successful in school and later on in life, which is true, but also because as an avid reader, I know how amazing the world of books can be and it is my job to help those students who may be struggling realize this, because everyone deserves that knowledge!

Kim Strzelecki

My name is Karen Massey-Cerda. I am originally from the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom where I taught kindergarten and first grade for five years. I came to North Carolina in 2001 on a two-year teaching exchange. This is my tenth year teaching in Catawba County Schools. I am currently teaching my second year in third grade at Lyle Creek Elementary School.

I have always loved to read and did not have any of the difficulties that I see my students facing daily with fluency, accuracy, and comprehension.

My earliest memories are of my parents patiently rereading books that I requested over and over again. Anything that had a rhyming text, such as the Dr. Seuss books, and the Mother Goose Treasury of Rhymes were particular favorites. My brother and I enjoyed performing ‘plays’ about well-loved books and favorite jingles from adverts on television. My Dad would also record us reading aloud nonsense rhymes and limericks that he made up for us and that we had memorized and giggled our way through!

My love of reading continued throughout my teenage years and on to university. At university I was fortunate to have resident children’s authors for my children’s literature professors. They would have us all sit on the carpet and listen to stories, which we thought was brilliant! I fell in love with children’s literature all over again, revisiting childhood favorites and discovering new texts from which I could plan engaging classroom units.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for poetry was dampened by endless dissection of stanzas during my English classes with professors. I put poetry to one side for quite a while until I began my student teaching. It was great to read poetry aloud again simply for enjoyment.

I have always kept a diary up until a few years ago; before assignments and life got in the way! Writing down my thoughts has always given me a sense of calm amongst the chaos and challenges that life brings.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching the writing process in kindergarten. Seeing the transformation from scribbles, to letters, to sentences was amazing to see. I felt that I did a fairly good job with writing in kindergarten because amongst other things I had time in the day devoted to writing. In third grade this time has been drastically reduced and students are less inclined to write anyway, for fear of mistakes. Unfortunately, my theory of writing was based very much on a linear approach for the third grade curriculum. The model I have explored in our graduate program is altering my approach. I am trying to model a writing process where editing and revising is taking place throughout and not just at the end. These writing theories have also made me aware of how much more time writers need to allocate to the planning stage of writing. Recently I have been working on a writing project as part of our writer’s workshop. It has been very successful especially for my most reluctant writers. However that has been my focus for over a month. I feel that if I do not take the plunge and do projects like this I just skim the surface and do not do enough of my language arts instruction well.

Teaching reading remains the most rewarding and challenging part of my job. Whilst the focus in third grade is reading to learn, I am still very much the teacher who is helping students learn to read with reading levels ranging from first to sixth grade. Working on an MA in Reading Education is such a valuable experience. It is making a huge difference to how I strive to reach those children that we all want to ensure do not fall through the cracks during their school life.

I am looking forward to getting lost in some great books this summer because by then I will have completed my graduate degree!

Karen Massey-Cerda

My name is Ruth Ann Timmons. I graduated from UNC-Wilmington in December of 2000. This is my tenth year teaching kindergarten in Forsyth County. Since beginning the master’s program this past fall, I have not only learned a great deal but have excitedly put that new knowledge to work in my classroom.

As a child I remember my mom always had a book in her hand. She was my first example of the passion a reader can have for books. I loved being read to and was amazed that she could sit for hours engrossed in the pages that looked like hieroglyphics to me. I remember watching “The Letter People” in kindergarten and round robin reading in groups during first grade. I struggled as a beginning reader and not until around fifth grade when my grandmother gave me “The Baby-sitters Club” series did I find myself looking to books/reading for enjoyment. Writing was also a struggle for me in the classroom but something I enjoyed doing in my free time. I kept a journal throughout high school and used poetry as a way of working through the loss of several family members.

I don’t think I ever really loved reading until I began teaching. It is powerful to see the effect my excitement about a book or for an author can have on my students. Watching them discover the joy of reading is magical and has to be one of my favorite things about teaching kindergarten! It is also rewarding to work closely with parents, helping them understanding the vital steps and essential at-home practice needed to develop into a successful reader/writer.

Although this is my first online class, I am excited about the challenge and opportunity to learn with and from others through this medium.

Ruth Ann Timmons

Hi. My name is Holly Lawson, and I am a fourth grade teacher in Rutherford County. I graduated from UNC-Charlotte in 2000 and have been teaching eleven years. I have a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year old son. Last May, I enrolled in the Reading Education MA program in hopes of becoming better equipped in the teaching of reading. Interestingly, my first true love is math, but I am so glad that I decided to pursue a master’s degree in reading.

My earliest memories of reading involved my mother reading fairy tales and nursery rhymes to me each day at naptime. Of course, like most small children, I had my favorites that I requested over and over- “Rapunzel” and “Hansel and Gretel”. Although my mom fostered a love of reading early on, I did experience a period in which reading became more of a chore than a pleasure. In elementary school, we frequently were required to give oral book reports. While these required reports did increase my exposure to text and improved my reading ability, they did not foster a love of reading. Thankfully, this love of reading returned to me as an adult, and I now read for both pleasure and information.

Throughout my career, I have learned a lot about reading. First of all, I believe it is much more difficult to teach reading than math. Reading instruction truly is an art. There are so many components which work together to create a strong reader. While vocabulary and background knowledge are crucial, fluency plays a major role, too. Because of this program, I learned strategies which I was able to incorporate into my low flex reading group at school this year. I have been able to better assess students’ reading ability and plan small group instruction geared toward their needs. I cannot wait to learn more this semester. There are so many factors to consider in reading instruction, and it is sometimes difficult for us to understand why students are experiencing difficulty in an area which most likely came easy for us.

With regards to writing, I feel that it is just as important as reading. I am thankful that writing assessment for fourth grade now extends beyond the narrative writing test. Since writing across the curriculum is so important, I require my students to write reflectively. Each day they use their journals to write about what they learn in class as well as how they behave throughout the day. For me, reflection journals are not only a means for assessing student learning, but they also give students an opportunity to share other information with me. It is so important that students have a chance to be heard.

Again, I look forward to this class and am excited about the opportunity to learn from and share with everyone.

Holly Lawson

Hi, my name is Carol Holt and I currently work as a Title One Reading teacher for Kindergarten through 5th grade. It’s surprising that I became a reading teacher when I think of my early experiences with reading in school. I do have fond memories of thumbing through Dr. Seuss books at home and occasionally visiting the library downtown. But I don’t remember particularly enjoying reading in elementary school (1st-8th) or high school (9th-12th). As a result, I didn’t do a lot of reading on my own!

In elementary school we always sat in rows of desks and took turns reading aloud. Because I was so nervous about reading aloud in front of the whole class, I would always count the students and the paragraphs and pre-read my paragraph. Then I would continue to take a head count and recount the paragraphs. Needless to say, I would never fully comprehend what we were reading, much less enjoy the story. In high school we sat in rows alphabetically and I just never got into reading.

I did enjoy writing, though. I remember writing lots of stories just for fun and creating little books. I would take the stories when we visited my grandmother and read them to her. She always smiled and told me what a good writer I was. We were able to get a pen pal through school and my pen pal was from Japan. I enjoyed writing to him and sending him little gifts from the United States. It was always exciting to receive his letters and gifts.

It was not until I started a family of my own that I realized I had a passion for children’s literature. I have spent a small fortune on children’s books. I used to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisles at the bookstore and flip through picture book after picture book. I have a BA in Art, so the illustrations would grab my attention just as much as the story. My children and I would read books together any time of day, but we especially enjoyed reading at bedtime after piling into bed and snuggling up with a good book or two.

After graduating from UNC-Wilmington with a degree in Art, I worked in UNC-W’s Printing Services Department as a lithographer. One benefit for employees included being able to take a class a semester for free, so I began taking courses in education. It was a long range goal, but eventually I was certified to teach Elementary Education K-6. Literature for Children was my favorite class! While I was a stay-at-home mom I worked as a reading tutor. Once both of my children entered elementary school, that tutoring position became a full time Title One Reading position. I received my Reading K-12 license from ASU.

I love my job! I get to work with small groups of children who struggle in reading, and I try my best to make it the most enjoyable part of their day. The ASU graduate program has been instrumental in helping me help these students. I have learned so much about reading assessment and how to meet the needs of my students. I understand the importance of creating a friendly, safe environment, and the value of choice in reading. How do I feel about reading now? I think reading is wonderful! I believe reading is the cornerstone of all learning. I thoroughly enjoy children’s literature, and maybe after grad school I’ll check out some good literature for adults. By the way, this is my last class! : )

Carol Holt

I am Candace Kee but prefer to be called Candy. I am originally from Randolph County and received my bachelor's degree in K-6 through Appalachian State University. After my first year of teaching grade 2 in Randleman NC, I had an offer to work for Burlington Industries in management. After 13 years with them and a transfer to the Shelby area, I met my husband and renewed my teaching certification. I was offered a job in a Title 1 school and although I have always loved reading I fell in love with this program and the students that I served. The fact that they struggled so in reading broke my heart and I realized that I needed to know more in order to help them learn and succeed. I started UNC-Charlotte in the Reading Master's program and completed everything but the capstone. A health issue took me away but I did receive a K-12 reading certification. After 13 years in Title 1, I received my certification in Exceptional children. At that time I transfered to the highschool in this program and again had an opportunity to work with the same children that were in my Title 1 program years before. I stayed there 3 years. My students still struggled. I realized then that I needed more training. Appalachian State University's master program has offeered the much needed training for me to be able to continue my journey to improve literacy in the lives of our students. Currently I am the coordinator of Cleveland County School's recently opened Parent Literacy Center where we serve parents and Cleveland County School students. Candy Kee

Though I’ve been aware that racial divisions have always existed and the dialect of a language has been one method of distinguishing these differences, I had never considered that stigmas occurred among one’s culture or race if they used standard English. Instead, I thought the stigma was reversed when minorities used their dialect within society. Both Delpit and Dowdy provided insight into this issue with firsthand personal experiences.

It’s funny how an ideal image of what intelligence looks like forms within society. I would have to agree that centuries of American culture have deemed ‘white’ people as more intelligent which ultimately leads to success, leaving those who were anything but white at a disadvantage. It only makes sense that these social outcasts could taste a hint of that success and intelligence if they tried to appear to be like the ‘whites.’ The easiest way to do so would be to act and talk like a white person. After all, is language not a true measure of intelligence? If you can’t look physically look intelligent, then why not try to sound like it?

As I was reading the articles by Delpit and Dowdy, I couldn’t help but think about one of the movies my daughters frequently view during their playtime – “RV” which stars actor Robin Williams. In the movie, Williams’ movie family meet a hillbilly family while vacationing in an RV. While Williams’ family, portrayed as a typical white American family who is regarded with success and intelligence, spends a majority of their vacation time trying to avoid the hillbilly family, they eventually realize that those they thought stupid were actually geniuses. Surprisingly, truth is revealed, and the hillbilly family with the dumb-sounding dialect are found to be highly educated where both parents and children have excelled academically above what others have expected of them. Though race wasn’t an issue in this particular movie, language was. Therefore, it is easy for me to understand that racial minorities may feel that they have more than one obstacle in their way of achieving success and respect from what is always perceived and presented as the standard. Such obstacles are the color of their skin and the cultural language and dialect they speak.

These minorities have discovered that everything is about the audience, meaning that a person can look and sound the part, and language is the means to do this acting. Therefore, successful individuals and leaders like Michelle Obama found that in order to achieve in a ‘white person’s world,” it was necessary to talk ‘white,’ using the King or Queen’s English, in order to get the “A” needed to pass in school and achieve academic success and higher social status. What was divided based on race was able to be bridged through language.

Knowing this makes the role of the educator all the more important. I feel that teachers need to make sure they are not imposing ideas or feelings upon these racial minorities. Though the articles and video referenced more to black Americans, these same issues pertain to any race that is not regarded as ‘white.’ Ignorance shouldn’t be measured on outside appearance and the way words spill from the mouth. As a white teacher, I’m well aware that success is measured often by looks and sound. However, I need to make sure that my students are aware of code-switching. In order to do this, I need to make them feel that their language, interests, and views are just as important as mine. I liked how Delpit mentioned that teachers need to find the interests of their students and let it be the center of the curriculum as it is integrated with all of the content areas. This idea of building an academic program around the interests of the students doesn’t lower the standards of instruction. Instead, it allows students to begin to respect their teachers as their teachers show respect and value them. Showing students that their teachers value everything about them – their home dialect and family – then teachers can incorporate the importance of standard language and teach it as a means to help establish success without imposing that it is the right way and their home language is the opposite. If language is one of the most intimate expressions of identity, then why would teachers not listen to their students in order to know their students better? Instead of making students struggle with the mental conflicts of trying to translate between home language and standard language, why don’t teachers try to create an accepting environment where students can learn the appropriate times to code-switch? Is this not making language a means to an end, allowing students to utilize it to benefit them?

Melissa Riley

Language is powerful. In reading these articles, it was interesting to see the different ways the language affects people. Unfortunately, many people view language as being either: right or wrong, even black or white. These articles made me think of the teaching profession. Everyday teachers are mediators. They work to help children sees our differences as positive attributes. We want students to learn embrace these differences and learn from each other’s cultures. Educators do not want our next generation of leaders get comfortable developing culture biases. As I was reading Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense”, I found Lisa Delpit’s reaction to her daughter’s new language very interesting. I found myself wondering, does anyone truly know why these intense feelings arise, even from the lips of your daughter? What causes this?

After reading Dowdy’s “Ovuh Dyuh” and seeing that language was again a crucial factor. Dowdy’s mastery of the British English language seemed to be much like a double-edged sword. She had done exactly as her family wished but language was hindering her from developing close relationships with her peers. I also see this happening within my school. I have several ESL students who have difficulty with the English language. When these students speak in their native language, I have heard other English speaking students say negative comments like, “Why aren’t you talking in English?”, “You sound weird”, “Can’t you speak English like everybody else?” I know that many students hear these negative comments from their parents and this affects students’ own opinions and biases. I realize that dialect and second languages are different but to me it still relates because they can both demonstrate the power of language.

Michelle Obama’s discussion of how language caused ridicule for her as a child was very similar to Dowdy’s description. When Mrs. Obama stated that other children told her that she “sounded white”, she confessed that she did not know what that meant. I believe that many people today and in the past have had difficulty determining what exactly that means. Language is and has been a touchy subject for many people for a long time. The roots of this subject are deep. Perhaps so deep, that many people are unable to give a clear reason for their feelings of animosity towards differences in language?

Stacy Durham

Everyday we teach our students how to read, write, and speak appropriately in conversation. We correct mispronunciations, teach vocabulary words that will improve writing, and ask students to repeat things they say incorrectly using ‘proper English.’ It is necessary that students meet these demands and learn ‘proper English’ to be taken seriously in society. Sadly, people are often stereo-typed as uneducated or inadequate just because they do not speak the language perfectly. Students must always strive to be the person that society wants them to be, who talks the talk that is expected and accepted. I assume that often times they feel like they can not be the person they are. As an educator, we must encourage all our students to be proud of their heritage, and to share their culture with other students. In order to get our students to do this, we have to be inviting of their culture and interested in it. If we reject their home language, culture, or their differences in general, then the students will feel like we are rejecting them (Delpit, 2002). Students should never feel like they are rejected.

Mastering different languages is a difficult task for everybody, and I can not even imagine how difficult it must be for those students in our class who are ESL learners and come from a very different culture. I have been very fortunate to work at a school where the majority of students are Hispanic, and there is an equal amount of African-American and White students. These students not only have to learn the basics of the English dialect which we use in conversation with friends, but they also have to be able to use proper English in their writing and when they are talking to people of importance. Sometimes I pass by a group of students speaking Spanish, their native language, and I can hear a teacher or somebody tell them, “We speak English. Talk in English.” Yet when these students get home, they are strictly only allowed to speak their native language. What are these students to do? They want to please everybody, so there is nothing else they can do other than assume “the mask of language” (Dowdy, 2002). They are forced to speak proper English at school and Spanish at home.

The language that students speak to their friends, teachers, family, and church are all very different, and they must unconsciously realize which language is appropriate. People have to be able to change, or ‘code switch,’ their language in an instant (Delpit, 2002). Even my language is different at home than it is at work, school, or other places of importance. If one would forget the appropriate language to use with their friends and used the incorrect one, they might be ridiculed and teased by others. In the video, Michelle Obama commented that when she spoke in proper English as a child, the other children teased her and made derogatory comments. This behavior occurs everyday, but it is unacceptable and needs to be stopped. It is a constant struggle to teach students to accept and embrace students for who they are, no matter how different they may be.

If we are interested in learning about students’ culture and language, then I strongly believe they will pay the same respect. It is necessary for students to be able to speak and write using proper English. What can we do to help them be more open to learning? If we expect them to be open to learn the proper English language, then we should be more open to learning their native language. Often times I will ask my Hispanic students to translate a phrase or word for me that I can use in the classroom. I found that the students really enjoy teaching me their language, and they also enjoy laughing at me when I say something incorrectly! In one of the Pre-K classrooms I have worked in this year, we taught the children the days of the week and the months of the year in Spanish and English. This teaches children at an early age to be accepting of one another and to be open-minded about other cultures.

We are a nation of many languages, and this is often true in our schools as well. Students must learn the universal, proper English language, but they (and us) should be open to the many languages around them. It takes a great deal of time and work to learn a new language or about different cultures, but it is well worth the challenge. Once we have learned new information, we must incorporate this new knowledge with what we already know, and use it to make our classrooms, schools, and communities a more accepting environment.

Lisa Beach

American society in general judges a person’s intellect based on the ability to articulate standard English. It’s a shame that the controversy concerning Ebonics made some African Americans wonder if they were adequate compared to the white race. The issue of standard dialect and cognitive ability is not solely a race-related issue, however. This judgment equates intellect with how a person speaks. Take the southern-speaking stereotype for instance. A person with a southern drawl is perceived by some as unintelligent. My brother-in-law has a good friend from West Jefferson, N.C. He majored in Business at Western Carolina University, and received a scholarship for most of his grad work. He was a superior student in graduate school. Upon receiving his MBA, he was offered a six figure salary to work in New York for a prestigious Wall Street firm. After several New Yorkers from the firm spoke with him, it was insisted he see a speech coach to correct his southern drawl and Appalachian dialect. The speech therapy would be fully paid by the hiring company. He was insulted and, as a result, did not accept the position. As Delpit points out, “to reject a person’s language can only feel as if we are rejecting him.”

When a person does not speak standard English, we know this does not automatically mean that they possess limited cognitive ability. I work with ESL students in reading and about one third of our school population is Hispanic and Hmong. When the opportunity presents itself, I point out differences in their first language and English, but not in a corrective manner. For example, we may be focusing on the th sound in words, but my ESL students almost always pronounce mudder for mother. I have pointed out to the Hmong students, who typically leave off suffixes, in English we say word endings and in the Hmong language many word endings are usually not pronounced. If these students were constantly corrected in how they speak, they could become discouraged and hesitant to speak at all. According to Delpit, “the children whose language is considered defective are themselves viewed as defective”. As a child it didn't sound like Michelle Obama was worried about sounding white and she certainly didn't view it as a defect, she was just focused on making good grades. When we read about Ruby Bridges and Harriet Tubman, I always point out that we are all the same under our skin (we all have a heart, etc.) and that skin color does not make anyone better than someone else. I have not thought about adding to the discussion that it does not matter how we speak. I think I should, though.

In contrast to Delpit’s statement, “students rarely get to talk in classrooms”, my students have the opportunity to join in discussions in a friendly, inviting, non-threatening small group setting. When I activate prior knowledge before reading, the students get to share their personal experiences making text-to-self connections. I am pleased that in our bookroom we have a variety of leveled readers in many genres that embrace multicultural backgrounds and experiences. I believe providing a choice in reading material elicits more student dialog, because they are reading what interests them.

It was interesting to read about bringing Luster’s Pink Oil Lotion Moisturizer into the classroom to engage students in different subject areas. Engagement is the key to learning. When students are totally absorbed in learning they don’t even notice if the principal walks in the room. The tricky part for educators is keeping students engaged, especially now-a-days with youth who are constantly stimulated by electronic devices.

Once I got to hear a white principal from a predominantly African American school in the deep South speak to undergrad Education students about his school’s success despite the low-socioeconomic status of students whose parents had not completed high school. This principal talked about how he greeted all of his students every morning with “high fives” and really connected with them. The thing I noticed most was that this white principal sounded African American. He had acquired their language and he sounded cool, like one of the gang. This energetic principal treated his students with respect, and his students accepted and trusted him. Delpit states, “Just as Maya’s new friends made her feel beautiful, brilliant, and ‘part of the club’, teachers have to create similar conditions for their students”. Isn’t this what teachers should be doing in any situation, whether you are making a personal connection or building confidence in academics? If a student struggles with math or any other subject, the teacher should not make the student feel inferior. Instead, offer praise for accomplishments and build from there. All students can learn and every student is good at something. We are all unique and that's what makes us special.

Carol Holt

Language is a powerful tool we use every day. We can build someone up with our language or destroy someone’s self-worth. Teaching in a school where the population is 95% African American these articles reached out to me and made me reflect on my own teaching practices. I find it important to embrace student difference and encourage students to express who they are. Students need to trust you as the teacher before you the teacher begin to tear their self-worth down just for the way they talk. While reading Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense” I began to think how each and every one of my students come to school feeling this same way as Delpits daughter only many of them don’t have the filter to language change just because they are at school. They come to school with the tools modeled at home and that is all they know. Is this truly a race ideal? I don’t believe that it is. Within our own families we have our own dialect and language we use. The only difference is we come to school and the community knowing how to use the two interchangeably.

To build the trust and relationship with our students that we want we must first build it into the curriculum that we teach. If we want students to react and respond a certain way we must relate to the students first and build a common trust they share with the teacher. It is then that you can reach the child and model a language that will become common in the learning community. Students need to feel comfortable in their environment then they can be successful.

When reading Dowdy’s article I immediately thought about my Hispanic students and how they must feel. They too have been brought to the United Stated to succeed and become better. They are thrown into the language that often makes no sense and expected to compete with their fellow classmates. Once again I think this goes back to the teacher and what kind of environment they build within their own classroom. Of course children will always have difficulty with English as it is their second language, but I think it is important to foster an interest in the other students to want to know their language too. The other students shouldn’t look at their language as strange or weird. This is what I have done in my own classroom and my English speaking students love to learn Spanish. They are always asking “how do you say this?” I couldn’t imagine how Dowdy felt being alienated from her own language and expected to speak English. The way we speak is part of our own identity and I think it is important to foster that is children when they are young.

Kara Scott

Reading the two chapters about cultural or home language made me think of the students in my current Title I school. We have a diverse population with many different ethnicities but primarily African-American and Hispanic. While I have always understood the struggles of our Hispanic students who are learning a completely different language than their native tongue, I had not thought about the cultural or native language of our African-American population as described in the chapters by Dowdy and Delpit. When Lisa Delpit described the shock and horror of listening to her daughter’s newly acquired ghetto language after years of formal education in predominantly white schools, it became a more personal issue and a reflection of her own childrearing. Often, the need for children and even adults to identify with their peers, the ones that look most like them, is greater than the need to impress upon others their true intelligence or competency. After years of civil rights awareness and change, our public view of aptitude is moving away from how we look but is very focused with how we sound in the public arena. The lack of Standard English is seen by many as evidence of incompetence and cognitive deficiency to the point that a qualified and skilled consultant could not be utilized in her profession because of her Southern rural language. Both Dowdy and Delpit realize the need for Standard English in professional and public situations, they also understand the need and value of identifying with the home language of the students in our classrooms. By using the curriculum to connect with our students’ cultural lives and interests, we can create more engaged and motivated learners who learn to distinguish between “proper language” that will help them be successful members of society while maintaining their cultural ties with friends and family using home language that provides a sense of belonging and comfort.

These chapters illustrate the value of home language and the importance it plays in our students’ identify and feelings of acceptance. The video about Michelle Obama’s personal experience with language as a youth illustrates the importance of using proper English in schools and the workplace. When she claims to be told how she “sounds like a white girl” as a child, her response of getting the A clearly pointed out that she was proud of her education and success as a respected citizen in our society. In order to overcome negative stereotypes but hold on to cultural and racial identities needed for survival, people must be able to resolve this conflict by understanding the value of both informal and formal language. I think that as educators, we have a responsibility to assure our students are exposed to formal English that is used to assess their competency but value their identity by using their culture in the classroom. I think that language can be viewed like behavior – we act certain ways in different environments and situations, therefore we speak in certain ways in different environments and situations.

Michelle Carlson

My name is Karen Gold and I have not always loved to read. I don’t really remember learning to read as a student nor do I remember reading specific books in school. The first books I remember reading were The Left Behind Series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. This is quite an ironic situation considering I am a Title I Reading Teacher. Once I became employed as an educator (in elementary school), my love for books began. Now I can’t wait to get the next great children’s book to read myself and then encourage my students to read them too. My three children, despite my lack of modeling reading at home are avid readers. While I did not read my own books as they read theirs, I did read a lot of bedtime stories over and over and over. I did not realize the tremendous importance of reading with children early and often until much later after my children had grown. Now I have the opportunity to help educate parents and students about the importance of reading but that the experiences gained from reading are limitless.
Karen S. Gold

While reading both chapters what struck me most was the idea of “code-switching”. It was a phrase I had not heard before, but I see now that it represents what should be a part of our students’ lives. Both Delpit and Dowdy refer to code-switching in some way. In Delpit’s chapter we read about her daughter seamlessly switching between her peers’ African American dialect and the dialect of Standard English. In Dowdy’s chapter, she explains how she was able to eventually speak in both “the Queen’s English” and her native Trinidadian, but only after she had begun to express herself through acting. I appreciate that through code-switching, people can maintain their culture and home language while expressing themselves acceptably in the business and academic world. I think the Obama video showcased a prime example of code-switching when he spoke to the waiter in the restaurant in Chicago. As the president, Obama has the ability to speak eloquently to the American people, but it’s good to see that he has not lost what may have been the local culture in which he was brought up. I feel that this should be a goal for us as educators, to encourage students to become successful in the professional world while not dismissing where they came from.

While reading these chapters I was reminded of the first school I taught at. At this school, the Hispanic population was about 90% and the remainder of the population was mostly African-American. We were lucky enough to have Title I funds to provide ESL support to both students and parents. A lot of time and effort was put into helping these families adjust to the American culture and schools and learn English. However, we were often disheartened at the minimal participation of both parents and students when programs were offered. After reading these chapters, I’ve begun to realize that perhaps we didn’t get much participation because we did not put much effort towards celebrating the cultures from which these students and families came. I know there were other factors (transportation, child care, work) that also did not allow significant family participation, but the families may also have felt inadequate and disrespected because instead of inviting them to share their language and culture in the school, we were simply thrusting our language and culture onto them. Of course the students that came to school every day attended ESL classes and learned the English language, but academic success was low. In the future, I will remember Delpit’s comments that we should integrate our students’ home lives and interests into the curriculum in order to better engage them. I think integrating their personal interests and cultures into the curriculum would have made a large difference for students and families. If we could teach these students in a way that would celebrate their individual histories and cultures, they may have had an easier time learning the English language. As Delpit said, “The less stress and the more fun connected to the process, the more easily it is accomplished.” Just like Delpit planned a unit around a moisturizer brand, we could have planned a unit around soccer (a very popular interest for most of our students).

In terms of Dowdy’s statement about “having the freedom to go back and forth from the home language to the public language without feeling a sense of inferiority,” I believe our country has a long road to travel. With a rising immigrant population and so many corresponding languages, we teachers have our work cut out for us helping these students to learn Standard English. I agree with Delpit that by working with these students’ backgrounds and home languages, we will be able to teach these students without making them feel inferior about where they came from. As educators, we want all students to feel that they are an accepted and appreciated part of our schools.

Andrea Schlobohm

Language has proven to be an obstacle for many students in America. Whether native-born or migrant, students bring a range of dialects and languages to the classroom. As teachers, we can choose to ignore their voices and attempt to force them to learn our language, or we can take a more inviting approach and choose to hear their voices first.

I am sure we all have witnessed the curt correction of incorrect grammar in the classroom. Did this approach prove to be effective or did it cause the child to shutdown? Whether curt or tactful, it may have made the child feel that the content of what he or she had to say was not important if it could not be delivered in the “correct” manner. Perhaps these students fear that they will be “viewed as defective” just as their language is “viewed as defective”. (Delpit) How will they ever become comfortable in our world if we never seek to enter into theirs? By simply listening to them without the goal of correction, we may learn just how much they truly know. After all, words should be a bridge not a barrier.

While I believe that students should be taught standard English, I do feel that they should have opportunities to use their own languages and dialects to share. In order for students to truly learn, they need to feel safe. If they feel respected, they might “be willing to adopt our language form as one to be added to their own”. (Delpit)

In my classroom, I try to stress the importance of being able to use correct grammar. At the same time, I talk about the fact that our language may take on a different form depending upon our audience. For instance, our speech around our friends may be different from that which we use with our parents or teachers. Just as we play various roles, we have alternate ways of expressing ourselves while in those roles. In alignment with this view, Baker states that she begins “by building upon a firm respect for each student’s home language”. In this way, it appears that language diversity is celebrated rather than criticized. Instead of viewing the “white way” as the “right way”, perhaps we should view them as simply different ways. (Dowdy) After all, we all have to admit that using a different dialect may add emphasis when needed.

With all the aforementioned in mind, we must remember that learning a new language takes time. We did not learn to talk in just a few months. It took years to learn the basics of the English language, and for this very reason, we must be patient with all students who enter our classrooms. They will get there with time, patience, and a safe and inviting learning environment.

Holly Lawson

These articles initially reminded me of my friend Erika. She is black and like Lisa Delpit’s daughter, she grew up in a very white neighborhood going to a Catholic school where she was the only African American. She learned to speak “white,” as she explained to me. Then, she went to Northwestern University and joined a black sorority and made friends who she felt entirely comfortable with. Erika is a sincere person who feels at home with people of different races, but she understands the need to shift her language when she’s at work, with her white friends, or with her black friends. I was intrigued when we had this conversation a few years ago but these texts helped me understand what she was feeling and how her success might be partially contributed to her ability to “be in two places at the same time, ovuh dyuh and here too, and not give any indication that her attention is divided” (Dowdy, 11).
In fact, our conversation started when I asked her what “code-switching” was. She had used it to describe someone and I quickly asked her to explain the term. Delpit’s daughter has a point when she states that this skill will aid her in getting a certain job or getting into a college she wants to attend. In the video, it is evident that President Obama has this skill, and while it is useful to be successful, it is important in a different way to those who share his cultural heritage. They want to know that he has not forgotten who he is.
Unfortunately, people do judge based on the words that you speak. This reminds me of a story a friend told me once. She was in a car with her mother and they were waiting for a parking space when a woman cut them off and turned into the space as soon as a car was pulling out. When the woman got out of the car, my friend’s mother angrily confronted her saying that it was rude for her to cut her off when she was obviously waiting for the space. The woman responded by telling how she had followed the lady who left the space to her car. She said, “I axed her for the space.” My friend’s mother repeated haughtily, “You AXED her?” Needless to say, my friend was mortified by her mother’s actions. The woman corrected her language and replied embarrassingly, “I asked her for the space.” I can’t imagine how that woman felt that day. Or what judgments my friend’s mom held. I do believe that people judge others if they do not speak the English Standard form of dialect. Michelle Obama openly tells how her speech has helped her achieve success. She might have been ridiculed as a child, but she wouldn’t have gotten to be where she is if she did not speak the accepted English Standard form of speech. I wonder who encouraged Michelle Obama to learn to speak properly. Joanne Dowdy did it to please her mother. But she learned that once she earned the respect of those around her, she realized that it was then that she could let herself be who she wanted to be. She earned the right to be outspoken and learned to embrace her heritage in a way that would not offend anyone. She could cater to anyone…and in that, she was extremely powerful. Yet I am still curious…is it more important to preserve your ancestry, or is it more important to succeed in the world?
Delpit makes an important point at the conclusion of her article. People will only adopt the English Standard form of language if they feel that they themselves are respected. Therefore, it is essential that a teacher embrace a child’s personal culture and background, while trying to teach them to speak in a way that will allow them to be the most successful in society.
-- Carrie Brown

As I read the Delpit and Dowdy articles I could relate to their sense of struggle in regards to the use of a “home” language versus the use of a “public” language. Growing up in a rural town in western North Carolina I spoke “country”. As I prepared to go to the University of North Carolina, I was somewhat worried. I did not want to sound “too country” because I thought people would think that I was less intelligent than they were. I did not want to be judged by my dialect alone.

Delpit and Dowdy both emphasize the importance of looking past a person’s speech patterns or language form when determining a person’s intellectual competence. We must listen to what a person says, not how they say it.

Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult for most. We have grown up in a society that constantly affirms prejudices and misconceptions. As a result of this, many children and adults alike have become adept at “code switching” as Delpit refers to it. Code switching is the ability to switch dialects based on the situation or audience one is speaking to, and has seemingly become standard practice for many members of society.

I think that the ability to code switch has been viewed as a necessity for many different cultures, but especially for African Americans. As stated in the clip with Michelle Obama, oftentimes African Americans face stereotypes from both white Americans and African Americans. They are afraid of sounding “too white” or “too black” depending on the audience.

I agree with Dowdy when she states that people should be free to go back and forth between their home language and their public language without feeling inferior in some way. This brings me back to my feelings about my own dialect. I never realized that I, too, had become adept at code switching. I speak one way with my friends here in Hickory, but when I go home I often slip back into my “country” language. Otherwise, my friends at home might accuse me of “puttin’ on airs”. While I should feel free and comfortable to speak in either dialect in both settings, I do not because as Delpit points out, there are not many people who can actually “listen beyond” a person’s language form.

I think that as educators it is our responsibility to provide a balance between nurturing our students and encouraging them to use their home language and teaching them Standard English. Students should realize that they are not “less than” because they speak differently than others. However, because of the world we live in, they need to know, and be able to effectively use, Standard English. When trying to teach our students Standard English, we need to consider Krashen’s (1982) theory of an affective filter as referenced by Delpit. We must find a way to identify with the students, implement a curriculum that affirms them and their interests, and make them feel safe and comfortable while doing so. As Delpit points out, in order for our students to acquire this new dialect we are trying to teach them, we must recognize the worth of their home language because as Delpit so accurately points out, when we reject our students’ languages, it seems to the children that we are rejecting them.

Leslie Rothenberger

After reading the two chapters and watching the video clip, the idea that most interested me was the concept of “code-switching” mentioned in the Delpit chapter. When I thought about it, I realized we all do some level of code-switching in our lives. For example, I alter certain aspects of my speech from the way I talk with my friends and family for when I go on interviews or have any type of conversation with another professional. I remember having a undergraduate course on classroom management and the professor wouldn’t let us speak if we said the word “like.” It was actually extremely difficult for a lot of people because that word was so engrained in their speaking habits, but she wanted us to learn how to be able to eliminate that word comfortably on command because the general impression is that people who use the word “like” more often than is necessary are less intelligent, which may not necessarily be true. It was obvious she wasn’t trying to imply that we were all stupid because of one word we tended to overuse in our speech. She was trying to give us the best chance of succeeding in the professional world.

The Dowdy article presented an example almost in reverse. She grew up knowing how to speak the “Queen’s English,” and instead of having troubles being successful academically, she had trouble socially. It was when she eventually learned how to code-switch through her knowledge of acting that she was able to be her true self. The Obama video clip also demonstrates an example of code switching when it discussed President Obama altering his language patterns to speak to different groups of people. He is able to speak Standard English to give the impression of being educated and capable of leading the nation, but also able to switch back to whatever original dialect he grew up with.

It is this balance between being able to hold on to your “mother tongue” as well as being able to acquire new dialects that may improve your chances at success that is important. As both chapters pointed out, we need to be sure to respect the languages and dialects spoken in the homes of our students, so that they will respect us and in turn learn from us what we have to teach them. In an ideal world, no one would be judged on anything but what was on the inside; their true value as a person. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world, and many people do still judge intelligence by the way someone speaks. That is the reality of the situation. So, as teachers we have to do our best to prepare kids for success in the real world that is full of people who prematurely and unfairly evaluate others. As Delpit’s daughter says, “you have to be who you are,” but, as seen through the many examples of people who couldn’t get or lost jobs because of dialect issues, it’s also important to learn how to be successful. The balance of holding on to who you are and doing what it takes to be all that you can be in life is the key, and as teachers, it’s our job to help our students find that balance.

Kim Strzelecki

As I read these two articles and watched the video of Michelle Obama, I was reminded of many of the Hispanic students whom I taught when I was in the Thomasville City Schools. These children were so intent on becoming “Americanized” that they were losing touch with their own cultural heritage and with their own language. We witnessed students who simply refused to speak in Spanish with their parents when they came to school, even when the parents needed for them to translate. These children clearly felt themselves to be different from their classmates, and somehow less worthy than their classmates. They were willing to put aside their native language in order to be more like the other students at school. As we (the teachers) became aware of what was going on, we made a concerted effort to encourage the Hispanic children to share their culture with their classmates, to teach us a bit of Spanish, and to encourage other students to respect the diverse cultures that were represented in our school. I agree with Dowdy – I think that, in order for children to flourish, they have to embrace their heritage, not try to hide it. Additionally, I agree with Delpit when she says “To speak out against the language that children bring to school means that we are speaking out against their mother, that their mother are not good enough to be a part of the school world.”

I do believe, however, that there is a place for using – and expecting our students to use – Standard English. In the public world, the working world, Standard English is the accepted mode of communication, and those who are not comfortable expressing themselves, whether in spoken language or in writing, in that way do not present themselves in the best light. I don’t mean that students should forsake their home language – I simply mean that it is important for students to be able to express themselves in ways that are easily understood in specific situations, in addition to their home language. Even as a white American, I have a Southern dialect which, I have realized, I slip into when I am talking casually with my family and neighbors. I catch myself saying “I am fixing to go to the store,” for example – a phrase I would never use in a professional setting. I think that most people naturally develop the skill of slipping into accepted speech patterns to fit into specific situations. Even the Obamas have developed that skill – both Michelle and Barack acknowledge that they speak differently as they speak with different groups.

We, as educators, must walk a fine line between valuing the home dialect of their students and expecting them to learn how to express themselves in Standard English in school situations.

Marlee Wright

“Our language has always been a part of our very souls…When we are with our own we revel in the rhythms and cadences of our connection” states Delpit. For many of us, this connection is and will always be our home, our mother’s language. For me it is my British northern roots, where I slide easily into a northern language. Delpit discusses the power of this language and how "self affirming and esteem building" it can be as we identify with those people who speak it.

However, as Delpit outlines, we all pay an emotional price for sounding different or for not using Standard English. Many societies, align a person’s intelligence to their mastery of “the queen’s English”.

I experienced this when my family moved from northern England to ‘down south’ in the UK. Like Dowdy, I too was “giggled and sniggered about”. I said words such as “book” with long, deep vowel sounds and not the clipped, softer short vowels used by my peers. It made no difference that I was a year ahead of them and I had already learned most of the curriculum they had just begun. I did not say the letter “h” correctly therefore, I was deemed less intelligent.

Suddenly, sadly the issue becomes “our concern about what others think” (Delpit).
Michelle Obama’s experience went beyond just the comparison to intellect; it was to race, ‘sounding white’ also equaled sounding more intelligent. Of course, grammar should not have anything to do with race. It is both ignorant and arrogant to think that it should. Unfortunately many people do. Those in society with money and power, what Delpit called “the white folks” tend to validate and create ‘rules’ about how they think certain groups of people should speak in order to gain social acceptance. Whilst no one dialect or language is any more grammatically correct than another (According to Dr. Gill!) those with power can make it appear so.

Delpit’s story about the brilliant computer employee and the company’s inability to look past her ‘southern’ language “to appreciate her expertise” reflects how few of us, if we are honest can truly “listen beyond” language form today. I am certainly guilty of commenting on dialects and probably questioned their intellect. The media also reinforces these stereotypical views. In every aspect of our lives we quickly become aware of how our ‘languages’ must occupy separate spaces. So we create the “mask of language” that Dowdy discusses. We must be “in two places at the same time ‘ovuh dyuh’ and here too”.

The solution to try and alter the inequality that we perceive would be to to continue to do what we strive to do as teachers: To integrate and value both our ‘language of intimacy’ and our standard public one. Delpit’s example of using the hair care products as a way to meaningfully engage student’s attentions is the type of experience we also try to ensure our students have so that they find meaning in the classroom instruction and that it is relevant to their lives and their language. Above all, they have a chance to talk about it. My classroom is very rarely silent, and discussion is a large part of our curriculum.

However, I think we will always code switch. Our language at work is far different from our language at play. I code switch to engage my students, to engage them in learning and to listen to what they have to say. I use their language and experiences to make the learning meaningful. Conversely, I incorporate ‘British’ expressions that I use everyday to develop mutual understanding of language differences not inequalities and the children of various ethnicities in my room do the same. With this balance of language we can more meaningfully explore and understand the world around us.

Karen Massey-Cerda

I was moved by the raw truth in the stories from both chapters about children searching for their identity and trying to find a place to belong based on their use of language. Even Michelle Obama struggled with finding her own voice and said she was teased as a child for “talking like a white girl.” Like it or not, right or wrong, we are judged by others based on our choices, outward appearance, and yes even the way we talk.

In Dowdy’s “Ovuh Dyuh,” language was described and used as a tool to be mastered in order to gain personal and public power over the past “memory of slavery.” Dowdy’s passion for protecting her roots and honoring the person she truly felt she was is inspiring. She took a tough stand against her mother and embraced her Trinidad heritage by the way she spoke and chose to wear her hair. Feeling torn between the two worlds of what feels right and what looks right is what ultimately shapes who we are as people. Accepting who you are and allowing others to be themselves too is what will set us all free. In a perfect world and in writing that sounds great but it is tougher task to put into practice. I encourage my students to remember that it doesn’t matter what someone looks like on the outside, but rather what is on the inside and how they treat others that really counts. I guess I often get caught up in everyone getting along, that I could at times do a better job of acknowledging and celebrating their differences too.

Affirming differences and being accepted are key points that I related to in Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense.” Whether using Standard English or Ebonics to express ourselves, it feels good to be accepted and part of a group that we like and likes us. Delpit’s daughter experienced this feeling when she moved schools and learned a “second language form.” Who is to say that there is only one right way to do anything, much less tell someone the way they can and can’t express themselves? Kids know when they are with their friends and/or family there is a certain language used, different from how they talk in public or school. “Code-switching” is the formal name for this. How interesting that children can acquire this ability and knowledge without formal lessons. Instead such authentic learning takes place when it is fun and you don’t even know it is happening. As teachers, who tend to get bogged down by the pressure of tests scores, we can take from this chapter that learning can be made fun again! Let’s not take ourselves or our students too seriously. Instead, get to know them and use that knowledge as a foundation for helping them discover the larger world through language. I think in today’s classrooms there has to be a balance of allowing individual expression as well as traditional/formal instruction.

Ruth Ann Timmons

I couldn't imagine having to double think every aspect of my being just to be accepted, but I guess that is exactly how minority groups feel. To feel like you had to change who your are just to be "adequate". Language is a part of our soul and part of what makes us who we are. I think it is very important for teachers to gain knowledge about the home language of children. The example in the article about the employee that was brillant in computer technology, but her speech pattern was an issue. None of the companies could move past her language to appreciate her expertise. So, do we as a society negatively assess someone's intelligents and potential based on what we can only see and hear? I understand that in the professional world the issue is professionalism, but who sets the standards for what is professional? If I hold an administration position I have to ask myself, do I want the person that will do the best job, or do I want the person that will reflect my standards and what I consider professional? Who says that what I say is professional isn't wrong? If someone can't be themselves and be comfortable being who they are...that's sad. We all have students everyday trying to please us. Do we really want teacher pleasers, or would we rather have students that feel comfortable with who they are and have the freedom to be who they are? This goes back to the article when students' interests are addressed in school, they are more likely to connect with the school, with teachers, and with their work. Is that not what we want for our students? I think we must look at the BIG picture...are they learning what they need to be successful in life and are we creating life-long learners. Language is part of who we are and we must strive to understand the differences...it's a multicultural world and the teachers more so than the students need to understand the differences we have within our own classrooms. With that being said, I do strongly feel that students should be taught proper English and grammar and be encouraged to speak it. BUT, we must embrace who they are and the dialect that is part of their family without doing more harm than good. As teachers we sometimes listen to the way our students speak rather than what they are saying. We need to listen beyond the words and hear what is being said.

Karin Scott

I believe there are times in our lives whether black or white that we are uncomfortable in our own skin or in our learned vernacular and speech. I do realize that black language and speech reflects the culture and upbringing of that race and they along with many other races are perceived as using speech and accent and slang that is unbecoming to the race in power. Historically, yes, the white race and the way of expression and articulation have made up the majority of the upper class echelon in many ways including the educated. With that being said and also understanding the taunts and jokes that surround our social network, I must also say that all races are victims in this respect. I grew up in a small cotton manufacturing community in a primitive Baptist church. All families were poor and had to work very hard in cotton, farming, milling, and tobacco to make a living. I grew up with an extreme southern accent unless I compare it to a friend of mine from Georgia. I was very comfortable with my accent, sayings, drawing out words, using extra vowels in words until I attended Appalachian State University. There I discovered that my way of speaking was held in low esteem as compared to some of the students in other states. This is a perception that may not ever change and not unlike the black vernacular in the eyes of others. After teaching a year in Randleman, NC., I began working for Burlington Industries in management. Although this company was located in a southern county, most of the upper management were from Virginia and northward. They spoke professionally and articulated well. Eventually I was given an opportunity to attend a workshop on, "Conquering Your Southern Accent". I declined this opportunity and was somewhat irritated that they thought my accent was offensive. I realized in their eyes that I sounded stupid and inept. This is the same hurt that blacks feel and have felt over history.
In Michelle Obama's video I don't think she is apologizing for not lapsing into her born and bred vernacular and the same with President Obama. Over time I have realized that we all have several different ways of communicating depending on the circumstance. I can easily lapse into my best southern drawl when I am home and with family. I can choose to use my public speaking voice when I am in a mixed crowd. I have a completely different way of communicating when I write and would not use much of this language as everyday speech. I don't think that any of us can ever overcome what we were born with but we can choose to respect our very diverse nation when addressing them. Michelle Obama did make it clear that she grew up in a middle class working family but she had the motivation to make good grades and excel. Perhaps we should all follow her example to not only try to be more comfortable in our own skin or situation but also be comfortable with everyone's.

Candy Kee

In reflections of the readings and podcast this week I realized the people that I know best in my environment are code switchers! I believe as was outlined in the readings that society does dictate what someone’s language should sounds like. Of course being from the south, when I am carrying on a conversation at home, I sound “country.” When I am at work I use different vocabulary when speaking with parents and colleagues in an effort to be more “professional”. With my students I find it hard to be anything but myself and I suppose that is when I speak a more natural southern dialect and sometimes speak a language I think they can understand. I was not surprised by the readings as I have heard my colleagues speak of talking white or sounding white as something they learned to do. I think Michelle Obama is a classy lady and presents herself very well. She told the truth from her perspective and I respect that. Does she code switch? I would think so, don’t we all? Karen S. Gold

Literacy is a way that all students can express themselves. Reading allows students to go to different places and assume different identities. I believe that reading is very appealing to minority students because they can go to a place where they can be their self and don’t have to hide who they are. Literacy is a great resource when it comes to getting to know your students. By paying attention to the books they grab during Library or SSR time, you will learn your student’s interests. For example, the article mentioned that Daniel enjoyed reading books about American Indian heroes. A teacher should use these specific interests to help get students interested in the other content areas. The teacher could do an integrated unit about American Indian heroes. Not only will this interest Daniel, but it will also give the other students an opportunity to learn about Daniel’s culture.

Writing allows students to share their talents, feelings, and to tell you what is important to them without actually speaking to you. Daniel used his writings to talk about issues he was experiencing. One writing that particularly touched me was “Daniel’s Time at School.” It talked about his desire to be white (so that he could be popular and attractive), and about his need to be accepted for who he is. It is very sad that Daniel thought that the only way to be accepted by others was to be a ‘white boy.’ Daniel’s parents had taught him to be proud of his heritage and to accept everybody, so I assume that these thoughts and feelings were caused by ridicule from peers.

Zonnie’s language arts teacher required that they write in a journal, so she used poetry and her journal entries to express herself. Like Daniel, Zonnie used these journal entries to talk about issues that were affecting her such as racial discrimination and acceptance. What a great way to get to know your students! I don’t mean get to know their favorite color or how many siblings they have, but get to know their feelings, thoughts, and their values. When I get my own classroom, I hope to include time for students to write in journals as part of my daily schedule. If we expect them to tell us about their ‘secrets,’ then we should take the time to write a response. We don’t have to respond to every entry, but at least once a week would be ideal for me. For a student like Daniel or Zonnie, my response would include words of encouragement and praise just for being the person that they are. I don’t know if any of their teachers ever took the time to let them know how wonderful and brilliant they are, just as they are, but I bet it would have made a world of difference. Maybe they would have felt more accepted (at least by their teacher), more confident in who they are, and proud of their heritage. All of our students need to know that we love them, just as they are.

I mentioned that literacy is a great way for students to express themselves, but it is also a great way to teach acceptance of others. I believe that some children don’t realize they are being mean and not accepting others- they need to be taught how to treat others, love others, and accept others. The best way to teach this is by example. We need to be fair, accepting, and loving to others. In reality, are we going to like everybody that we meet? No, but we still need to accept and love them just as they are. Like Daniel’s father said, “There is only one race, the human race. There’s good and bad [in all of us].”

Lisa Beach

Indian students balance their lives between two worlds, Indian and White. This struggle is very difficult at times. Daniel and Zonnie felt like they had to civilize themselves into the mainstream of the white culture. They both struggled with fitting in and felt isolated. I wonder how many children we serve of different cultures/backgrounds that may feel this same way in our schools today? They both were at an age when acceptance by peers is so important, but they were becoming aware of the differences between their native culture and the mainstream white culture. Because of these differences the result was that Indian students' experiencing racism, discrimination, and prejudice in school related to their lack of academic success. So my question is, was the result of low academic performance coming from dealing with racism or was it a true literacy issue? I think both. I think the racism was a result of the lack of self-esteem and how they saw themselves as students. I also think that they were not exposed to literature that interest them and therefore they had no desire to learn.
They both had talents that enabled them to express themselves through a form of literacy. Both students were able to connect to their native worlds through the arts. We need to bridge the gap between cultures and in doing so, we (teachers and communities) need to take the time to understand one another. As teachers we need to go beyond our "world" and find ways to give everyone a voice. We need to know our students, parents, and cultures that we serve in order to make connections that we can use to build stronger relationships and to ensure that all of our students are learning. We need to get away from expecting students to learn what we think they should know and allow them opportunities to learn what is important to them. Students should not be forced to the "white" world, but to the worlds that make them who they are and that they will be a part of as they grow. Teachers need to be aware of what they are teaching and who they are teaching to. We need to ensure that we are teaching a cultural responsive curriculum.

After reading this article, one of the things that struck me the most was when Zonnie’s English teacher said “Zonnie is just kind of there.” This just seemed to me like it should be something of a warning sign to a teacher. If you ever realize that a student is “just there,” there’s something going wrong somewhere and it’s your job to figure out what it is and how to fix it so that student is more than “just there.” A student who is “just there” isn’t getting the full benefit of the classroom experience, nor are his/her peers getting to learn from him/her. No wonder Zonnie wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about doing her schoolwork. It’s not as if Zonnie hated reading or writing, in fact she liked reading horror stories and spent most of her free time writing poetry. So why was she so reluctant/unable to become an active participant in her Language Arts class? She commented that she thought the work was easy, and the topics boring, yet she only averaged B’s and C’s. The reading teacher Zonnie claimed to have connected with the most didn’t even know she liked to read, let alone what she liked to read. Zonnie said the teacher knew she was intelligent, while the teacher said she was mediocre. This saddened me because Zonnie stayed after to school to talk to this teacher, but was she even listening? As a reading teacher, how do you not know what your students enjoy reading? The only two explanations I can think of are either she never asked or she did ask and didn’t bother to listen to the answer. I’m not sure which is worse.

In both the cases of Daniel and Zonnie, literacy was a way for them to express themselves. I was amazed at how well they were able to do this, despite the fact that no one really seemed to respond to their work or encourage it, especially in Zonnie’s case. By paying attention to what students choose to write or read, it can really help a teacher get to know his/her students. It is really unfortunate that the teachers of these two students did not take advantage of these opportunities because it is especially helpful with trying to understand the feelings of minority students. Even the simplest things, like an encouraging response to a journal entry, can make a big difference.

Kim Strzelecki

Literacy plays a primary role in all of our lives, but it’s also one of the easiest ways to reach out and connect to children. Children are consumed in books every day and all day at school, then they go home and we hope it continues. Literacy can build children’s interest into their future. I teach second grade and through the day students are amerced in literature all day long from whole group reading, guided reading, SSR, science, social studies, and read alouds. This is how we help to build students curiosity in their literacy journey.

As we saw in the study the two children had very different interest, but that is the beauty of literacy it has an interest point for everyone. Students can then write and reflect upon what interest them. The key to this is making a connection. As stated with Zonnie “she preferred writing about her own real experience.” So for her connecting to her life and what was happening was the key to keeping her connected and interested in the literacy process. If we choose to ignore student’s interest we lose them in their literacy journey. Also there were some signs that the teacher need to adhere to. Zonnie was performing average as they used the term “just there” and only liked to write about her own life experiences. The teachers made little effort to help make connections to make the literacy experience more meaningful. Zonnie’s journey in school could have been so different if the teach would have helped to build those connections.

Both Daniel and Zonnie experienced hard times in school because they were at the most impressionable age and wanted expectance from their peers. I think one problem the pre-teens had is that they did not have high self-esteems of themselves due to low academic performance. When students perform low in this creates low self-esteem. I think the teachers could have done a better job making connections for the two with literature and writing to help build their interest. Once students are hooked with a good entry point they will begin to become successful and feel better about themselves.

Kara Scott

Zonnie and Daniel both young and journeying into the world to live and learn with excitement for the future. They both are so innocent and unaware of the slurs, disapproval and jokes that will invade their lives as they journey through. Whites are supreme as far as numbers. We think so shallowly as well that we are superior. We think our culture is the best. We resist people of color and cultural differences. We keep our distance and do not want to share or let those people in. Zonnie and Daniel both have hearts, souls, brains, awesome talent and cultural art to share. We are the close minded and the unappreciative ones. Our curriculum is designed more for white history and culture. Our reign as the superior race may be a fleeting one now. Many cultures and races have moved into the United States and are marrying into white families. Whites are marrying into diverse culture and race families. The cycle of kick ass meaness from our past and current generations will dissapate over time. Will we understand the ramifications of what we do then?
I have much apathy for Zonnie and Daniel that feel their culture is not important and their history and heritage is not valuable. The kind of treatment they endured as school students is repulsive to me. We must learn to celebrate and read about all cultures in our world and especially if we have these students in our classes. All children regardless of race, color, culture, religion have a right to an education. They have a right to receive respect from others. They are the courageous ones and the ones that will hopefully excel in life and not let the history of racial injustice torture their hearts and souls through their lives.
As years go by I have become more aware of the importance of multicultural studies and celebrations within the classroom. I fear that much of the racial injustice we see today stems from older generations. They seem to love to pass on negative history. We must work harder than ever in the classroom to change this narrow way of thinking and open doors for all of God's children to enter equally in order to learn and prepare for generation's ahead.
This account and study of Daniel and Zonnie should be read by all teachers and used as a lesson for others.
Candy Kee

What struck me most while reading these case studies was that both Daniel and Zonnie could have really enjoyed school if effort was made by the teachers to help them make connections to what was being done in class. For example, we know that Daniel enjoys reading the newspaper Indian Country Today in his free time, but when current events are discussed in his class only current events of the mainstream newspaper are used. This leads to Daniel not participating in class discussions because he feels the events being discussed do not pertain to him. The civics teacher stated that Daniel could bring in an article from Indian Country Today to share, but it’s very likely that Daniel fears teasing and bullying if he is the one to bring his culture’s current events up for class discussion. If the teacher was to provide articles from this paper a couple of times, perhaps Daniel would feel more willing to bring in articles he finds interesting. Similarly, Zonnie enjoys reading magazines and horror books, but she is under the impression that these texts are not “appropriate stuff” for school. If her reading teacher would take some time to talk with Zonnie about what she likes to read, Zonnie may feel more comfortable about reading her preferred texts in school. These simple tasks: bringing in a relevant news article and discussing the acceptance of all types of texts, would make a huge difference in Daniel and Zonnie’s class participation.

In terms of completing class assignments, I believe the teachers need to make an effort to engage students like Daniel and Zonnie in a way that is meaningful to them. Both of them have grown up in a culture rich with history in which they’ve learned to sing, dance, and play music. Why can’t Daniel create a musical presentation to share his book instead of writing a book report? As he stated, he does read more than the teachers probably realize, but he just does not complete the book reports. Since storytelling through music is part of Daniel’s background, music would be a perfect way for him to share what he has read with the class. If the teacher was willing to expand assignments beyond written reports, other students may also benefit from the ability to express themselves more fully. Enthusiasm on the part of the teacher would also hopefully minimize any bullying backlash of these new assignments. For Zonnie, she has stated that she does not like making up stories. She has grown up writing poetry that expresses the feelings and actions of herself and those around her. In the case study it is unclear if the language arts teacher ever even reads the work Zonnie presents in her journal. I feel that this teacher is missing the opportunity to turn a “mediocre” writer into a great writer. All it would take is showing a little appreciation for the writing she creates and enjoys.

Finally, I couldn’t help but make a connection between Daniel’s case study and the Delpit article from earlier this week. In her article, Delpit mentioned that students feel further alienated in schools when their cultural contributions are left out of history lessons. Daniel brings up the very same issue when he states that his history courses only study “white man’s stuff.” I had never really heard this point-of-view expressed by a student before, although I had read about it in multiple books and articles. It was another reminder for me that I need to keep this issue in mind when teaching history in my own classroom.

Andrea Schlobohm

“How help them understand?” was usually the first question that came to my mind while teaching students of diverse cultures. This reading helped me realize this should not be the first question I ask myself. It should be more along the lines of, “how can I understand my student?”
Developing strong background knowledge about each student individually is key. This knowledge can provide information needed to better meet the needs of students. It may also allow teachers to develop more sensitivity to students’ cultures and backgrounds. Knowing where your students are coming from and what they deal with outside of the classroom can also build trust in the teacher-student-parent relationship. If students know that their teacher is truly invested in their live in and out of school this can only be positive. I have done this in the past but I need to be more in depth. Every year about mid-way through the year I find out something significant about one of my students that I could have found out earlier if I would have dug a little deeper.

While reading, I found it interesting that Zonnie did not describe herself as a good reader. This was because she did not read books about real people like her mother did. Instead, said that she read things like, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone, things that she believed did not teach her anything. She was down playing her choice of literature. She could have easily pointed out that she enjoyed reading a variety of genres for fun. It makes me wonder, did Zonnie’s family instill this thought in her? Is their view of literacy one that only consists of nonfiction genres? Although neither Zonnie nor Daniel were the most high achieving students, they both planned on using literacy in their future. I think this proves that some form of literacy can serve as an outlet for many people, even if they do not consider it literacy.

Zonnie and Daniel were lucky to have such supportive parents. They both had parents who read to them at home and had open lines of communication. This reading pointed out that all youth have some sort of struggle growing up and trying to find their identity. This struggle is even more challenging if you are of a diverse background and you’re your heritage questioned or made fun of. I believe that their parents’ support of their “school world”, embracement of their culture, and communication along the way, made this process a little less daunting. As we all know, not all children are lucky enough to have parents as supportive as Zonnie and Daniel’s parents. This is where their teacher can provide support and understanding (if they dig deep enough to understand their student’s culture and heritage).

Stacy Durham

After reading the Noll article, I can’t help but feel a little disappointment in the role of the teachers of Daniel and Zonnie. Though the article refers that the teachers, in their own perspectives and opinions, provided opportunities for all of their students to express their own identity through the various assigned readings (especially in regards to Daniel’s civics teacher who allowed students to choose articles that involved current events), I can’t help but feel that they must not have provided enough for their students. By this, maybe the teachers weren’t as inviting to the different cultures within their classrooms – something that the Delpit and Dowdy articles noted was crucial when building literacy in students of different races and cultures. The fact that many of the student artifacts gave insight into Daniel and Zonnie’s feelings, experiences, and perspectives suggests that their teachers were totally oblivious to all of their literacy capabilities. What was even more astonishing was how Zonnie’s language arts teacher felt she was just there even though she felt quite the opposite and mentioned that this teacher was perhaps one of her favorites because he understood and listened to her.

This article only affirms that as a teacher, my goal in trying to best meet the needs of my students is to get to know them – their interests, backgrounds, families, cultures, etc. By being aware of their cultural interests and traditions, I would be taking the first step to creating a multi-cultural classroom where all students are accepted and respected by me and their peers. It is no wonder that the educational apathy felt by Daniel and Zonnie was a direct result that most of the discrimination and rejections they experienced actually occurred at school by their peers.

Also, the article demonstrates how powerful literacy is to each individual. Daniel and Zonnie used it as a way of helping them to define their identity and think through the challenges they faced. In my opinion, I see that the music, art, writing, and dance was a coping mechanism to make sense of the prejudices so they could discover where they fit within their predominantly white community. Even though all adolescents find it difficult in establishing their own identity, it is more internally complex for the Native American adolescents mentioned in the article because they have to learn how to operate in a world that rejects or downgrades their native cultures. However, at home, these participants were experiencing the extreme opposite where parents placed emphasis on the history and traditions of their Native American cultures, focusing that this is who they are and it need not be forgotten. Therefore, these students, along with many others, are left wondering, “Who am I, really, and how am I important?”

Relating this to my classroom, it’s important to realize that no matter what culture, race, or gender, literacy is a method of forming a student’s identity and this literacy is achieved in several methods. Therefore, it’s crucial to know my students, welcome who they are, be sensitive to their needs, and help them find ways to develop within the confines of school. This means that classroom writing may not just be letters, narratives, and reports typically addressed in the curriculum but poems, songs, forms of art and dance, and personal stories that allow students to express themselves. My writing (literacy) program need to transform to the interests and needs of the students so that a complacency regarding school won’t be expressed, and I need to let students know that I will accept them the way they are developing. My expectations for my students’ behaviors need to be set so that all classroom members will regard each other with respect, regardless of physical differences. Though this is something that I strive to achieve each day, I need to make myself more sensitive and aware that just because a student won’t express himself or herself in the way I would doesn’t make his or her way wrong and mine right. I need to make sure I am giving students an ample opportunity to select what is important to them (topics, method of expression, etc.) and make sure that they are aware that their choices will be respected no matter what, which goes beyond what the teachers in the articles did.

Melissa Riley

After reading Elizabeth Noll’s case-study research in Experiencing Literacy: In and Out of School, I felt with supportive role models and positive outlets for their personal expression, minority students like Daniel and Zonnie can find some balance between the multiple cultures in their lives. Each of these students embraced the American Indian culture of their families while trying to find acceptance in their white mainstream school culture. Today’s young adolescents have enough confusion about finding their own identity in their families and school, but when these cultures clash the conflict can often cause negative reactions and consequences.
The encouraging aspect of this study is the support of both Daniel and Zonnie’s family, not only for their education but for their talents in their music and writing as well. Even though Zonnie’s father was absent most of her life, his incarceration did not keep him from being involved in her literacy development. The letters and poems she wrote to her father gave her a purpose for using literacy as a means of communication. This personal and meaningful writing paired with her love of music gives Zonnie an authentic means of expressing herself that cannot be matched in the school setting. Skill-based writing assignments and reading responses do not give students like Zonnie and Daniel the creative freedom to write about their own experiences and feelings. Like Zonnie, Daniel also felt capable when writing stories of personal interest but felt unmotivated to engage in school work that did not connect to his life. His interests were not celebrated in his school culture thus making him feel disconnected.
As a teacher, I am concerned that we are not making strong enough connections with our students’ cultural identity to create a more meaningful school environment. This is the identity they are most proud because it is where they find love and acceptance naturally and unconditionally. To motivate and engage students like Zonnie and Daniel, it is important to bring their family culture into the classroom to avoid the conflicts described in Noll’s research. Although Daniel’s civics teacher allowed students to bring their own articles to class for discussion, it would have been more acceptable for the teacher to take that initiative and show the class that other cultures have relevance in our society as well. We have a large Hispanic population at my school and although we work hard to accommodate their linguistic differences, I think we are more concerned about assimilating them into our culture so that they can be successfully mainstreamed into the “American” classroom. I would like to find more creative ways to bring their culture into the school to not only make their two worlds more connected, but to educate our American students about the values of different cultures in their community.

Michelle Carlson

As I read the Noll article, highlighting the literacy experiences of Daniel and Zonnie I was struck by the fact that these children, who grew up in the United States, were having these strong feelings of “disconnect”. We typically tend to think of ELL students or African American students when we think of students with dual-languages and cultural differences – I had not thought of American Indians having the same kind of experiences, particularly to the extent expressed by Daniel and Zonnie. I felt like their schools failed to support their efforts to learn. I was particularly struck by the fact that the teachers didn’t really seem to feel any connection with the two students, that they didn’t seem to know them well at all. It has been my experience that the more connected students feel with their teachers, the harder they will work and the more they learn. I was amazed that these teachers didn’t seem concerned that there was such a lack of connection.

As I read I was struck by the extent to which Noll took pains to express the perspectives of the American Indian people. She, very painstakingly, communicated their point of view. Noll was careful not to report her own perception of what they thought and believe, but, rather, to “capture the meaning that they confer on what they (do) and on the way other people react to what they (do.)” I believe that, too often, we become caught up in what we think our students are feeling and saying, and we forget to ask them...such a simple thing, really, but not something we do very often.

It was really evident that both students took great pride in their heritage. They both participated actively in music, dance, poetry, and art, and were able to express themselves fluently in those mediums. They were clearly intelligent students, but they both felt themselves to be on the outside of their school experiences. They seemed to feel so different from their classmates – and their classmates seemed to echo their feelings. I cannot help but think that if some teacher had taken the time to establish bonds with these students, they would have excelled. They had the home support we all want our students to have, and they had innate intelligence – I think a connection might have been the link that was missing.

The more I read, the more responsibility I feel to plan for and to provide rich multicultural literature and experiences for my students. This article reiterates the necessity to connect with my students on a personal way, to see them as people with interests and connections to abundant cultures of their own. We need to give them opportunities to share their own cultures and to help them learn to appreciate cultures of others. We have a lot of work to do in our classrooms, but I think the results will make it worthwhile.

Marlee Wright

Daniel and Zonnie’s teachers really “missed the boat”, didn’t they? First of all, where’s the teacher-student connection? Being bullied caused Daniel to become alienated at school. If a connection had been made, perhaps the teacher would have become aware of the bullying. Just speaking with the students doing the bullying could have made such a difference. The school counselor could have had lessons focused on bullying that includes racist comments. If the school personnel had had an impact on the reduction of bullying, Daniel and Zonnie would not have had to continue experiencing the mistreatment from others. They would not have had to struggle with issues of racism concerning their Indian identity. This change could have totally transformed their outlook on school. It seems to me that the school needed to embrace their culture in some way, like sponsoring a Cultural Awareness Week.

These teachers totally missed out on engaging Daniel and Zonnie in reading and writing. I found it surprising that Zonnie’s reading teacher had no idea what she liked to read. Something as simple as having students complete an Interest Inventory gives the teacher an idea of what the students’ interests are in reading and writing. Daniel’s teacher could have discovered that he enjoyed reading the comics in the weekly Indian newspaper as well as the wide range of genres that were mentioned, and expanded on those interests. Daniel needed to be as engaged in school as he was in powwows. Zonnie’s teacher could have recommended additional horror books for her to read. Matching readers with a book they might enjoy is a strategy to get them “hooked” on reading. Allowing student choice in reading material is also motivating. If their teachers had known that they had an interest in art, music, writing and dancing, they could have used a multisensory approach in their lessons for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners.

Thank goodness Daniel and Zonnie had strong cultural ties and a strong family unit encouraging them to do their best. It’s good that Daniel and Zonnie had writing as an outlet for their feelings. Every kid wants to feel like they belong, especially in the teen years.

Carol Holt

Noll’s qualitative case study discussed an obvious and necessary truth for us as teachers: know your students and build your curriculum on this knowledge. Being aware of the surrounding community in which you teach and the cultural dynamics of your students is crucial if they are to feel valued as individuals.

Noll’s article made this necessary truth all the more vital at the middle and high school level when adolescents of all backgrounds are searching for a sense of identity. However, the study was conducted in 1998. I would like to think that we have taken much greater strides in the types of literacies we offer our students and the value we place upon their cultural background in order for them to express their thoughts, culture and emotions.

It was surprising to read the parents reactions to Noll’s ‘literacy club’. The association they had with the term literacy as a “euphemism for illiteracy” made me think about our Spanish partners in print ‘literacy’ nights that we offer at our school. Are we sending that message, despite us implementing a program with the intentions of simply helping children to read and develop literacy experiences?

The study challenged me to think about my current literacy practices. I work in a school with an extremely diverse population. For many of the students in my classroom, irrespective of their cultural background, I know that specialty areas such as music, art and drama are often cited as a favorite part of the elementary school day. For some of our challenging students, it is what keeps them connected to their learning. The arts provide multiple opportunities for literacy expression and a means to make sense of the world. As Noll explains, “the ways in which the adolescents “read the word and the world” in a variety of contexts”.

Food, books, literature and the use of discussion and media are predominantly the means by which I try to meaningfully integrate students’ cultural backgrounds. Our reading program offers many diverse texts from multiple countries that my students enjoy discussing and can empathize with. The Hmong and Hispanic students in my room have enjoyed bringing in traditional clothing centered around festivals, discussed foods and stories from their own culture along with sharing their language with others. Many of my students have discussed the reasons why their parents chose to leave their native countries and they often discuss the role bilingualism plays in their lives.

I also offer multiple literacies in my room including poetry, technology, art and reading and genre writing. My students are engaged writers in their daily journals in our writer’s workshop. They often have free choice to write about their own experiences and often do write about Hmong and Hispanic family celebrations.However, these activities are not always purely from a cultural base. I need to bridge the gap further by planning more cultural based topic choices. For example, students often create their own poetry however, the models are often chosen by me and the content is not centered primarily on cultural background and experiences. I offer students experiences in multiple genres so why not multiple cultural topics? I realize that I am a work in progress and need to do as Noll suggested, “to adopt a wider lens” for deeper understanding of my students views of the world.

Zonnie certainly appeared to have more of these types of opportunities than Daniel who “seemed to lack a sense of belonging”. (Noll). Her teacher took the time to plan a poetry unit with discussion about racism and prejudice. However, it was evident that there was a great deal of wasted opportunity and potential for both of these students. They clearly loved literary expression, which shone through in their writing artifacts and career hopes. As Noll notes, meaningful literacy opportunities that link home and school “ Can serve to make visible their cultural knowledge and perspectives” and reveal the literacy strengths of students.

Karen Massey-Cerda

There were parts of this article describing our educational system that I found tremendously frustrating. One issue I had was the assumption that students have literacy deficiencies when in fact, the teachers and students often have difficulty understanding each other. Therefore, the teachers, because of their hierarchical role, judge the students to be lacking in ability when really miscommunication is the primary concern. It’s important for a teacher to look at her students and reflect about what the real problem is. If I have a whole class that does poorly on an assignment, was it the students, or was it my teaching and clarity as to the expectations of the assignment? I think many teachers blame the students for their lack of achievement when oftentimes the teacher needs to reflect on changes they could make themselves.

As seen in the remainder of this article, Daniel and Zonnie are considered average to below average students yet they have some incredible literary talents that their teachers do not recognize because they have not bothered to learn about them or their culture. If the teachers aligned their curriculum to meet the students’ interests they might see some real imagination and engagement in language arts. Daniel shared that things that he studies in school do not relate to him because they are mostly about “white man’s stuff.” Since the teachers don’t appear to show an interest in him, I believe Daniel responds by not showing an interest in school and doesn’t complete assignments that he is very capable of doing. It’s not important to him. This reminds me of one of my favorite students from 4 years ago. He left my class in 2nd grade where he was thriving and went to a 3rd grade teacher who was pretty mean to her students. I would surprisingly see Brandon in the office on numerous occasions. When I would question him he would honestly say, “Mrs. Brown, she doesn’t show me respect so why should I respect her?” I didn’t know how to respond to his insight because my heart ached for this young man who had loved to learn the year before. I learned later that he started coping by excusing himself to go to the bathroom and go and sit in my friend’s 4th grade class in the back and listen to her teach! This demonstrates that children have the innate desire to learn. Like Brandon, Daniel and Zonnie wanted to learn but turned to cultural opportunities to learn because they were not inspired by school.

Things that do inspire them, such as singing, drumming, and poetry, are activities that they engage in wholeheartedly. Is there a reason that those things can’t be incorporated into school? I found the commonality between Zonnie and Daniel, as well as most other students I’ve worked with, to be the arts. There is a reason that the Multiple Intelligence Theory is known world wide…students learn in different ways. Yet when funding is cut, what is the first to go? The Arts. Therefore, this article is another reminder that teachers need to incorporate the arts into their program. Fortunately, Zonnie and Daniel have families that promote their children’s interests and strengths. Yet there are many students whose families are not culturally involved so their children are not aware of that outlet and the only source of their education is school. That is why it is our job as teachers to involve both the arts and cultural opportunities (hopefully ones that students can make a connection with) into our teaching.

-- Carrie Brown

Noll brings up a good point when she discusses the low test performance of American Indian students. The information presented on these tests most likely did not relate to topics or subjects of which these students possessed prior knowledge. It seems that these tests could easily have been considered biased. How well would white children perform if they were given a test designed by a different culture? It is simply not fair to view or define children “by sets of numbers rather than by the experiences and activities of their daily lives.” (Goodman 1992) It is easy to understand why students’ test scores would improve when using “locally developed materials.” (Begay 1995)

After reading about the case studies of Daniel and Zonnie, I have found a new respect for our Native American cultures. What a great literacy support system these two children had! It was evident that both students had parents who helped build a rich literacy foundation. They understood the importance of self-expression. After all, isn’t expression the very reason for language? Daniel and Zonnie were able to utilize literacy to convey their thoughts, not simply read about the ideas and thoughts of others.

In facilitating a child’s growth in literacy, we must consider their personal needs and interests. Isn’t that what we do as parents? We encourage children to write notes and letters to friends, read and reread favorite fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and sing favorite songs over and over. These earliest literacy experiences are pertinent to children and enable them to begin building background knowledge. Daniel and Zonnie had the optimum foundational experiences with regards to reading and the arts. Their parents and siblings facilitated their learning. With a culture rich in family values, music, art, and literacy, both students were successful in expressing themselves. This expression is the whole purpose of language- to convey meaning.

I found it interesting that both students were quite private when it came to sharing their innermost feelings. For this reason, they both expressed their disappointment with white students through their writing. Daniel would write about his experiences with racism and discrimination in stories while Zonnie would record her thoughts in a journal entry or poem.

In reflection, it must be very difficult for students of minority races to become better readers while having little background knowledge and reading about topics which are of little interest. It is a shame that Zonnie did not consider herself to be a good reader because she did not “really read appropriate stuff” although she did enjoy reading poetry by Langston Hughes. (Noll) Zonnie could relate to Hughes’ position as a minority. Daniel choice for reading was a weekly newspaper and the comics. In both accounts, reading was meaningful for them when it related to their worlds.

I believe a key theme of this reading is to celebrate cultural differences. Different cultures cultivate and convey meaning in various ways. Literacy comes in many forms. Ultimately, it is not for us to determine that one race or culture is superior over another. Rather we should recognize the differences and provide opportunities for expression.

Holly Lawson

In reading the research by Noll, I was interested in a couple of things. The first was the scenarios of literacy in the home at an early age by both Daniel and Zonnie. Another concern of mine was the teacher responses or no responses to each student in regard to their academics.
Daniel was raised in a literature rich environment where his family valued reading. This was evident by reading to him, taking him to the public library, storytelling and the emphasis put on keeping with tradition. Daniel had to deal with racial issues from white students at his school and I wonder if he had been in a more accepted environment would he have excelled academically? His parental support was very solid but no mention of a real “home-school” connection which I think is important for student success. It’s not that his parents didn’t care but perhaps did not feel comfortable at school, especially after Daniel’s being called names and taunted by others.
Zonnie also had positive parental support and also holds strong family ties. She was exposed to books and reading, was read to as a small child and also frequented the public library. She values family traditions, music, dance and especially poetry. Poetry is her outlet to express herself. The sad truth for Zonnie is that she seems to have a talent for writing poetry but her family is the only ones that know this. I was saddened by the lack of response to her poetry by her teacher. Aren’t we as educators commanded to recognize talents such as writing? This seems to be a passion for her and how disappointing to feel so strongly about something but not be recognized for it.
I think this study proves our need for being culturally responsive teachers. We need to make it our goal to understand diverse cultures and find ways to make the students and parents in our communities feel welcome in school if we ever hope to bridge that home-school connection.
Karen S. Gold

“Historically, schools have served to promote mainstream cultural values and expectations and have disregarded the experiences, languages, and cultural understandings of American Indians and other underrepresented groups” (p. 206). This was certainly the case with both Daniel’s and Zonnie’s school experience. The Native American culture that Daniel and Zonnie both belonged to was not represented or embraced by their predominantly white school. As a result, both students felt disconnected from the curriculum and were viewed as poor students. Daniel’s teachers felt that his poor performance in school was due to disorganization and a busy life outside of school. They did not take into consideration his inability to relate to the curriculum, particularly in his civics class. Zonnie did not enjoy doing school work and felt as though her time could be better spent writing poetry.

I feel that this happens quite frequently in classrooms today. We teach in schools that are filled with students from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Instead of incorporating these cultures into our curriculums, we teach mainstream values and expectations and, as Noll points out, the cultural and linguistic differences that students possess are often viewed as deficiencies. This was obviously the case for the parents in the study as well, since they wondered if the literacy club was going to be remediation for their children’s supposed deficiencies. Often, we do not take the time to get to know our students like we should. We do not delve into their interests or seek to engage them in academics by creating lessons that revolve around these interests.

As educators we have an obligation and a responsibility to understand and respect the cultures of our students. We must use this knowledge to make connections, identify student interests, and create a “culturally relevant curriculum” for our students. As I read about Daniel and Zonnie’s literacy experiences in school, I began to question my own classroom practices. While I do recognize and respect the many cultures present in my classroom, am I truly integrating these cultures into my literacy curriculum?

I have begun to use more multicultural literature in my classroom. However, I do not feel as though I have adequately integrated these cultures into my curriculum. I have not utilized the cultural knowledge of my students or my community to the extent that I should. I realize that I must do a better job of building the bridge between school and home in order to foster greater feelings of self-worth and belonging in my students. This can be accomplished by creating a “culturally relevant curriculum” and validating the “expression of cultural knowledge, perspectives, and personal experiences” (p. 230) through the use of multiple literacy activities.

Leslie Rothenberger

Noll’s research of the two American Indian teenagers, Zonnie and Daniel was insightful and eye opening. As a teenager I remember wrestling and being consumed with many of the same issues and interests: friend/peer relationships, boys, self-esteem, career/future planning, music, dance, social gatherings. However I did not experience the added burden shared by Zonnie and Daniel of discrimination. Unfortunately the situations described seemed to not only include students but teachers too. I’m assuming, maybe wrongfully so, that instead of getting to know Daniel and Zonnie they made false judgments based on their race and/or previous experiences with other American Indians.

Not trying to get to know your students personally (background, culture, and interests) is an injustice to the continuum of education. Putting forth that extra effort and attempting to engage all your students is vital and even the smallest act of reaching out could make a world of difference. Daniel probably would have found civics more relevant if his teacher had led by example, not just mentioned, using the Indian Country Today. I know even my kindergarten students have more attentive and productive days when I ask about their weekend game or another personal event they mentioned earlier. Daniel could have also really used the boost of positive reinforcement by hearing his Halloween story read aloud, seeing as how this was one of the few assignments manage to submit.

Literacy is influenced, supported, and accomplished by a variety of factors. Noll’s research clearly depicted the influence of “American Indian culture, mainstream popular culture, and school culture” on Zonnie and Daniel. These teenagers connected with poetry and music, choosing these avenues as a means of working through and expressing feelings too tough to simple talk about. I think we all have our outlets and ways of coping with the pressures of life. This research has reminded me of the importance of being a good example, sharing ways I use reading and writing in and out of school with my students. Making a point to show and talk through examples of lists or notes I’ve made at home could spark my student’s interests. Starting at a young age is important but as this research has shown, continuing to support and show interest in each child’s culture can only improve on their literacy development.

Ruth Ann Timmons

I would like to begin by bringing attention to a quote that was included in the Henry article, which I found particularly valuable and powerful. “When I use the term voice, I am thinking of a strong sense of identity within an individual, an ability to express a personal point of view, and a sense of personal well-being that allows a student to respond to and become engaged with the material being studied by the other students in the classroom, and the teacher. Voice, in this sense, is having a place in the academic setting, other than just a desk and a book.” –Beverly McElroy-Johnson

My experience with minority students (as a student and a teacher) has shown me that the majority of these students actually appear ‘voiceless’ most of the time. They are the shy, timid students who do the work required, ask no questions, and usually cause no behavior problems. When comparing these students with the characteristics mentioned in the above quote, it seems that these students would be considered as ‘just a desk and a book.’ This brings me to question whether these students lack the abilities and characteristics of a voice and are indeed voiceless or do they choose not to exercise their voice, and do they know how to use their voice? My guess is that these students choose not to be heard most of the time, but they do need guidance in how to use their voice effectively. So, how do we help students identify their voice and exercise it?

To begin with, we need to help students meet the criteria above. We need to help them identify with who they are, encourage them to share their thoughts, opinions, and concerns, and expect them to actively participate in class. We can help our students achieve this by providing interesting literature, holding group discussions about ‘real’ issues, and requiring verbal/written assignments that will help students recognize their identity, express their views, and allow them to be actively engaged with material, as well as respond to material. Staples mentions that maintaining high standards for students
helps them realize their academic responsibilities. In addition, we need to encourage students to use their voice. If we welcome their voice, they will be more willing to exercise it. Students need to feel that they can freely and openly use their voice, verbally or written, to communicate with their peers and teachers.

Every child has a voice, and it is our responsibility to help them “speak up” for themselves, and “speak out” about whatever they feel necessary. Through patience, love, and encouragement we can help students find their voice. Only when their voice becomes heard, do they have a name and a place in the classroom. They are no longer a desk and a book. She is not the shy, Hispanic girl who sits in the third seat from the left on the first row and never makes a peep. She is loud, not afraid to express her feelings and thoughts, she is proud of who she is, and her name is ___________.

Lisa Beach

Staples and Henry provided fascinating insight into the way teenagers engage in literacies ‘outside of school’ and how they use these to explore social issues.
Staples discussed, as our previous readings have, the importance of ‘abolishing the great divide’. School and home should intertwine in the classroom and student backgrounds valued.

Staples article clearly explained our roles as teachers: “To carve out spaces, to inspire a sense of “not yet” and to reinvent schools and communities that are engaging for young people”. (Fine, 1997). This is not an easy task. It was clear from both Henry and Staples that the ‘classroom’ environment plays a role in creating an atmosphere that is conducive to students having a voice. Henry rightly suggests that teaches should ‘devise spaces inside of school that mirror outside spaces’. Single separate desks speak volumes to me about the level of interaction and types of cooperative discussion that can realistically take place amongst students. An environment geared for discussion that encourages cooperative learning and comfort, not silence is something we all recognize the importance of in our classrooms, irrespective of the age group. Other wise as Henry notes ’we leave them voiceless’.

The trust and freedom that Henry and Staples were able to create is also a crucial component to students having a ‘voice’. Teacher’s need to value what students have to say without judgment and understand that background shapes our diverse points of view.

It was also interesting to read about the ‘roadblocks’ that Henry encountered to students ‘coming to voice’. Henry notes it took a few weeks for the students she was working with to realize that there is never ‘one right answer” gleaming on the pages of a book. I agree with Henry who states that this is a difficult learning process for students of all backgrounds. Too often we experience teachers who expect the ‘right answer’ (I know I did growing up). These are classrooms where as Henry discusses, the teacher does all of the thinking, discussion and imposing of a correct ‘view’ or ‘voice’ and students sit silently without giving voice to their ideas.

Both articles also discussed the importance of the teacher learning to read what the students are reading. How else are we to transform the discussion process?
Staples argues that this atmosphere of trust, this creation of ‘voice’ also has to encompass positive reinforcement, acceptance of language variations, text value and collaboration. It was obvious that text engagement and text choice in the discussion process are essential. Staples explained how after reviewing the film ‘Hustle and flow’ students felt more confidence and more pride in their accomplishments because the issues being discussed mattered to them. They were also given multiple literacies to express their ‘voice’. Henry discovered that Kay used her voice more readily in writing and wrote at length when “ the topics were good” and she could ‘read the world’.

Clearly these experiences that we want for our students take considerable planning. I think it goes beyond simply providing the cultural texts that I have in my room. We have to know what students are truly interested in. Some themes as Henry argues are relevant to all kids and will meaningfully engage them. Others, as we have all previously discussed, need to reflect specific cultural backgrounds as well.

What resonates with me in both of these articles was the importance of planning for discussion throughout the school day. Not for the teacher to be in complete control, but for them to clearly define roles that the students will participate in. The students need to generate questions of their own in order for the group to make connections, create understanding and for all voices to feel valued. The teacher also has to deal with students who as Henry discusses ‘ come to school with real life questions that a teacher cannot always predict” or plan for. Henry’s response to Tamisha’s questions about when to begin being sexually active would have left me at a loss for words. Working in an elementary school, I would not have been equipped to deal with that type of question. However, she chose to turn that question to the group and asked them what they thought first. This choice in the spontaneous discussion maintained an atmosphere of trust and freedom that was so important to the students.

Henry summed up the needs that our students have: ‘they are anxious for spaces” and we must strive to provide them because ‘voice is identity, voice is power and a sense of purpose’.

Karen Massey-Cerda

In her efforts to explore the concept of “coming to voice” for African Caribbean girls, Henry wanted to provide students an opportunity to read and write about issues that were relevant to their own lives. To use Noll’s terminology, she wanted to create a curriculum that was culturally relevant. This was extremely important for Henry because, historically, black students and other minorities have been denied the opportunity to learn about their own culture from a critical or their own informed perspectives (Joseph, 1988). According to teacher Beverly McElroy-Johnson, we have ignored the issues in the lives of these children and have essentially left them “voiceless.”

As educators it is our responsibility and obligation to help these students find their “voice.” We must take steps to ensure that we are providing a curriculum that is relevant to their own personal experiences. Also, just as Delpit and Dowdy point out, Henry also asserts that we must have an awareness of the language and dialect interferences of these students so that we can avoid assuming that their cognitive capabilities are inferior. By accepting students’ linguistic differences and creating a curriculum that includes issues relevant to their own lives, educators can encourage students to participate in discussions and help them understand that their thoughts and ideas are important. We can help them to find their “voice.”

I found myself agreeing with Henry’s decision to ignore “errors” in the students’ writing. By doing this, she found that the students could express their feelings through writing. This is also true in my classroom. I have found that when my students respond to literature or write in their journals, they often ask, “Are you grading this? Are you going to count off if we misspell words?” They always sigh with relief when I answer no. I just want them to get their thoughts down on paper and they do this more freely when they know that I am not going to “grade” it. In this way we afford our students the opportunity to “speak up” and “speak out”.

Henry states that this is especially important for black girls who have been consistently shortchanged in the school setting. She asserts that “[b]lack females need a space for authentically reproducing themselves…” (p. 150). I associated this notion with Staples concept of “re-authoring.” “Re-authoring” is described as the self-reflective processes of naming and ascribing personhood (p. 380).

Staples referred to students who were named “disengaged,” “off-task,” “slow,” “struggling,” and “troublemaker” when they were within the confines of the classroom. Outside of the classroom these students were able to “re-author” or rename themselves. I think that teachers should really examine this concept “re-authoring.” Instead of focusing on our students’ weaknesses, we should focus on their strengths and “re-author” our own representations of our students.

These are our students, like Daniel and Zonnie, whose “school literacies belie their otherwise literacy-rich lives” (p. 379). As Staples points out, opportunities for our students to “re-author” are often missed by us as educators because we fail to see them as relevant to their literacy education (p. 380).

Again, teachers have the responsibility to help our students discover their ability to use their literacies to re-author themselves or find their voices. In order to do this, we (or at least I) need to provide our students with culturally relevant topics which allow them to "speak up" and "speak out" (Henry) and “the possibilities of new names in [their] dynamic literate lives” (Staples, p. 389).

Leslie Rothenberger

The concepts of “re-authoring” and “speaking up” and “speaking out” go hand in hand. They both are concerned with giving students a voice with which to speak and also to learn. Students who are labeled “slow,” “disengaged,” and “off task” re-author themselves outside of school and are allowed a different identity based on what their strengths and interests are. During the course of Staples’ article, the students in her groups are able to re-author themselves inside a school setting based upon their academic abilities. This should be able to happen in a regular classroom as well, not just during after school program. As teachers we should always work to see the strengths and unique abilities that our students bring to the classroom as opposed labeling them due to their weaknesses or any deficits they may have. This is extremely detrimental to the child because they catch on to that label, as well as it’s connotation, very quickly and it dictates their attitude toward school and learning for the rest of their school careers.

The concept of voice was very prevalent in Henry’s article as well. During the course of the study, the African Caribbean girls learned to speak their minds about a subject because, as they learned, “there is never only one ‘right answer’ gleaming on the pages of a book” (p. 241). Too often students today are too concerned with getting the “right” answer. I know I was as an elementary and high school student. I would rehearse my answers over and over making sure I had the exact right answer before raising my hand in class but by the time I was sure enough about my answer someone else would have already said it, so most of the time I ended up hardly ever saying anything unless I was called on. In both Henry and Staples’ articles, trust was an important issue to build among the students before serious learning could happen. Students need to be able to trust that their teachers as well as their peers won’t judge and ridicule them for what they say, or how they say it, for that matter.

Kim Strzelecki

I remember well when our public schools in North Carolina began the integrating process. I was approximately eleven years old and in the fifth grade. I was not stranger to blacks and lived close to many in the Piney Ridge area in Randolph County. To see them come into the school was not a shcok for me but I am sure it was for them. This was also the first year that girls could wear pants to school. I did not think of this at the time, but I wonder how long before we had a book adoption year that would also incorporate black history into social studies and reading. I do not remember one reading book that depicted black culture. All our readers were based on white middle class living, no divorced parents, no dysfunctional families, no same sex marriages, no disabled people and no blacks. The only book I can remember as multicultural was Little Black Sambo.
In all my years in school through highschool I only had one black teacher. Not only did the black student population suffer but also the disabled kids at this time. There were no special curriculum and no other classes. I also remember being embarrassed in the social studies lessons when we studied negative black history and the slave market. I would always peek a glance at my black peers and wonder if they were embarrassed or angry.
In a predominately white school with white teachers and administration, no efforts were made to include the black culture in discussions or topics of interest. My black peers never talked and habitually looked down or at the floor.
I really can not remember a push for multicultural literature in the classrooms until the 1990's. I had been out of the school system awhile and went back into the school system in 1994. I still observed predominately white teachers and white students. I can
understand in Henry's research her quest for answers from the perspective of Black African Carribean females. Not only are blacks oppressed through history but black women received a double dose of the oppression.
Our multicultural world and classrooms should reflect positive cultural values of all races through our textbooks and assignments and discussions.
I find it disconcerting that Henry feels she needs to refer to her studies and concerns as a "take back control" approach. I wish we could all plan a curriculum based on our student's needs without distinguishing one group or another but this has not happened in the past so the "take control" approach may be the only way to accomplish this.
Staples research in Hustle and Flow reiterate much of Henry's but in the life of black males. She says that black males are instantly stereotyped into categories of ignorance, criminality, gangs, murderers and thieves. We see this type of stereotyping attitude daily. If something criminal happens and the name or face of the perpertrator is not immediately available the comment is always, "must of been a black man". have we pushed them to this end?
I had the pleasure of having several black male students in one of my highschools classes recently. We used journaling as a means of mentoring. In their work it was amazing how many of them would write about the way people snubbed them and talked about them. In the perspective of white counterparts, these young black men were accussed of being drug dealers, girl friend beaters and gang members. Given them a voice or an opportunity to express them selves through their own cultural studies may instill pride and a reason to help change stereotypes and perceptions.
However, I feel it is our duty to instill pride in these girls and boys through our teaching and help them discover themselves and us.
I can't help but recall in the movie "The Breakfast Club' that the students were able to tell the teacher his perception of each of them even though unspoken.

"Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed. "

Candy Kee

After reading both articles, I felt that Henry summed it up best by saying that when educators ignore the issues that are important to the lives of minority students, we are leaving them “voiceless,” meaning that they are unable to identify or relate to the material or school in order to help them create their own identities. Both research models display the importance for giving students the opportunity to write, read, listen, and speak authentic, meaningful texts. Though I know there was a little more leniency given to the setting of the Staples article where students participated in literacy groups during an afterschool group, the insight provided from these meetings display the need to allow students to choose topics, books, etc. that are important to them. By doing this, educators are bridging their backgrounds and interests, regardless of race, gender, class, and power, with the educational community. Even in Henry’s article, the curriculum of the workshop was designed as a student-focused curriculum, where Henry would integrate and add articles, etc. that appealed to the interests and situations of the girls within her small group. By allowing students choice or incorporating material that they can relate to reveals to them that they are valued and important, empowering them with academic confidence and success.

Both articles helped me to realize that literacy flourishes in a range of settings through a range of methods. These literacies occur both in and outside of the classroom, and they don’t just consist of reading and writing but verbal discussions, technological texts, media texts, etc. Though I knew literacy carried different forms, my eyes were opened as to how these different forms become useful and effective when reaching students based on race, gender, class, and power. Educational instruction too often uses the unidirectional model (Henry) where the teacher things, knows, talks, and decides within the classroom while the students sit, comply, and regurgitate what has been delivered to them by the instructor. When will this approach begin to change? If we know that critical thinking is an important skill for our students to acquire, then we need to do more than just model and actually allow students to apply it by stepping back and giving them some choice and free reign where they aren’t criticized for the way they deliver their literacy knowledge. It was evident in both articles that standard English wasn’t exactly the standard for the students in the studies, especially in Henry’s article where the participants were ESL/ELL students. However, when reading the Henry article, there was a comment made by one of the participants who received the donuts for her birthday where she corrected her home language with standard English and chagrin. This disclosed to me that the issue was not whether these students could use standard English correctly but our approaches in teaching them when and how to code-switch. The fact that this particular student expressed some embarrassment at the beginning of the study suggests that she had been reprimanded in the past for her home language usage within the classroom. I think that teachers need to be aware in how we teach students to speak and write correctly in the standard language. They need to see it done with such love, care, and respect so that they will trust the school community and so that the students aren’t failed by the schools (Staples). This care requires planning that uses multiple types of literacy that appeal to the interests and abilities of our students.

Melissa Riley

Staples article on “re-authoring” and behavior in separate worlds was interesting. While reading, I thought of one of my students, Shamek, who is one of the sweetest children you could ever meet. He’s a well-behaved, hard-worker with a laid back personality when he is in my guided reading group. But when he associates with his best buddy, Clay, the two are fighting other students and the next thing you know he’s suspended from school again. It is truly hard for me to believe that he behaves this way around his peers. Shamek needs to "re-author on the outside" as Staples would say. I wonder how seeing African American men portrayed in a negative way in the media affects the African American male?

It was intriguing to read how Staples engaged students by giving them opportunities to work on their weaknesses in literacy through areas that interest them. As Staples states, “students who had trouble decoding print were able to forefront their abilities to talk, write, or deconstruct images while they gained practice interrogating documents.” Providing choice seems to be a prevalent strategy in education today, along with multiple modes of literacy learning (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, journals, storytelling, media and technology). Including students in the decision-making on what material to read, gets them involved and helps them to take ownership in their learning.

The community respect that developed was of great consequence, especially with these older students who normally refused to participate in the lesson. Having students agree to respect one another in the group (no ridiculing) helped to create a safe environment, so the students could take risks in areas where they struggle. Reassurance and praise from the teacher can positively affect struggling students who may just need a confidence booster to encourage them to put forth an effort.

Modeling standardized English, while allowing language variations the students were accustomed in using, reminded me of my ESL students’ pronunciations of certain words no matter how many times we go over it. I have mentioned this in a previous post, but they always pronounce “mudder” for mother, because they are so used to saying it that way. The pronunciation of this particular word, along with several others, must be engrained in their vocabulary permanently.

The use of roles in cooperative grouping made the assignments seem more manageable and less daunting for the students. I have noticed that my students enjoy being responsible for their part in a group assignment. I recently had a group of six 5th graders work in two groups of three. We read an informational text on reptiles. The group roles were Note-taker, Artist and Summarizer. As we read the text, the note-taker would write important information about an animal and the artist would draw a graphic representation to go with the note. After reading, the summarizer wrote a paragraph about reptiles and their characteristics. The students collaborated and discussed each part of the project even though they had group roles. The students were totally engaged in the group project.

I feel very fortunate that my position allows me to work with small groups of students. We are able to have discussions that sometimes reveal personal information that would never be mentioned in a whole group setting. Because of the small group setting, I learn things about students that their classroom teachers do not and, it is certainly easier to meet the needs of the students. For the students, I believe it is easier for them to express themselves in a small group setting.

In Annette Henry’s article, “Speaking Up” and “Speaking Out,” she mentions that her “objectives were shaped by research showing that reading and writing activities together promote greater learning than when they are treated as separate subjects” (Staton, 1989; Tierney, 1990). When my students respond to literature in their reading logs, they know that the most important thing is to think about what they have read and respond in writing. They know that I will not correct grammatical mistakes, so they are free to get their ideas written. This quote by Henry (1999), “Black girls may ‘learn’ to be silent or complacent in classrooms, they, indeed, have a lot to say,” made me think of a student named JaNyah. I was pleasantly surprised when JaNyah journaled an entire page about a portion of text we had read. She included lots of questions which revealed that she had given the reading much thought. Was I surprised at her lengthy response because she is black? My surprise did not lie in her ethnic background; rather, my surprise was based on the length of responses I usually get from this group of struggling readers. I mentioned her ethnicity because of the research that is sited in the article. Hale (1982) claims that black girls “are invisible to teachers as serious learners.” I’m curious to know how the researchers came to this conclusion. As a teacher of African American girls in K-5, I certainly disagree with that finding. However, that research is nearly 3 decades old and education has changed a lot since then. I have high expectations for every student, no matter the color of their skin.

Carol Holt

The two articles by Staples and Henry are insight to teachers/researchers providing a way for Black youth to find their “voices.” Staples used an after-school program to encourage young Black males to pursue reading and writing with many multimedia outlets. Staples challenges educators to “carve out spaces” for young Black men in the areas of reading and writing at school and after school. Many influences determine a person’s practices in relation to literacy and the term “discourse community” is used. These are people that are bound together by the characteristics in using language. When given the opportunity the students became friends and followed a route of respect, positive reinforcement, individual freedom and acceptance. The most important aspect I found was that Staples “maintained high standards for participation.” I felt that set the stage for success in this group.

I was touched by the “Speaking Up” and “Speaking Out” article by Henry. The African Caribbean girls group was also given a space of freedom to speak their thoughts, desires and questions. Once again this study was designed to focus on literature that the students could relate to on a person level. It seemed as though Henry provided an authentic space for the girls to ask questions and discover themselves like never before. School is often not a place for this type of outlet.

Many times I will refer a student to the guidance counselor for help with issues that is personal. Sometimes I have talked to students that want to open up to me and talk. I think it is vital for students to trust me. That will open the door to future conversations and the acceptance of high expectations. Even if a student does not want to do an assignment as did Kay (who only wrote what and when she felt like writing) it is up to the educator to find a way for them to want to be involved and want to write. We can do that by providing culturally relevant materials and forming that important relationship with the student.

Staples article Hustle and Flow (re-authoring representation for Black masculinity)
Henry’s article Speaking Out (African Caribbean girls)

As I read the Staples study and the Henry study the thought that struck me over and over again was the importance of connecting with students. In both studies the students who were involved were ones we would characterize as under-achievers. They were clearly not connecting with what was being taught at school, nor did they indicate that they connecting with their teachers and the subjects they were being taught. I found it interesting that Henry noted “It took those first few weeks to convince them that there is never only one ‘right answer’ gleaming on the pages of a book.” (p. 241) I couldn’t help but wonder how these students had gotten to this point in their schooling without having anyone actually listen to what they were saying, or to help them understand that their thoughts were worth listening to. This seems to be a prevalent occurrence in the articles we have read – it certainly worries me that we, as educators across the nation, appear to be failing so many of our students simply by not making an effort to understand – and appreciate the relevance of - their backgrounds.

It seemed, again in both articles, that the students’ lives outside of school were totally separated from their lives in school. This, too, concerns me. I have always thought of education as preparation for my life, believing that, for the most part, what we learned in school would be relevant in my life. Generally speaking, I have found that to be the truth. It seems, however, that for these students, school was just something to get through until they could really live their lives outside of school. As lacking in relevance as their school experience appears, it is no wonder so many drop out of school before they graduate!

One technique which Henry used as a tool for self-expression was drama. I couldn’t help but think, as I read that section, how will the budgetary issues affect those students whose forms of self-expression are the arts? In the age of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” are we allowing monetary issues to cut us off at the knees as we seek to help these students learn through these different learning styles?

It is evident that these students could learn. Staples’ interviews with the teachers after the conclusion of Youth Leadership showed that, as did Henry’s experiences in her study. It seems that what they needed was to be taught, with material that was relevant to them, how to use the “processes of engaging media texts” (Staples, p., 388), and to know that their efforts would be supported rather than disparaged as inadequate. I thought Staples’ recommendation for working with “urban adolescents of color who appreciate popular cultural narratives” (p. 388) were insightful, and that they could be applied to many educational settings, including school settings where other minorities - American Indians, Hispanics, etc. – are in the population.

It is evident that we in education have a lot to learn!

Marlee Wright

Our voice is important and as teachers we express our voice daily, but often we don’t allow our children to express their voice freely. We often silence student voice because we feel it in inappropriate or not the right time. As state in Henry’s study students “need opportunities to read, discuss, write, and express themselves in a safe, private context. It is our job as teachers to provide this opportunity to our students. Students often times don’t get the opportunity to express themselves because of their age and often times they have something very valuable to bring to the table. We have a job as teacher’s to help students to author themselves to find their own voice. Students need to learn to express themselves not matter if writing or public speaking is their strength of weakness. Often time’s students use not having a voice as a defense to slide through the cracks without being noticed that they do need help academically or emotionally. If we integrate writing into everything we teach as a reflection model then students will be able to give their voice in one form or another knowing it is safe to share their thoughts.

In Staples article students were able to re-author themselves in an after school program. It was argued that in the classroom these students were often “off task”, “slow”, “troublemaker”, or “struggling”, but when they were in the after school program they were able to “re-author” themselves. To some this concept should come as common knowledge and what everyone should be doing in the regular classroom. Meeting student’s interest and needs based on their abilities. This is not always easy to do, but a good teacher will make every attempt to make sure that it happens. When students are actively engaged then the terms of “troublemaker” or “struggling” can be change to successful as students are engage at their ability and interest. We did a gender study this year at my elementary school and as I got into the research and started applying some of the strategies within my own classroom there were drastic changes in the way boys and girls responded to literature. Their behaviors and attitudes also changed. Maybe it’s the teachers that need to”re-author” themselves instead of the students.

Kara Scott

The research conducted by Annette Henry with adolescent African Caribbean girls and by Jeanine Staples with African American urban adolescents illustrated how young readers can create meaning when the text is engaging and the environment is free of judgment from the authority figure. Getting to know your students seems to be a necessity for reaching students socially, academically, and culturally when interacting with text. The relevant, real-world connections made by these researchers in a non-threatening atmosphere enabled the students to bring their own voice and identity to the text giving it a sense of purpose that is often not found in the traditionally structured classroom environment. When we have a multicultural population, it often leaves some students without voice, and as one junior high school teacher explained to Henry, voice is power. It empowers students to express their ideas in a productive and positive way. Both studies note the importance of creating independent and critical thinkers by constructing language and communications skills among their peers.
As a teacher in the elementary grades, I understand the need to provide opportunities for students to find value and relevance in their classroom work. When provided with a more flexible after-school setting, the ability to use engaging forms of media to build voice and thinking skills appeared more acceptable than the traditional school setting now accountable for standardized test scores as an indication of achievement in reading. I feel these small groups gave the students stronger voice and identity when expressing and articulating their views but I am skeptical about the extent that this could be modeled in a classroom of twenty multicultural students. As stated in Henry’s research, “school is rarely a place for explicit discussions of private discourses” as described in these studies. The skills acquired by these students when using culturally relevant text in their small groups gave them confidence and critical thinking skills that fortunately carried over into their classroom work. While some of the material in these studies would not be appropriate for classroom text, I feel there are literary works that deal with similar issues our students face on a regular basis outside of school that would help build those connections and provide a stronger voice.
I think the bottom line of these studies is for educators to allow students the ability find their voice through culturally relevant media and by allowing them to express their voice in a safe and non-threatening environment where they are given freedom and cooperative authority about the program structure and text value. I am not saying this is an easy task, but with a willingness to get to know our students and to learn what is relevant in their lives, we can create critical thinkers who feel accepted and valued in their school community.

Michelle Carlson

I admire educators who are willingly to allow students to have input into their own education. In both of these readings each group had a positive outcome. I believe that this was a direct result of students having ownership in the programs and a sense of trust. We all know that students will not learn as much or be as successful as possible; if they do not feel safe within their surroundings. The students in these groups did feel safe. This was evident when students asked personal and in depth questions. The students also regularly contributed to discussions, made suggestions, and voiced concerns. Kay, Alice, Tamisha, and Nadia were finally given a safe place to ask questions that were important to them. I think educators often forget that we may be the only person in our students’ lives that is willingly to listen and respond to their thoughts and ideas.

While reading the Hustle & Flow article, I thought that Staples did an excellent job incorporating a variety of media texts. This is something that needs to be integrated much more into my own classroom. All students respond differently to various media texts. If I am only using one or two I am not meeting the needs of all my students. My school is finally purchasing SmartBoards for each classroom. This will hopefully be a useful resource and allow my students to view other forms of media texts.

My students are much more engaged when I make them a part of the decision making process. I keep thinking about the beginning of each school year. My students and I sit down to make our classroom rules. It is also humorous to me when they create rules that are much more harsh than I would ever be. I always have to reel them back in a little because we can’t have children going to the principal’s office for forgetting their homework (this was a suggestion from one of my first graders last year). They students do remember the rules better when they have input creating them.

In first grade they can not have an extremely organized discussion on a topic but they can express their thoughts and ideas through other outlets. In math, students could choose to work with a partner or small group. They had to create a math game and teach it to the rest of the class. I was simply amazed at the thought that went into their games, not to mention to attention to detail while explaining the rules to their peers. I must admit that this project was given to the students with only two days left of school and this was not a planned activity. However, it turned out wonderful and I will definitely use it again next year. I believe that it turned out so well because of the simple fact that the students had a sense of ownership. This is something that I know I am guilty of. I do not give my students an ample amount of time engaged in activities that they suggest, create, and/or drive on their own. Sometimes I feel as if they are too young but that simply isn’t true. I need to release my own sense of ownership and give it to my students.

Stacy Durham

Those students that are "disengaged" as readers and writers are often not encouraged in literacy engagements. Finding out the interests of the students and allowing them to be a part of the decision making for the out of school time studies was a great way to bring them together and help them to see they do have something to say and give. The use of "popular culture narratives" was great motivation. Through the use of alternative contexts (like films, Internet, and popular periodicals) students were able to interact with literacy. This is one way that our schools fail our students. We do not allow our students choices within multiple contexts. Students need to be encouraged and engaged through means that inspire them. When this happens they find a voice and in this type of environment it was very non-threatening and encouraging. If teachers would allow students to work with multi-media context (with guidelines and choices) students would have a sense of freedom about what they are reading and writing about. By allowing them to "re-author" themselves through new/different media students will reveal their desires and intelligences.
We (educators) need to be aware that we teach "culturally relevant" literacy. Not everyone is from the same culture and we need to be mindful of that when we are teaching. Our identities and ideas of cultural norms are very different. That's why it is so important for all students to have a voice. Re-shaping our curriculum by choosing themes that are culturally engaging for our students is best practice. Students want to see themselves somewhere in their learning and it is our job to ensure they do, to prevent disengagement. When our students become actively involved in the curriculum and are allowed to have a voice, their voice, not the voice of the majority of the group. Our minority groups need to feel they can speak up to help bridge the gap, and they will only do that if we encourage them. We must allow them opportunities to integrate who they are outside the classroom into the classroom.

Karin Scott

What I liked most about the Staples and Henry articles was that both workshops developed into something that the students enjoyed and were proud to participate in. In the beginning of Henry’s workshop, many of the girls had adopted passive female roles and Kay was hesitant to write because she did not feel she had what it takes to be a “good writer”: spelling and concentration. Likewise, in the Staples workshop, students were used to being identified as troublemakers or lazy students. Henry’s participants changed by developing a voice in connecting to and analyzing literacy. They were proud to use that voice to share their opinions and point-of-view. Staples’ participants developed the ability to critique texts on their own terms and look at themselves in a new way. By the end of both workshops, I felt that the students in both groups had succeeded in re-authoring themselves.

Through both workshops there was a thread of diversity and acceptance. Students were allowed to journal privately, act out publicly, and/or share thoughts in a small group. Henry did not focus on correcting the girls’ spelling and grammar mistakes, and Henry allowed the student group to use whatever language they deemed necessary to get their point across in discussions. I believe that this acceptance and variety of options for expression are what made these programs so effective for the students. Staples identifies “positive reinforcement,” “community respect,” and “individual freedom” as key elements in assisting adolescents in re-authoring themselves. Integration of these policies into the general classroom would benefit all students and would lead to more than just better class participation. I bet it would also lead to less school violence and bullying, because students would feel that they are all getting to express their voice and they would know their voice has been heard.

Henry stated it may be difficult to take these small group discussions and achieve the same results with a large heterogeneous group, and I agree with her. However, I believe that integrating Staples’ suggested strategies (p.382) is a step toward making these small group results a reality in the larger classroom setting. As educators, we do want all students to have “a place in the academic setting”, and that place should not be sitting silently at their desks.

Andrea Schlobohm

These were two extremely powerful and aggressive studies, tackling not only race and gender but also addressing the search for identity and acceptance in and out of school. Finding your voice and taking a stand on topics can be quite complicated if you do not feel your opinion will be valued. Annette Henry also points out in her study, the lack of material used in schools that directly relate to women, presenting the issue we have read about before- interest. Students often ask themselves, why should I care about this? or how does this apply to my life?

Henry utilized readings that she knew would appeal to the girls in her study, helping them connect and relate to their own lives. Through writing and encouragement they were able to gain confidence in order to “speak up and speak from their own experiences.” I think Henry provided a vital component for the girls when she helped them realize there isn’t a “right answer.” After all, everyone has their interpretations and can relate differently no matter how similar backgrounds or home life may be. These views are felt but only when they are voiced can the individual be validated, reassured, and feel acceptance. I think Henry provided a great example of helping students find their voice and self-value in the classroom by using real-life examples. Jeanine M. Staples also utilized specific and controversial material to peak the interest of students labeled as “disengaged” in order to help them learn to “re-author” or find their voice.

I see both of these studies as examples of the importance of looking at the whole student. Not just grouping them as boys, girls, black, white but rather noticing their home and in school strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Even at a young age children find they are valued and have a place at home but struggle to find that same significance in the classroom setting. Using more material based on their interests and providing extra time and additional avenues for them to express their feelings will be a good start.

On a very simple scale I have helped my kindergarten students begin to find/develop their voice through journals. After drawing/writing on a specific topic or free-write we would come to the carpet together and have a sharing time several times a week. During this time students were giving the opportunity to share their work with the class. It was an important exercise for building confidence, acceptance, and voice. As a participating audience member the students also had to develop respect and patience for the presenter. The discussions are some of my favorite times from this past year. Just think what we could learn from kids and they could learn from each other, if we all took turns and listened.

Ruth Ann Timmons

Having taught 2nd grade for 7 years, reading these articles came as surprising for me initially. In the 2nd grade, girls are not that shy at sharing their feelings. I believe that the security blanket that guards girls from sharing naturally gets unleashed as a defense as the girls get older and have more personal experiences. They aren’t sure what is allowed to be shared and what they should keep to themselves. In this respect, it is wonderful that there are people such as Annette Henry who encourage teenagers to feel comfortable to share openly and provide them the opportunity to do so. I remember a few years ago, I did have one student who was extremely quiet. She rarely voiced her opinion in class, and she was an observer, always allowing others to take the lead in discussions. Towards the end of the year, she started raising her hand during discussions. I tried to contain my surprise and immediately called on her. Obviously, she needed time to feel trust and confidence in her immediate world. She needed to know that she was not going to be putting herself at risk by sharing. I respect the time it took Miriam to open up. Sometimes people are not as easy to crack as others. People need time to feel self-confident. This experience taught me the value of patience as a teacher.

Regardless of gender, the relationship that you form with a child will be a first step to open any open door. We have a 3rd grade African American girl at my school who has discovered this year that she is behind all of her peers in learning. That realization, of the possibility of failing in front of her friends, or getting critiqued by the teacher for things she is unable to do, has paralyzed her. She gets herself up in the morning due to her mother going to work early. Alexis decides when she wants to go to school. She has a tutor who she works with twice a week and she shared privately with her tutor her new understandings. She shared how she “planned to be absent from school next week because [she] didn’t want to take the End of Quarter tests.” Her tutor shared this insight with me but was very concerned with the way that we handled the situation because it was important that Alexis knew she could continue to confide in her tutor. This experience taught me the value of relationships in teaching and how they are key in building the trust and opportunity to get to really know a child.

Another example these articles reminded me of was the story of the teacher, Erin Gruell, and her “Freedom Writers,” that was made into a movie. Those students were given a piece of paper and told that they could write whatever they want without the fear of being scrutinized and when they thought their ideas were completely private, they came clean, their writing somewhat like poetry in it’s nature. In my opinion, writing can be a form of private discussion without the concern over getting in front of an audience. In Henry’s article she points out the very important point that school can create a fear of public speaking, especially if they have to speak a language which is not their primary tongue. Writing provides them the opportunity to share without the fear of getting ridiculed. Since “school” can be that one factor that continues to keep students from sharing openly, I loved the project that Jeanine Staples began after school. Since students did not associate their writing with “school” and being evaluated, they were more openly expressing themselves…especially when they were reinventing themselves as authors.
This taught me the important lesson of letting students create for themselves a new author, that is separate from their own academic personality. I have learned the value of freedom when it comes to writing in the classroom. Students need to be able to feel free to become who they want to be, and write as they want to. As a teacher, I need to give them that freedom.
-- Carrie Brown

Literacy can be interpreted in so many different ways. These interpretations are directly affected by race, class, and gender. In Hustle and Flow, Staples discusses the act of “reauthoring” and its role in enabling African American males to identify with various literacies
outside the context of school. Through reading this article, I began to understand the value of
redefining oneself in order to draw meaning from technology and media texts. While school
may fail to include literacy experiences connected to diverse cultures, ‘popular culture
narratives’ provide these individual students with opportunities to connect with texts using
their own unique perspectives. As a result of these provisions, they are able to maintain
a genuine level of engagement. They use their experiences and knowledge of their worlds to
interpret and create meaning. Perspective is everything, and the students’ contributions are
key. Ownership is crucial in literacy education, and we need to factor this idea into our
instruction. True learning occurs when students are able to draw their own conclusions,
critically evaluate using their own prior knowledge, and express their ideas using their own
language. As teachers, we are always asking students to pull from their own experiences and
background knowledge to help students comprehend what they read or view. With that being
said, we have to remember that diverse backgrounds do not readily lend themselves to all
texts. We would not expect our English-speaking students to be able to draw meaning from a
French text so why do we expect all students to understand texts on the same level or to the
same depth?
With regards to “Speaking Up” and “Speaking Out”, the idea of leaving minority
students ‘voiceless’ is a sobering reality. Every day there are students who feel that their issues are being ignored. Like everyone else, these African American and African Carribean girls have ideas and thoughts they want to share. It is okay if they share in their own languages and dialects. I do believe that their messages may be altered or even lost when they are “avoiding their mother tongues and dialects.” (Henry 237) By choosing texts that minority students can relate to, teachers are treating an inviting atmosphere and forming relationships with these students. We should strive not to “squelch student creativity and expression.” (Henry 243) On the contrary, it is our job to celebrate diversity and welcome each child’s contribution to each learning experience. Equally important is the acknowledgment of social issues pertinent to their culture and gender.

Storytelling is a tradition that has been practiced for many, many years. Although storytelling was initially practiced orally, it has transformed so that it is practiced in written form as well. The original purpose of storytelling was thought to be to express a community’s beliefs, values, and attitudes, but storytelling has evolved so that it serves many different purposes. People often tell stories “to remember, instill cultural knowledge, grapple with a problem, rethink the status quo, soothe, empathize, inspire, speculate, justify a position, dispute, tattle, evaluate one’s and others’ identities, shame, tease, laud, entertain, among other ends.” (p. 321) No matter what the reason may be, storytelling is a practice that enhances literacy.

The study described in this article tells us about three Southern Sudanese refugees (Chol, Ezra, and Francis) who used storytelling as a means to adjust to their new life in the U.S and to share experiences about life in the Sudan. The Lost Boys used storytelling in their writing assignments for school to tell about their life. For a college writing assignment, Chol wrote an autobiography that talked about the many journeys he had been on and some of his achievements. From his autobiography, it is very obvious that he is very proud of the achievements he has accomplished, despite the traumatic childhood he had. Allowing the Lost Boys or other refugees the opportunity to write or tell their stories “may offer refugees an outlet for dealing with painful memories or emotions, it may help educators and other non-refugees understand refugees’ experiences, and it may help empower refugees and others to act.” (p. 354)

Hopefully our students haven’t had such dramatic experiences in their lives, but we never know what secrets some of them may be hiding. Although our students may not be refugees and probably did not have to make the long journey from their homeland to the United States themselves, they all have issues that affect them. No matter how major or minor the issue, it always helps to be able to share it with someone else, either orally or written. We need to give our students the opportunity to tell their stories- where they have been, what they have done, and what they hope to become. I have mentioned in an earlier post that I like the idea of requiring students to write journal reflections and the teacher taking time to respond. This provides an excellent “outlet” for our students to share information with us, and to just get things ‘off their chest.’ Before we can expect our students to be comfortable doing this, we must provide them with a safe and trusting environment. They need to know that we want to hear their story, and that we care about the issues they are dealing with. After all, we are all storytellers, and we all want people to listen to our stories. Our students are also storytellers; we just have to provide the opportunity for their voices to be heard.

Lisa Beach

I think that Perry’s research offers a good foundation for teaching students of all different backgrounds. As she stated, her small research study focused on three participants should not be thought of as a generalized study for all refugees. She noted that even within the Sudanese refugee communities, feelings towards storytelling varied from tribe to tribe and person to person. While it is true that we should not generalize the situations of all refugees (or immigrants), I think it wouldn’t do any harm to practice the storytelling techniques she discovered in her research with students in our own classrooms. We must keep in mind, however, that “No refugee should be forced to share his or her story with others, and educators must exercise sensitivity and discretion in using storytelling in their classrooms.

While reading Perry’s article, I was reminded of Zonnie and the fact that she did not like to write fictional stories. Her poetry, like the Def Jam poetry, could have been used as her mode of storytelling. Perry stated that the purpose of storytelling with Sudanese refugees was changing from maintaining history and culture into educating the world of the situations that society sometimes chooses to ignore. I think Lamont Carey has the same purpose in his poetry. Although he has not participated in a civil war in his country, he seems to feel at war with the education system that has failed him. To me, this shows that the “Transformed Storytelling” described by Perry can apply to a variety of people in a variety of situations. If students feel that there is an authentic purpose behind their writing, they will feel a desire to write. That authentic purpose could be simply making others in the class aware of their community situations or it could be as complicated as trying to convince a principal to allow afterschool clubs focused on Native American dancing. Through Perry’s article I learned that, by encouraging our students to speak up about situations that may be difficult in their lives, we may be creating more effective eager writers.

Andrea Schlobohm

I appreciate the fact that the young Sudanese refugees expressed a desire to become literate in their “local languages”. They deeply value their culture and want to preserve their heritage. That’s greatly admirable. Throughout the article, Perry writes of the importance of storytelling to family and community. The three refugees spoke of the role of storytelling in their homeland. In Sudan, storytelling seemed to serve the purpose of connecting generations and preserving history. A great deal of time was allotted to this communication every day. It saddened me to read about how greatly our daily schedules differ. One of the refugees stated, ‘There it’s different, of course, people sit together and tell stories.’ Although we as Americans are very busy working every day, we need to have time to share. In fact, I believe our children would be much better equipped if they were provided ample opportunities to communicate across generations. Before we can expect children to write, we must share stories with them and give them time to share orally as well.
Much of the refugees’ writings stemmed from their own personal experiences. They used stories “to educate the wider world about the situation in Sudan and about their experiences as refugees.” In addition, Francis also wrote fictional stories. While I believe most Americans enjoy storytelling, the biggest hindrance to this pastime is most likely lack of time. That’s one reason why literacy is so important in American culture. Today, the refugees use literacy to “call others to act.” For them, the transformation of storytelling has largely taken place because of their audience. In America, they are not only communicating with others in a small community, but with the ‘outside world’.
Holly Lawson

Storytelling has been, and remains, an important aspect of many cultures and their literacy histories. Traditionally, storytelling was an oral practice that was used to pass on cultural and community beliefs, traditions, and histories. Research indicates that storytelling is a purposeful practice that is not only shaped by, but linked to, a community’s beliefs, attitudes, and values (p. 321). However, in our ever-changing world, storytelling has begun to be transformed to include written stories and is used for many different purposes.

In Perry’s study, she examined the impact that storytelling had on the lives of three “Lost Boys” from Sudan and how their sense of storytelling evolved from that of a traditional practice while in Sudan to a new, transformed practice when they were relocated to the United States. Perry identified different themes in storytelling such as “learning from stories,” traditional stories,” and “stories for the wider world” that were embedded in the data collected from each of the participants. She found that in Sudan, the participants’ experiences in storytelling seemed to be that of “traditional stories.” These stories were important to the participants as a way to preserve their culture and keep the history and customs of their culture alive. In my fourth grade social studies curriculum we study the Cherokee Indians. We read the novel Soft Rain: A Story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears and study Native American legends. Next year I plan to hold a storytelling festival where students will write their own Native American legends and then tell them to parents and classmates. In doing so, I will be giving my students the “authentic purpose” and the “real audience” that Perry mentions.

Once the boys were relocated to the United States, they began to transform their storytelling practices. In the United States, the boys no longer had access to the elder members of their community or culture. They began to see a need for creating written accounts to preserve their culture’s way of life. The biggest shift that Perry found was that the boys began to tell more personal stories. These stories “purpose, audience, and medium differed in important ways from those of the traditional storytelling…” (p. 328). Their stories now served to educate others about the situation in Sudan and the boys’ experiences as refugees.

The results of Perry’s study showed that the boys thought that engaging in literacy activities was important on many levels. They felt that it was crucial for their futures. They felt that knowing how to read and write made things easier for them and could help them pursue their educations and obtain a “professional” career.

This point was reiterated by Lamont Carey in his Def Jam poetry session. I was particularly moved by his poem because I felt that I could more easily relate to that situation than I could the experiences of the refugee boys. It angers me that some educators can overlook a student’s struggles in literacy to further their own agendas such as sports achievements. What options do we leave these children? When their knee snaps, as Carey points out, then what WILL they do? Our literacy instruction must provide students with the opportunity to engage in activities that have “real purposes.” Whether students are refugees from another country, black males from the ghetto, or Native Americans, as educators we must strive to reach these students. Otherwise, they won’t even have a story to tell.

Leslie Rothenberger

Storytelling is an essential part of our lives. Whether we are listening to an old story form our grandparents, watching a play, reading a book, or writing a story it is a way we can all communicate. “Story telling represents a powerful sociocultural practice shaped by and closely linked to a community beliefs values and attitudes” p. 321 for the three young men in the research study storytelling did just that. It connected the boys to the past and their communities. The men wanted so much to keep their cultures and values alive as they integrated into the American culture.

As found in the research the refugee boys told what they called “traditional stories”. We all can relate to traditional stories. I think back to my second grade class this year when we were reading a traditional Hispanic story sharing family and food. This is a traditional story that all students were able to connect to especially my students from Mexico and Puerto Rico. Within our own classroom we can set the stage for our students to have an experience from another culture. We can find literature to share or ask our families within our classes to share their own stories and traditions. We are then giving our students an genuine purpose for their learning.

Even though the boys are now in the United States it is important that “They keep their identity”. P. 331 It is important that no matter where you are, you never forget where you came from. The no longer have the connections to the elders in their culture they now must educate others to keep the cultural traditions and ways heard alive. Through sharing their stories these traditions can live on and the systems they live by will stay with them.

Kara Scott

This study examined storytelling practices among young male adults from the Sudan and how it shaped their literacy practices. Their displacement as a result of the horrific civil war in the region morphed their traditional storytelling to reflect their new communities and literacies in the United States.

Significantly, Perry considers the importance of “What individuals and communities do with stories and how they talk about storytelling” what she distinguished as talking about storytelling and enacted storytelling. (p.333).

It was clear that Chol, Ezra and Francis attached great importance to storytelling and to literacy. In their native Sudan they had experienced literacy practices that focused more on individuals and elders. These orphans had heard and told traditional stories covering histories in the community. Their storytelling practices did not involve any print literacies. Ezra explained the reasoning for this: a lack of schooling and a means to keep the community alive ensuring “customs and culture were passed from one generation to the next” (p. 334). They had engaged in oral literature at school that focused primarily on traditional African tribe stories and dialects, which was also important to their learning community. Here storytelling also provided “a meaningful context for literacy learning” (p.335) and a clear sense of identity for the young men.

The metamorphosis that took place in the orphans’ storytelling was two fold. In a new community in the United States they all continued to talk about and enact stories but also engaged in print form. Some of the stories were “hypothetical, generic” but carried meaning for them and their culture. However, many of the stories that they told were true and were based on their experiences in the refugee camps. Therefore, the purpose of the storytelling changed. There was a different audience, different issues and different “media of communication” (p338). It became “transformed storytelling”.

Whilst the need to maintain a sense of identity through storytelling was important to the boys, they were also now actively using their storytelling “to push for change” and were critiques, advocates and persuaders in their need to share life experiences. This then became a powerful motivator for the young men to engage in print literacies: Chol writes about his experiences and wants to publish his autobiography whilst Ezra writes for a newspaper. These new literacies enabled the group to not only develop their English language abilities but to share their storytelling beyond communities and out into the wider world. As Perry revealed “literacy was the key to improving their lives and the future of Sudan…. being literate meant having access to power”(p.320)

It was interesting to read about Ezra’s concerns about the consequences of no long experiencing traditional storytelling: new people would not know how to ‘behave’ and would be lost. As we have discussed in our previous readings, the importance of a balance of where you are from and what you are transitioning to are of equal importance to our sense of culture and identity. The young men offset this disconnect of feeling that they would not ‘learn’ from traditional story anymore by using transformed storytelling to continue to communicate history and culture and utilize it for political statement. In effect they constructed new identities encompassing aspects of both their native and new communities using new literacies to do so.

As educators, this study and the poetry of Lamont Carey convey the importance of the power of literacy and providing authentic opportunities to share stories in our classrooms, to engage not only refugees but all students who have a story to tell. Storytelling is a necessary and powerful tool that teachers are in a unique position to give to student ‘voice’. It can counteract those students who say they ‘can’t read, can’t write, can’t spell’ and succeed in developing a strong sense of self.

As I read through the Perry research article, I was amazed at the trauma the young Sudanese males must have experienced during this war and the fact that they became refugees in the United States. Even though they were brought to safety, the events that they witnessed and lived in must have been heart rendering. I did not realize how many refugees took up residence in the United States although I know Africa has always been a place of war and dangerous unrest. Francis, Chol and Ezra realized they would have to be literate in order to make a better life for themselves. They did not have anyone to help them, they learned this from observation of others. A lot of their literate background developed in Sudan where the people did not work like Americans do and their life is not so fast paced. These boys were able to sit with elders and listen to traditional stories about their culture and history and personal stories.
Because of these experiences, these boys have been able to educate others in the United States of the trauma, culture, hardships and perils they experienced in Africa. This is how their storytelling transitioned. They had a different audience with different needs. The storytelling in Africa by the elders was a means of educating it's young. These three boys were fortunate in that they realized the value of this traditional storytelling and also the need to bring stories of their culture with them. Not only did this opportunity share experiences verbally and written, it also helped the boys to transition to a different life but still hold on to the closest thing to their heart, their cultural and ancestral history. How great it would be for our children to learn more from their ancestors through storytelling and less from history books.

Candy Kee

I thought that it was interesting to learn about the different forms of storytelling: talk about storytelling, enacted storytelling and transformed storytelling. Chol, Ezra, and Francis held storytelling close to their hearts. Storytelling was how the Sudanese community passed information down from one generation to the next. I kept thinking about how I would never be able to remember family history information if it had been only orally given to me. I remember as a child and young adult trying to recall facts about my family genealogy. I had to constantly refer to the information listed in print.

Throughout our readings we have noticed the weight that connections carry for our students. I could not help but think of what a strong connection Erza must have had when he first learned that there are genres in literature. He stated, “I did not know this until I was doing literature in Kenya, oral literature, when I came to realize some of the stories, although different versions of the stories that I had been hearing, being classified. “ He was able to apply his background knowledge to help him understand a new concept presented in the classroom.

The Youth Program that Erza described is exactly what storytelling has always meant to me, a form of drama. In my eyes, means a more exciting approach to literature. In high school I was in theatre arts and we were performing Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, "The Cask of Amontillado". The next week in English class we were reading the same story. I had never understood a story more in my life because I had been a part of the storytelling process. This connection helped me to understand how important storytelling can be and why “The Lost Boys” wanted to ensure that this part of their culture was not lost. They did acknowledge that written form would provide a way to safeguard this information for those who did not get to experience the art of storytelling first hand.

Lamont Carey (I Can't Read) HBO Def Jam Poetry related well to Perry’s, “From storytelling to writing: Transforming literacy practices among Sudanese refugees”. Stress and responsibility are two words that came to my mind while viewing the clip. Knowing that your future options are limited because you can’t read and success in athletics is crucial. Lamont Carey’s use of storytelling through poetry painted a clear, yet dejected view of being an illiterate youth. He asks several powerful questions, but the one that stuck with me most was, “what are my options?” In my mind I was a searching for an answer but I was speechless. This answer should have been easy and full of choices. His future could have been anything he wanted to make it. I began asking myself, how did his teacher(s) miss this? I hate to entertain the idea that his teachers indeed knew but chose to overlook it.

Stacy Durham

Opportunities missed are sometimes of your own accord and other times are not; whether you managed to go through school without learning to read and write, or if you are a Lost Boy who does not learn any more from his elders. Storytelling for Chol, Ezra and Francis “provided a meaningful content for literacy learning” and is similar to a read aloud in a U.S. classroom. Like a read aloud, storytelling for the Lost Boys of Sudan was a learning experience involving family, animals, history, etc.

Francis, Chol and Ezra knew that these stories were integral to their identity. According to Francis, “People tell a lot of stories, but here, now, we don’t learn.” In his desperate situation of trying to survive without parents, Ezra knew it was necessary to learn to read and write, to be successful like the professionals he had seen. Being able to read and write will help a person become an independent, productive member of society in the developed world.

Storytelling can be transformed into video (their personal experiences and plays), written form and oral recordings to preserve a culture and language. Literacy is essential to record stories for posterity, and can be used to convey issues facing society and world events as in the mistreatment of the Sudanese or U.S. students not learning to read.

Lamont Carey’s poem is a sad, but probably accurate, commentary for some African American athletes. I have heard of college athletes who received scholarships in sports, but never graduate. I guess some athletes have passed the grade because of their athletic ability. After all, it equals points for the team!

Who’s to blame? It seems like a circular firing squad with everyone pointing a finger at someone else. I suppose it is human nature to blame someone else as an initial response. We all seek to deflect blame. As in the poem, the TA says the teacher, the teachers say the B.O.E., B.O.E. says parents, and parents say it’s my fault for not learning how to read. In reality, it takes a student who will put forth the effort, and it takes parents who will consistently work with their child. It also takes a teacher who will go the extra mile to insure student success. It takes a collective effort to help a struggling reader.

If a student repeats one grade in elementary school, they are usually not retained for an additional year. So, some students are passed even though they are not ready for the next grade level. There are studies, though, that say retention does not help. In fact, it can damage a student's self-esteem. I find the teachers that I work with truly care about their students’ success. If a teacher did not care, they are in the wrong profession.

Carol Holt

In this country, rich with various forms of literature, storytelling has a different purpose than in countries such as Sudan. The refugees in Perry’s research were able to use their traditional method of communicating their culture and history to inform a global audience of the atrocities that have forced them to flee their country in search of safety. Their transformation from oral literacy to written literacy changed because the audience and purpose of the communication had changed. When the Sudanese were among their families and communities, their need to preserve their culture, history, language, and identity were easily met with storytelling from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, for these refugees, their need to share their experiences with the world in order to gain political change became their purpose for oral literacy in the form of speeches and written language expressed in newspapers and books to educate even larger audiences. It is apparent that all communities rely on some form of literacy, whether it is oral or written, to develop social relationships, beliefs, attitudes, and cultural identity. The subjects in Perry’s study, through support and education, were able to use their literacy practices from their native country to reach social activists and human rights organizations through transformed storytelling.

As a teacher, I found this research extremely interesting as we have an increased multicultural population in our community with limited standard English skills. Although they are not fleeing a country in turmoil, they are fighting to preserve their native culture in a school environment that can be drastically different from their home environment. When studying the folktale genre of literature, we can use that opportunity to encourage students to use storytelling as a way of preserving their own culture and identity. During holidays would be another opportunity to orally share their traditions and experiences at home so that we can appreciate other cultures while promoting tolerance and understanding. When we transfer these oral narratives to writing, it creates a meaningful context for students to engage in literacy. A reoccuring theme in many of these readings has been that making connections to our lives outside of school provides students with a sense of identity. I think using storytelling in the classroom would be an effective means in motivating students to write. Most children love to express their voice but many are reluctant to write their thoughts. If we could use oral language to encourage writing for specific audiences and purposes, students may see its value and embrace this form of literacy in the classroom.

Michelle Carlson

Why do we tell stories? According to Ochs and Capps we tell stories to remember and to pass along cultural knowledge. Story telling was the only way these refugees could "remeber" who they were. It was the only way these boys could keep their culture alive and educate the world about what had happened in Sudan. I began thinking back to my life and what I was doing during the 1980's during this war. I was here in America experiecing a wonderful life full to opportunities and education. While these boys were experiencing a horrible war and trying to escape. One may ask why is storytelling so important when these poor boys were just trying to survive? "Storytelling represents a purposeful sociocultural practice shaped by a community's beliefs, values, and attitudes." A way to pass history to one generation to another. It was a way to form an identity and values. The stories are what made these boys who they were and without them they had no identity. By telling stories about telling stories gave them a sense of who they were and where they came from, even though their homeland and people no longer exsisted. These boys understood the power of education and they used their stories to share the history of the homeland and their experiences as refugees. To these refugees to TELL is to LEARN, storytelling was the only education so it was so vital to the culture. These boys were using their experiences to push for change. To educate the world of what was happening in Sudan. They learned that literacy was a way to preserve the way of life they had to leave behind. Transformed storytelling came about becasue of the different needs of the boys in sharing information. Where as before it had been mainly to pass history down, now it was to educate and inform the world.
Writing with a purpose has a whole new meaning to me now. When we give our students a writing prompt it has little meaning to them. Students need to be invested and have a passion for their writing and the only way for that to happen is for them to write about something that has meaning to them. We must allow storytelling to continue through our students so they can learn the importance of oral literacy.

Karin Scott

As I read Perry’s study about the transformation of the storytelling and literacy practices among the three Lost Boys Chol, Ezra, and Francis, I was struck by their focus on developing their own literacy skills in the English language, although they spoke several different languages. English was described “as a language of empowerment for their community.” (Perry, p. 320) It seems that they, like Michelle Obama in the film clip we watched, recognize the power of the use of Standard English in the world today. These young men, who came from such disastrous backgrounds, were determined to get an education, which they saw as the key to their futures, as Ezra noted when he said “...I saw it necessary for me to be able to read and write because – maybe partly because I was there by myself, alone, and I have seem many professionals, and I admired what they do and their positions and the kind of life they were living...I would do anything I could to become one day a professional like some of the people that I saw there.” (p. 333)

Despite their focus and determination to learn to read and write English, however, they maintained their loyalty to their own cultural heritage and identity. Ezra, in particular, seemed to realize the importance of helping the Dinka people become literate in their own language so that their culture would not be lost although they had been forced to flee their country and settle in many different parts of the world. It was interesting to read about the transformation of the storytelling tradition, and to realize that it evolved as the Lost Boys began to feel a part of their new countries. They began to see storytelling as a way to tell the world about their experiences, to relate the horrors of the events in their country, as well as to pass along the traditional stories of their history, customs, and heritage.

The study of the Lost Boys and their determination to become literate contrasted with the Noll study, the Staples study, and the Henry study. In those other studies, the students felt defeated by their lack of command of the skills needed to read and write, whereas the Lost Boys realized the power of the language and were determined to attain the skills they needed to be successful. It appeared, too, that the Lost Boys had a better support system within American society. Students, such as Lamont Carey, who are passed along from grade to grade because of athletic prowess, don’t seem to have that level of support, and, as he said, they are one injury away from failure. It makes me wonder why we don’t provide the same kind of support for Carey and others who are needy– what makes these “boys” different? Is it because of their determination and focus? Or are they determined and focused because of the supports which are in place? How can we better support the efforts of those students who are “passed along” from grade to grade?

Marlee Wright

In every culture, subculture, discourse, and family we have stories pasted down, told, retold. These stories are what help to form the identity of groups and their individual members. Stories tell us our histories, gives us reasons for the way things are in our current situations, and help us create new options for the future. I still remember the stories my grandfather told me about his childhood and how grateful he was for some but not all of the changes in modern day society. Then there are the stories I remember hearing at summer camp around the fire and ones we secretly shared with a select few at sleepovers growing up. All of this storytelling contributed to who I am today- how I tell stories, interpret others stories, even impacts the kinds of stories I enjoy reading and writing. In my classroom I share stories with my students about when I was there age. Some of them have really be interested and asked several questions or brought up topics from my stories weeks later during class discussions. I often wonder if they will remember years down the road- my stories, my advice. We’ve all heard “you could/should write a book!” Well as teachers I know we all have fascinating stories to tell, unfortunately not enough time in the day to record them on paper though. Passing stories down through written form is important and even vital to the survival of the information being shared. It’s a shame that many of us never seem to have enough time to write these stories down. However, I do have many friends that keep personal and family Blogs for that exact purpose- recording experiences in writing and preserving their stories.

I listened to Lamont Carey share his story through a moving poem “I Can’t Read.” I felt sad, mad, and frustrated that this is the reality for so many students even in today’s society. How must that feel and what are their options? Who is to blame or better yet will anyone ever take responsibility? Still not being able to read in the 6th grade, playing the class clown or getting into trouble to mask the truth, being used for athletic abilities, getting hurt and all those dreams, aspirations, and plans vanish in an instance- too bad it isn’t a fictional story. What can we do differently, in the short span of a year, as teachers to ensure that this doesn’t become the story our students are telling? The blame game that has become so popular nationally and on the state level has to stop first. Only then can we all actually begin working together to prevent this story from being reality for more children.

Perry’s research was intriguing but not completely surprising. The harsh truth of life in the Sudan was brutal and devastating. Members of “The Lost Boys” used storytelling to preserve their memories and cultural uniqueness. Many of them also wrote and shared their stories in the printed form in order to advocate against the injustices of their homeland. What a powerful message and example they provide for others. This is “authentic literacy” in action. Having students monotonously write just because we need something for a grade is useless and degrading. Instead when students are motivated by a cause or reason they are passionate about their writing improves. If an assignment and writing has purpose and meaning outside the classroom, it has potential to change that not only that student but society at large. Writing can be a powerful and meaningful way to express ones beliefs and record your story for others to pass on. Shouldn’t we all be doing more of it?!

Ruth Ann Timmons

In Perry’s article, one of the points that is made is that along with preserving culture and tradition, storytelling is also a valuable tool in informing, educating and persuading others to act on a certain cause. As Perry states, storytelling was an important “practice that gave them legitimate reasons to engage with reading and writing and to develop their English language abilities” (p.37). Writing and telling their stories gave them a reason for becoming involved and interested in literacy. Perry points out that “educators should find or create authentic opportunities for refugee students to share their stories” (pg.37) In the article, Chol hoped to publish his autobiography in a magazine because that’s a real life application for a real audience. Teachers today should try to find ways for students to share their work with live audiences as opposed to just turning it in for the purpose of a grade or not getting in trouble for not completing an assignment. That gives the assignment purpose instead of the feeling of busywork.
This point also connects to Lamont Carey’s Def Jam poetry. He’s using the medium of poetry to get across a message to a real audience about certain problems with the educational system. His poem really did make me think about all those kids that get passed along because everyone places the blame on someone else, especially if the kid can play a sport, and those kids don’t stand a chance if they get an injury because they’re not prepared to do anything else in life. It’s our job as teachers to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

I think that Perry also makes a good point near the end of the article. We should remember that although we are encouraging students of all backgrounds to share their experiences through all mediums, it’s important that they know they don’t have to if they are not comfortable. Many of us have not had traumatic experiences like the Sudanese refugees and do not know what the best way to handle that kind of trauma is. So it is critical that these students be able to decide if, how and when they share their experiences.

Kim Strzelecki

As I read this article, I thought about how stories impact my life. I believe myself to be a storyteller. I was interested by how this article distinguished between the different reasons people tell stories. They tell stories about personal experiences to explain themselves. People tell stories for social reasons, to learn something, or to teach others about society. I tell stories to make connections. When I was sitting around with a few friends at dinner tonight, we were sharing stories so we could make connections with each other. I just did it again! As the article pointed out, storytelling differs across cultures, a point that I reminded myself as I found myself making connections with the students identified in this research study. While I tell stories to for social reasons, Ezra, Chol, and Francis tell stories to educate the world on what is happening. I feel that this is both a skill, and a challenge, as it is hard to recall such difficult memories and put them on paper or easily express them to an audience. Meanwhile, if your audience is not one that you have complete trust and comfort-ability with, it is even harder.
I found myself impressed with Perry as she had worked hard to earn people’s trust in the community. Due to the time she spent with the people, and learning about their culture, she presumably got very honest perspectives and feedback from the people she was interviewing. I thought about myself (typically an open book!) and still, I will only share certain pieces of my life with those that I feel most comfortable with. Knowing this, it is important for me to form a trusting relationship with my students so they feel like they can open up to me about the stories in their lives.
Getting the stories in their lives on paper, like Francis, Ezra, and Chol did is beneficial for many reasons. First, people write their stories to capture the memory so that it is locked in one’s mind as well as on paper. Second, stories can generate interest among a wider population, and on paper, it can reach a wider variety of sources. Also, one can speak to people outside of their culture, to others that might not have the same understanding but do have the desire to learn. These students explained how their parents told stories, but their teachers read the stories. As a teacher, I can contribute to spreading an understanding of different cultures if it is written down for me. I would love the opportunity to experience every culture first hand and bring it back to my students but let’s be realistic…on a teacher’s salary? ☺ Therefore, it is important for people like Ezra, Chol, and Francis to write their stories down so we can help share them.

-- Carrie Brown

Both Lamont Carey and the Perry article focused heavily on storytelling and its importance within our society and among different cultures. While both texts dealt with different groups of people, they both were intended to show how storytelling can be used to make us aware of situations that exist within our community and the world.

For Carey, telling “his story” enabled the audience to see the injustices done among many American children, regardless of race. For me, the most profound statement was when Carey explained that his inability to read, write, and spell (illiteracy) had teachers blaming other teachers, who then blamed the board of education, who then blamed parents, who finally blamed the kid. Illiteracy isn’t a child’s fault…it lies in the fact that our educational system along with the community and parents have not adequately partnered with the student to meet his or her needs. When we aren’t doing our jobs, we can’t even begin to recognize and provide interventions to help a child achieve and feel confidence and success within the academia, along with other areas of his/her life. By the end of Carey’s story, we have a child who was not only injured physically but emotionally and mentally when he felt that he no longer had anything to offer his family. Educators need to instill in students avenues to feel like they are making a difference for their families and home communities, and literacy is a major avenue for doing so.

The use of literacy to make a difference becomes evident when Perry explains how the orphaned Sudanese boys of her study began to transform storytelling, which is a form or genre of literacy, from its traditional purposes to more proactive means of making others aware of the situations that existed in their home communities. This was accomplished as they relayed their personal experiences in oral and written forms, therefore establishing the importance of giving a child the gift of expression through literacy where they can make sense of their personal experiences in order to establish their identities and convey meaning of themselves to the world. Perry’s article show that literacy practices take many different forms and change over time. Storytelling began as a means to pass down cultural histories and traditions as reading and writing only existed in formalized education, but eventually, its audience, purpose, and how they were told changed because the three male participants resettled in a foreign culture that didn’t share the same stories but was eager to hear their experiences in order to learn about the injustices occurring in Sudan so they could proactively participate in a fight for human rights (pg 338). Storytelling became a push for change that was also written down so that it won’t be forgotten. As the Sudanese orphans became displaced, written communication became necessary to keep in touch with surviving family members, making literacy important within their lives.

To adequately sum up both Carey and Perry, all storytellers recognized the need and importance for literacy and its various forms. Both believed, as Perry stated it best, that being literate equaled having access to power. Without literacy, other opportunities exist to achieve much wanted power and prestige, but they can easily be disrupted as made evident in the physical injury of Carey’s storyteller. Literacy seems to be the only rock-solid way of achieving success among society, especially in what many of our articles have referred to as a “white society.”

Melissa Riley

The story of the Lost Boys of Sudan is a compelling one and has been perserved because the refugees are willing to pass on their experiences through storytelling orally and in written forms. I think that all people groups have their ways of passing on traditions using storytelling. In the United States we have access to all kinds of media and access to stories in written and oral form and we pass down family traditions and stories in those forms. But these boys lost a connection with their elders (the storytellers) and mentors that will possibly never be recovered.

In Perry's discoveries, he discusses literacy practices among Sudanese Refugees. The refugees that he included were educated and passionate about disclosing the events from the civil war that tore them from their communities. Perry found that in the participants lives their literacy practices before leaving the Sudan included oral traditional type storytelling by elders, some written storytelling mostly in a religious forum as well as acting out storytelling. Since their arrival in the USA the literacy practices have included more transformed storytelling as they no longer have the elders but rely more on their memory and memory of their fellow refugees as to the acuracy of traditions. But the emergence of using storytelling for change and to tell their stories and to educate the public about the Lost Boys and the civil war has been and outcome for the refugees.

To me it is significant in allowing students I teach to write stories, poetry, and any other form of written expression to put down on paper their thoughts, feelings and desires. It is also important to me that we dictate stories children have because they don't write well but every single one of the have a story to tell. Added to the importance of a student begin given the opportunity to write they should be given opportunities to talk, discuss and participate in self-made skits to express themselves. While I beleive this is true for all students it would be especially important for refugees or ELL students.

Throughout years of research, it has been proven that race, class, and gender, as well as many other factors, all have an impact on learning. Some researchers argue that one factor has more influence on learning than another, but as Deborah Hicks states, “It’s an entire cultural web of language practices and identities that so importantly has an impact on student learning, including literacy learning.” (page 20) The discourse of a child, their culturally specific ways with words, relates to the way that child engages with literacy. Even as adults, our discourse influences our engagements with literacy. Even though we read the same articles for this course and the text reads exactly the same, the literature ‘says’ something different to each of us. The literature connects with us and touches us in different ways. I enjoy reading others’ critiques to see how our perceptions and interpretations of the text vary.

In school, children are often ‘named’ according to their race, gender, and class. Thinking back to my childhood years, children were often given a name by peers, but it was usually based on their race. I do not recall students ever being named for gender or class, but it is possible that it happened. As a child, I thought there were only two classes: rich or poor. I was in the poor class which meant I never had name brand clothes, I didn’t have to pay for my lunch, and I never received toys while they were still “in-style.” So naturally, I thought that the children who had the name brand clothes, paid for their lunch, and always had what was in-style were rich. I also associated my teachers as being in the rich class. They always wore such nice clothes, went to the salon to get their hair fixed, told me stories of taking vacations to faraway places, and drove brand new cars. To be honest, as a child, that is why I desired to be a teacher. I thought they had such perfect, rich lives, and that was the life I desired. As I got older, of course I realized that they are not perfect, and when I started pursuing teaching, I realized that they are definitely not rich. At least not from their teaching salary!

Discourses are not permanent or fixed; they are always shifting. As my perceptions, beliefs, desires, and intentions changed while I was growing and maturing into an adult, our students change as well. In school, children take up many different social discourses causing them to change roles. They can talk, act, and know in hybrid ways as well (p. 21). As educators, this is to our advantage because we can help students create new subject positions. We can help them change the name that they have been given by others, and to create their own name and identity. We can do this by helping them to uncover their true values, beliefs, and desires, and then modeling to teach them how to present themselves so that their words and actions reflect what and who they are, and will be in the future.

Lisa Beach

One of the children that Hicks chose to study was a boy named Jake. She described a situation that occurred at Jake’s home and this helped me to put things into perspective. We know that all families rear their children differently, but when Jake pushed his sister I was taken aback by his family’s reaction. As Hicks states, on the surface this incident does not seem like it has anything to do with literacy learning. As I continued to read, I began to see the connection between Jake’s upbringing and how that could carry over into his academic life. Jake’s mother and grandmother did not use that particular situation as a teaching opportunity. I would predict that most situations in his home were resolved physically.

Students from my previous classes began to flood my mind. These were my students who never stopped to tell an adult when there was a problem. Instead, they would “solve” the problem by simply hitting or pushing the other student. After speaking with their parents it was usually evident that this behavior was tolerated or even encouraged at home. In my experience all of these parents were of the working class or working poor. These parents were quick to defend their child without asking questions or having a discussion. The children of these parents also lacked appropriate communication skills.

Hicks stated that “the ways in which students’ engagements with literacies-or institutional modes of talking, reading, and writing-are connected with their own histories, formed with other whom they value and love.” These crucial aspects of education are formed outside of the classroom. This made me think of the students who do not receive enough exposure to literacy at home. We would hope that their parents would instill a love of literacy but what if they do not? To me it is almost as if educators must take on the role of detective to uncover their students’ discourses. Educators must investigate this problem and scaffold to help students develop the use of a hybrid. I feel that this is an especially delicate situation for younger students. They may be confused about why things in school are different and could view things as “right” or “wrong”. We do not want to dampen our students’ culture; instead we must become compassionate and knowledgeable about the challenge that they encounter. In Dr. Jackson's podcast, she explained a hybrid by using southern women as an example. This really helped me understand the transitions that our students are constantly making. I know that this can be a hard task for adults to juggle, I am sure that it is for children as well. We must know where our students are coming from in order to meet their needs most effectively.

Stacy Durham

It’s evident why conflict exists among kids from working class families as they are forced to transition into white middle-class schools. I have to agree with Hicks that literacy is more than reading and writing because language is used in diverse ways in a range of places. It’s our overall use of the language in various social settings, which often differs with one another and creates the need for this move towards “hybrid” individuals. This “hybridization” compares with code-switching in that we have to understand our roles within each setting and talk like we are a part of that setting. However, the “hybridization” that Heath discusses includes more than our speech. It also involves our behaviors, thoughts, and actions of each role in our social places. A child can often experience failure and decrease in self-esteem and confidence when they are unable to distinguish different roles for each setting, making it hard for them to achieve the literacy and its expectations of each setting.

The idea that power, gender, and class affect our relationships as our social worlds expand is best said with Hicks’ idea of how children enter classrooms having already “named” their identity from their cultural worlds. However, when they enter classrooms, they encounter worlds that are saturated with specific cultural meanings, values, and forms of knowing that are unfamiliar and foreign from their home lives (p. 24). Because they sometimes experience trouble performing to educational literacy expectations, they are labeled in statuses perceived lower than their roles within their families, making many of these working-class children dread or hate school. They feel stupid at school but empowered at home because of their families’ roles that are defined by their gender, race, or class. This concept further affirms Hicks’ thoughts that literacy practices aren’t learned by autonomous reasoners (p. 15). Literacy is guided by those around us in our differing social settings, which include home and school.

Melissa Riley

I totally agree with cultural literacy researchers in that the way students act, their values and beliefs are important in how our students engage in literacy. I found it interesting that Hicks stated it's not just the preschool years that make such a difference. It seems that is the point to drill home to our preschool parents and teachers. But that's not all there is to it. According to Hick's it's the entire cultural web and the literacies within that web. A "cat's cradle" of different language practicies and the identities that come from knowing and acting on those languages. I think that is a very important point in that it's not just how much exposure these children have to books that is the key to early literacy, it's also understanding the background of our students. The literacies they are engaged in at home, involving all language practices. It makes perfect sense to me that we must reflect on the histories, cultural locations, class and gender of our students in order to understand them and their literacy background. As educators our job is to help our students create new literacy, a literacy of learing. The social and economic status of our students shape them into not only who they are, but what they know. The culturally hybrid classrooms were a great way for students to remain who they were and to maintain their cultural " language" as they move to literacy education. Language is more than just linguistics. I agree that conflict occurs when school languge is unfamiliar to our children. The one thing that really comes to my mind is our time spent in Writer's Workshop, just like Roadville. As we read fiction aloud to our students and then ask them to create a piece of fiction writing and they can't. We wonder why this is so hard for them, but to create a piece of writing that is not true or imaginative is out of their language norm. As we (educators) do a better job of understanding the cultural languages (the community of our learners) of our students maybe then we can help our students create new possibilities for their writing and literacy.

Karin Scott

In our readings we have been exposed to a diverse history of literacy learning; from Dowdy’s Trinidadian background and her mother’s influence to “curse in white” to Perry’s Sudanese “Lost Boys” now immersed in American culture. When I read these articles, I think about the ESL students at my school. Preserving culture and language is probably as important to the ESL families as is to Dowdy and the Sudanese refugees. That may be the main reason that ESL families speak their home language among family members in their homes and community, to preserve their culture and history of literacy. The Hmong families in our school are a tight knit group. Most live down one dirt road that winds through some woods and dead ends to a circle of homes, what the Hmong students refer to as “The Village”. In this community, they speak Hmong and are immersed in the Hmong culture. According to Hicks, “the cultural continuity of practices and values shared among generations was stable and consistent.” When the next school year begins, they will once again be immersed in another culture and have to communicate in another language. The language practices among ESL students vary depending upon the cultural community they are in. At home the Hmong children are much more outgoing and verbal. At school, most are extremely quiet until they feel comfortable in their surroundings. Hicks might say that these students are “shifting relations or identities between discourses.”

In the podcast, Dr. Jackson points out that literacy is much more than cognitive processes, but also cultural processes. Literacy involves language practices and the way people act. How are children being socialized? Does a family teach to solve problems physically, as Lee Ann is encouraged to jump on her older brother, Jake? Are conversations taking place in the home that help children learn and grow? Are there opportunities to read in the home, and do the parents value reading? All of these areas are fundamental, because literacy takes place in a social environment.

Hicks states that “Children can know and be in ways that transgress racist, classist, sexist oppressions – a key goal of critical literacy education”. Hicks goes on to say “Children and teachers together can contest and transform the relations that position children as ‘failures’ because they voice and enact working-class identities and values”. These statements remind me of the Hustle and Flow article that reveal the African American students beginning to feel differently about themselves after participating in the afterschool program. The students changed from unengaged with literacy to not only engaged, but feeling more confident in their reading ability. Teachers should strive to help students overcome feelings of defeat, and value education no matter where they come from.

Carol Holt

Previously we have discussed how our ‘languages’ must occupy separate spaces. We must be “in two places at the same time 'ovuh dyuh' and here too” as we construct our identities. (Dowdy).

Hicks expands on this notion of identity by examining the ‘whole’ child. She defines literacy as a cultural process and not just a cognitive one. She discusses how theories suggesting children are ‘autonomous reasoners’ who individually in their own minds construct literacy is too narrow an assertion. Instead she defines it as a social process: “Literacies are cultural and material practices shaped by histories, localities, and the persons within them that give form and meaning to children’s lives” (p.16). I think she is correct when she states that children come to school ‘named’ in terms of their literacies that are embedded in their culture. Young children can perceptively articulate how they view themselves as readers, writers and speakers and it is fascinating to listen to them explain why.

Identity is not just our social literacy, it is this and more. Just as we utilize Dowdy’s notion of dual languages, we also occupy hybrid discourses, shifting discourses: Not of language of words, but of socialization, what Hicks terms “a way of being”. Therefore, as the podcast also explained, in all walks of life we see and experience different ways of being. However, in doing so we tend to have social expectations that certain people will behave in a certain way.

Hicks also discusses how gender, race, power and class influence literacy learning and therefore identity. How children view these through the lenses of their upbringing can cause “working class children to experience painful cultural dissonance in middle class classrooms” (p.4). She cleverly illustrates this influence in her discussion of family moments with Jake and Lee Ann were issues of power, gender and rules were evident in their play and arguments and the resolutions offered by the adults. Children then bring this discourse, this ‘way of being’ into the school environment. They have preconceived notions that are embedded in their upbringing about behavior, the role of women and men, and if those same notions apply at school or are they to be left at the classroom door? Here children have to try and navigate a world “saturated with specific cultural meanings, values and forms of knowing” (p.24) that is different from their own. With conflict we often ask the children how can we solve it and give them ownership and develop a ‘way to be’. We expect them to say “I should have told the teacher, walked away or worked it out by talking with each other’. However, more often than not students have a different approach beginning with “my dad told me to” or “in my family we.” Hicks offers Heath’s depiction of the Roadville children as an example of contradictions such as this and the need for shifting discourses. The children’s communities approached storytelling in different ways to their school setting. The teacher did not value spontaneous stories, about real life events. Instead they favored students making up stories from their reading books. However, in Roadville these stories would be seen as lies and bring punishment. (p.25). Clearly this is confusing for students because literacies and values clash. Social discourses have to shift because of shifting power, talk, action and knowledge.

To counteracts these moments, Hicks urges teachers to teach critical literacy: “to strive for critical practices that address the varying diversities they might encounter – those involving relations of ethnicity, race, gender and class”. (p.4). We should offer a curriculum that “embraces listening, watching, feeling, and understanding” (p.13). This task is challenging but crucial: to attempt to ‘read the lives’ of children as they negotiate their hybrid discourses of home, school and places. Above all we should not model autonomy, of singular experiences such as tests and labeling of students. For policy makers this should be their ‘shift’ and ‘way of being’.

Karen Massey-Cerda

I found the chapters in “Reading Lives,” to be very thought provoking and the podcast was helpful in understanding vocabulary as well as highlighting important aspects of the text. One interesting part of the readings for me was the comparisons about working class vs. middle class. If I interpreted the text correctly it revealed that students coming from working class backgrounds are more focused on social belonging and they way their peers and teachers respond to them. Students from working class environments draw on their experiences from listening, watching, feeling and understanding more than they do from reading and writing. Everyday experiences form much of their literacy knowledge depending upon their access to literacy.

Whether from middle class or working class environments children soon become aware of “where they stand,” socially and academically among their peers. You don’t have to tell a child they are a struggling reader they most often know it already. It would be nice if our society could get over the competition that pits children against each other – we constantly have to assign a place in line or pecking order if you will. It would be better to have at least a school environment that emphasizes all students reading in a nonthreatening and comfortable/encouraging place to grow academically.

In Chapter 2 of Hicks book, the term hybrid ways was introduced. This I equated to the term code switching from the earlier readings. Students do learn to work one way at home and another way at school. I also liked that Hicks brings out the fact that literacy does not just happen at school. Many things happen at home that relate to literacy such as storytelling, sitting on the front porch talking, and conversing over preparing for dinner or at the dinner table. I know that I have learned many things just from conversations with my parents and watching them that doesn’t mean that I do the same things the way they did but it was a learning process.
Karen Gold

I often wonder if the younger set out there was plagued during their adolescent years by the scourge of last name identity as it relates to literacy and worth. After reading Hicks research and accounts of "we of me" and the fact that literacy is not just reading, many memories flooded my mind. In my dating years and in the years of friendship cultivation, I remember quite well my experiences with my family and in particular my mom. In my county we had many people with the last name of Cox, Smith, Brady, Brown, Deaton, Kiser, Moffitt, Craven, Teague and the list goes on. When I mentioned to my mom certain interest in cultivating friendships or dating certain people, she immediately referenced them by the last name as if it would be a predictor of their worth. "On no", she would say, "you don't want to date a Deaton or make friends with a Brady." "Their families are illiterate or poor or bad and so on." These kids were lableled already and off limits to me. My literacy evolution was to be threatened by the very parameters she set. I suffered during these years and realized potential friends avoided me and thought I was an introvert. The "we of me" was always my family and I began to think there were no other people out there quite as good as my family. The Holy Bible and study was written literacy for me and my content area studies. However, as time evolved even my family ties could not stop the evolution of relationships and new "we of me" experiences. We never stop evolving in this way and as meet people or change circles of friends. My we people change as well as my thirst for new and different literature based on what they bring to my life. They shape me and mold me. How fortunate I have been to be able to break out of the small southern community stereotype and become intertwined with culturally different and diverse beings. The very socialization with many people continue to make me what or who I am and I don't see this ever stopping until death. Am I a Hybrid? You betcha I am. As a matter of fact, I change the nature of my hybrid existence depending on where and with whom. In reference to the podcast, I now understand as well that I am a literary product of the female south. That is innate and will not change but I revere and applaud my friends and experiences from different cultures and backgrounds. With each relationship and experience my readings become more diverse and clear. How in the world do we expect young children from certain cultures and backgrounds that experience only that because they can't flee the nest, to understand some of the literature we as educators place before them. How can we test them on such? They must live and experience in order to learn as do we. Relationships, experiences, people, places, all form our literacy background. Reading and reading for understanding is the product of those things. That is true literacy.

Candace Kee

I often wonder if the younger set out there was plagued during their adolescent years by the scourge of last name identity as it relates to literacy and worth. After reading Hicks research and accounts of "we of me" and the fact that literacy is not just reading, many memories flooded my mind. In my dating years and in the years of friendship cultivation, I remember quite well my experiences with my family and in particular my mom. In my county we had many people with the last name of Cox, Smith, Brady, Brown, Deaton, Kiser, Moffitt, Craven, Teague and the list goes on. When I mentioned to my mom certain interest in cultivating friendships or dating certain people, she immediately referenced them by the last name as if it would be a predictor of their worth. "On no", she would say, "you don't want to date a Deaton or make friends with a Brady." "Their families are illiterate or poor or bad and so on." These kids were lableled already and off limits to me. My literacy evolution was to be threatened by the very parameters she set. I suffered during these years and realized potential friends avoided me and thought I was an introvert. The "we of me" was always my family and I began to think there were no other people out there quite as good as my family. The Holy Bible and study was written literacy for me and my content area studies. However, as time evolved even my family ties could not stop the evolution of relationships and new "we of me" experiences. We never stop evolving in this way as meet people or change circles of friends. My we people change as well as my thirst for new and different literature based on what they bring to my life. They shape me and mold me. How fortunate I have been to be able to break out of the small southern community stereotype and become intertwined with culturally different and diverse beings. The very socialization with many people continue to make me what or who I am and I don't see this ever stopping until death. Am I a Hybrid? You betcha I am. As a matter of fact, I change the nature of my hybrid existence depending on where and with whom. In reference to the podcast, I now understand as well that I am a literary product of the female south. That is innate and will not change but I revere and applaud my friends and experiences from different cultures and backgrounds. With each relationship and experience my readings become more diverse and clear. How in the world do we expect young children from certain cultures and backgrounds that experience only that because they can't flee the nest, to understand some of the literature we as educators place before them? How can we test them on such? They must live and experience in order to learn as do we. Relationships, experiences, people, places, all form our literacy background. Reading and reading for understanding is the product of those things. That is true literacy.

`The idea of cultural discourse involves all the components which affect the development of the whole child. Language, beliefs, values, and ways of acting all impact an individual’s placement in the world. All these factors play an important role in a person’s literacy- how he or she interacts with his or her world.

It is fascinating how differing localities can produce such a range of cultural differences. Regions, dialects, and population size will produce individual traits within a culture. Likewise, jobs and careers will produce a social discourse which may be shared within families and communities. There is an understood way of interacting within one’s own community.

As a child becomes who he or she is expected to be within the community, he or she adopts or assumes certain roles. Their performance in school is controlled to a degree by these expectations and common values. While this control is a powerful influence, I do believe it is possible to assist children in developing an alternate discourse. With exposure to different experiences, one can learn to exist between two different cultures.

Currently, I teach at a rural school, much like the one I attended as a child. Many of the children participate in community events but may not have had experiences beyond their community. The dialect spoken reflects a need to express basic needs and wants. Students have learned to exist in a single culture with a common dialect. As a result, their writing reflects local values and experiences. Often during parent/teacher conferences, parents will excuse their child’s performance, assuming that their shortcomings are a direct result of their own academic struggles. Comments such as, “He gets that from me” or “Well, I wasn’t good at math either” reflect limited expectations. Children often internalize these expectations and live up to them. Many of these parents work at blue collar jobs or are unemployed.

While these outside influences do affect a child internally, I believe teachers can bridge the gap by creating global awareness. Children need to know that there is a world beyond their community. By doing this, we are not conveying that their world is not acceptable; rather, we are making them aware of additional opportunities. Once they are exposed to other possibilities, they will begin to create the ability to coexist between the two.

We cannot ignore the cultural histories of our students. On the contrary, we must embrace them and invite them to share their cultural literacies with us in order for us to expand our own. Before we can be great educators, we must take steps to understand our children’s backgrounds and create a safe atmosphere in which they can grow. We must not perceive what they bring to literacy as insufficient, but we must recognize it and validate it. “An explicitly political activism is required if the discourse that create ‘knowers’ and ‘knowings’ are to be altered.” (Hicks 30)

Holly Lawson

It was interesting, after reading these two chapters and listening to the podcast, to think of the other readings we have done with Hicks’ beliefs in mind. It appears that Daniel and Zonnie, the American Indians in the Noll article, were very much the produce of their Native American culture. Despite having parents who supported the students in their attempts in school, they were not as successful as they could have been, perhaps because their cultural literacies were not valued in the school setting. The Black students and the African Caribbean students in the Staples and Henry articles and Lamont Carey, were, likewise, not successful in school, and again, I believe, their cultural “ways” were not accepted in school. Their home discourses, their “language practices, ways of acting, values, and beliefs” (Hicks, p. 20) were not compatible with school literacies, and therefore these students had a strong sense of being disconnected with the world of education. None of these students had become skillful at shifting between cultures – hybrid ways, as Dr. Hicks described it, nor did it appear that the schools recognized and valued their discourses. On the other hand, the Lost Boys, from the Perry article, were able to successfully make the shift, and, as a result, they flourished in school even as they maintained their cultural identities. They were even able to use their literacy skills to share their culture and their experiences with the world. I have to wonder what made the experiences of the Lost Boys so different from the other students about whom we have read, what caused them to be able to function comfortably in both worlds.

At one point in my teaching career I taught in a small town where most of the parents worked in a furniture factory. Many of those parents were very distrustful of the school system because of negative experiences they had with schools in their childhood. Their feelings and attitudes came across loud and clear to me when we talked – and I can only imagine what their children grew up hearing about schools. As I read these chapters, I began to wonder if their experiences were the result of conflicting discourses, with a lack of acceptance of their home culture in the school setting. If their school experiences are repeated with their children’s schools, it makes sense that this becomes a cycle...so how do we break the cycle? It seems clear to me that it is crucial that educators get to know their students, that we learn about their home lives and community, and that we work with our students as they come to us. Only in that way can we break the cycle that holds so many students back.

Marlee Wright

A child’s values, beliefs system, language interactions, and behavioral interaction all impact how a child interacts in the world. Ideas that are rooted in a child’s upbringing shape their lives outside of the classroom “…it is an entire cultural web –of language practices and identities that so importantly has an impact on school learning, including literacy learning.” (p. 20) Children bring their deep rooted identities from home to school causing what Hicks has described as discourse.

During the podcast the discussion of “being socialized into ways of being, knowing, talking, acting, and feeling” brought think about my own school located in the center of public housing. Every student makes a shift when they come to school between their home expectations and their school expectations, but the shift is not always the same. The discussion of power really spoke to me and how children have to shift the power between school and home.

Many of my student’s parents work second shift and much of the responsibility at home fell on the siblings to take care of one another. At home the child was in charge. The child gave the orders and was also the caregiver. When they came to school and it was time to be “the child” it was hard for some of my students to make this shift into school mode. It was hard for them to relinquish the power and it could often lead to behavioral problems in school both academically and socially. For many of my children survival was the key as parents were working to make ends meet and the children took care of one another. Education was not always valued or modeled within the home, so for some kids the stigma of not being a good reader existed. The goal in the home was to be independent and take care of each other. School was routine for the kids, but not the center of their lives.

As their teacher it was my job to engage the children in the idea of accepting the roles of school. Building a trusting relationship along with understanding their life helps to transition the shift to school a little easier. When we embrace their lives while educating ourselves we make the shift for students between homes and school more inviting.

Kara Scott

As I read the chapters in Reading Lives by Deborah Hicks and listened to Dr. Jackson’s podcast, the point that resonated most with me was that literacy was not a school-based, individualized activity. Rather, literacy is a social and cultural activity, much more than just reading and writing. According to Hicks, “the ways in which students’ [engage] with literacies – or institutional modes of talking, reading, and writing - are connected with their own histories, formed with others whom they value and love” (p. 1). While I know that a child’s early literacy experiences are crucial to their literacy development, I think that I have been guilty of forgetting this cultural aspect of literacy development once they enter my classroom.

Hicks asserts that students “come to be and know with others as they engage in discourse practices fully saturated with cultural meanings” (p. 23). The problems for many children, like the working-class poor who are indeed viewed negatively in middle-class classrooms, arise when they enter school and encounter discourses and cultural practices that differ greatly from that of the home. The knowledge these children have constructed at home is the foundation of their identity. Once at school, these children must make shifts as they practice different discourses and different types of knowing. Hicks refers to this notion as “hybrid” ways of acting, talking and knowing (p. 21).

This idea of “hybridization,” for me, is the sum of all of our previous readings. Whether we call it code switching, helping them find their voice, or building a bridge between home and school literacies, this “hybridization” is key into today’s classrooms. Educators must create, respect, and maintain a balance between a child’s discourses. We have to create “classroom spaces where students [can] begin to move between cultural discourses without giving up the richness of their community experiences and language practices” (p. 25).

This is no small feat for educators. We are faced with many constraints in the classroom, especially the standard curriculum we are required to teach. We have to be innovative and creative. We must facilitate lessons that celebrate these different cultures and discourses. I felt that Hicks made an important point when she said that teachers needed to “confront their own racisms and classisms before they [can] see the richness of children’s culturally saturated lives” (p. 26). I know I have a lot of work to still do in this area. While I feel that I am taking positive steps in the right direction, I still have much to learn.

I am reminded of an article I was just reading in my hometown newspaper. The article was referring to a speech made by one of the graduating seniors. In his speech he was reminding his classmates to be proud of who they are and where they come from; their cultural identities. He said, “Wherever you go, wherever you are, don’t forget to say ‘y’all’ and ‘you’ns’.” Maybe his teachers got it right!

Leslie Rothenberger

“Children and teachers together can contest and transform the relations that position children as ‘failures’ because they voice and enact working-class identities and values, or Black identities and values.” (p.21)

When reading this section of the book, this quote in particular reminded of Staple’s article about “re-authoring.” I felt that this text went beyond calling on students to “re-author” themselves, and extended to calling on teachers and students to “re-author” the community. As in Staple’s article, the work of Heath and Walkerdine acknowledge that conflicts often arise between the cultures and literacies of students’ home lives and their school lives. Heath’s work suggests that classrooms should be reworked to include aspects of the students’ home and school literacies. Walker’s focus was on teaching students to be aware of how certain literature pieces may contain messages of “silencings and oppressions.” Both researchers’ goal was to change the way working-class students feel about themselves and the way their middle-class counterparts treat them.

What I took most from this portion of the text was Heath’s statements that we need to take all parts of the reader’s life into account when analyzing their literacy skills. Children do not grow up in a private bubble until they reach the magical age of kindergarten. They learn indirectly and directly from the people and interactions that occur around them and the situations in which they interact with others. These influences are always present, and we teachers need to acknowledge them not as a detriment to their education, but as a resource that can be used as a supplement to our standardized teaching materials.

Andrea Schlobohm

Reading the first chapter of Hicks' book about working class children and literacy opened my eyes to how many different discourses our students must manage in their lives. They are raised with a certain identity based on their social and cultural practices that shape their literacy before their school discourse even begins. Early socialization affecting their cultural literacy based on gender and class often conflict with school literacy practices. As educators, helping students become successful shifters of their various discourses would create more engaged learners in literacy practices at school. In Heath's research, she advocates for "teachers to create more culturally responsive pedagogies" (chapter 2, p.25). Creating classroom environments where students are able to shift between their discourses with ease, solidifies identities and feelings of belonging. The two American Indian students in Noll’s study, Daniel and Zonnie, would have been able to shift with greater ease between their home culture and school culture if their school discourse had integrated some of the literacy practices they both excelled in outside of school. Their power and identity was not recognized at school and their home culture was stronger and deeper thus separating the two discourses rather than bridging them. I believe by working through our own cultural discourses as Dr. Jackson described on the Podcast, shifting from academic researcher to a small town southern woman when visiting family, we can help students bridge the gap between home culture and school culture. Although with the example of the preschoolers, Terry and Sean, in Walkerdine’s study mentioned on page 27, some discourses cannot transfer easily into the school environment. I was astonished that the teacher did not discourage the young boys’ sense of power over her. Is there not a time when the line must be drawn to define what is acceptable and what is not?
Although we have a multicultural school community where I work, a large majority of the students come from working-class families or low income households. I think it would be beneficial to understand the three main ethnic class cultures found in our classrooms; White working- class, African-American working-class, and Hispanic working- class, to better understand their literacy practices outside of school and how that affects their learning in class. I grew up in a White middle-class family living in a predominately white middle-class neighborhood where the shift between discourses was easily attained. Even though my parents were only high school graduates, they both held respectable government jobs that required effective reading, writing, and verbal literacy skills. These literacy practices were instilled in our home environment through communication and support throughout my schooling. As an educator, I need to recognize that not all home cultures provide that continuance and many of our young students are learning how to become culturally hybrid in a global world.

Michelle Carlson

When reading these chapters, my mind was drawn to the one person in my life who has had to adapt to many different discourses and learn how to function accordingly: my mom. When my parents met, they were from culturally different worlds. My mom was from a working class family, while my dad came from an upper class family. My mom needed to learn how to navigate the world of country clubs and cocktail hours. Yet, while she needed to shift from one discourse to the other, she still needed to socialize with those that she grew up with. As Hicks illustrates, she couldn’t lose both, she became a hybrid of such, just as the kids in Hicks’ study did.

Then, when I was seven, my parents got divorced. My mom suddenly found herself illiterate in life skills. She did not know how to pay bills. She did not know how to get a job. She felt as if she didn’t have an identity other than being a wife and a mom. Her first job at an eye doctor’s office had a steep learning curve. She had to learn how to get along with all kinds of people outside of her socioeconomic environment. She needed to take direction from a boss that was much younger than she was. She needed to learn how a professional practice operates. As my mother’s discourse expanded, so did her confidence. She became literate in the things that were initially her biggest obstacles. Literacy cannot only be defined as how well someone reads or writes. My mom had established her reading and writing skills in primary school, but in her situation, she needed to become more knowledgeable in the skills of interviewing, maintaining a job, and managing money, to succeed in her world. As Hicks describes, literacy is a social and cultural practice, not only a school based activity. My mom is a first hand example of how she needed to become literate in certain areas to navigate her surroundings.

In some respects, my mom’s ability to transition between different cultures is similar to code switching. She might not adapt her language completely, but she adapted her actions, expanded her skill set, and extended her cultural awareness. Yet she was still able to fit into many different worlds. The students that Hicks’ studies are in a similar situation. I’m interested to read more…

-- Carrie Brown

While reading the two chapters from Hicks’ book, I found myself realizing there were many connections to previously read articles. The concept that stuck out to me the most was the use of the term hybrid to describe how children’s identities are not fixed but in fact switch back and forth from when they are school and when they are at home. This reminded me of the term “code-switching” from the Delpit/Dowdy readings/discussion. It further solidifies the idea that children today have identities that are dynamic as opposed to static and change according to their surroundings. It is important to support this fluidity so as to make sure that children are staying true to who they are, and yet still moving in the right direction in education.

Another similarity I noticed was the section that focused on storytelling. This, of course, made me remember our latest reading of Perry, and her discussion of storytelling. I took particular notice of the example of the community in Roadville, where telling stories from the Bible or of actual events was valued but “made up” or fictional stories, even stories that elaborated details of a real life event, were discouraged and frowned upon. As teachers we so often encourage our students to use their imaginations and make up their own stories, but in Roadville, this practice would in fact “bring punishment or charge of lying” (p. 25). It is important to know the kind of community your students are going home to at the end of the day in order to best understand where they are coming from.

In general, what this these chapters and many of our past readings have highlighted is the fact that literacy is not just reading the writing. It is not even simply what happens in school and it does not start when school starts. Literacy also involves everyone and everything that the child is introduced to and influenced by outside of and before starting school as well. It’s important for us as teachers to know where our students come from, and value those resources, in order to help them get where they are going.

Kim Strzelecki

While reading Deborah Hicks’ first two chapters I was reminded of many concepts previously introduced in the research we have been reading. “Code-switching,” the search for “voice,” storytelling, and “re-authoring” just to name a few. The concept of discourse is an interesting one for me. We all belong to many groups and therefore are members of several discourses. Interaction and communication within these groups require us to participate in and utilize “code-switching,” our “voice,” and storytelling. Hicks refers to this as “being socialized into ways of being, knowing, talking, acting, and feeling.” For children this can be a confusing and overwhelming time or process, especially if they do not feel or experience support from their home or school environment.

As teachers we need to remember to support and take into consideration all the differences that our students are bringing with them to class. They experience interactions with many discourses themselves throughout a day and week. As Hicks mentioned and it has been said before, literacy does not just consist of reading and writing alone. As I reflect, I can remember as a child switching easily between literacy experiences and discourses- from home, school, dance class, soccer team, piano lessons, and neighborhood playtime. I’ve noticed that some of my students, even at such a young age in kindergarten, can also easily adjust to their changing discourses. I look forward to reading more of
Hicks’ findings and utilizing ideas to help improve my own classroom.

Ruth Ann Timmons

WOW! I thought I was reading about myself as I was reading about Hick's childhood. The rural North Carolina town in God's country and summers spent at Bible School...learning to be a "good girl". I agree as I look back those were the moments that were critical in learning, in the sense of socalization. Those important memories and engagements are part of my unique life story. I never thought about those moments in my life history having such an impact on my beginning literacy. "Reading is part of children's situated histories." Our race, gender, class and locality all influence the practices of reading. As I read these two chapters and tried understand the people in them I found that the best way to understand them was to look at my history and try to really piece together what made me who I am today. Taking into consideration all the concepts we have been talking about in this course; race, gender, class and the locality of where I was raised. Once I understand this about myself the better I will be at understanding the discourses that make my students who they are and their literacy development.
Laurie's early years was an eye opening experience for me. It is amazing at the power of the events in our lives create who are, and how we relate to others shaped our beliefs and literacy experiences. Laurie's home life experieces had such an impact on her learning experience at school. I need to be more sensitive to my students and understand that their young lives are being influenced either positively or negatively before they come to me each day. And those influences do have an affect on their learning on a day-to-day basis. The success and/or the struggles that our students face sometimes flow from their home situations. My question is how can I, as a classroom teacher, help my students overcome such difficulties? My job is to immerse my students in literacy experices that will be life changing, therefore I need to know how to modify my daily instruction to meet the needs of all the children.

Karin Scott

After reading chapters three and four, I concluded that an individual’s identity is created from choices and backgrounds. As a person develops identity, often confusion and conflict coexist with this growth because of gender roles taught in a person’s family setting. These conditioned roles then have to be reconditioned to fit in an academic setting. What I found intriguing in these chapters was how reading and writing literacies were used to help Laurie in her academic world as she made sense of the world she was also bringing from home. Though her imaginative stories were methods at giving her a voice, I felt that they actually gave more insight to the researcher, teachers, and reader in why she was experiencing conflict in her “good girl” role at school when her good behavior achievements were not lining up to her academic abilities, especially when reading and writing improvement became evident for a brief moment at the time her single mother was dating a man that she desired to become her “daddy.” This exemplifies that even as a young girl, she already was able to distinguish the roles between male and female. My heart broke for Laurie as she tried to maintain the roles of caregiver and child simultaneously, and I sympathized for her when she struggled with this behavior during the school hours. It seemed that her situation only worsened when her kindergarten “boyfriend” relocated schools and she was diagnosed with ADD. I questioned whether she misdiagnosed for ADD and really needed to be medicated. A part of me felt that she was trying to define her gender role and cope with her reading and writing struggles. I also couldn’t help think that some of her so-called ADD issues were a direct results of the working class family she was in where her mother and grandmother were working all the time in order to provide for her and her two other siblings. Perhaps Laurie, like many children in such low-income single-parenting families, was attempting to gain adult attention and recognition from her mother and grandmother for her attempts of being a “good girl” at school and a “good daughter” at home by caring for her younger siblings.

Despite her situation, I can’t agree more with the text written on page 42 that states Laurie created “adventures” connected to reading and writing. She discovered that she could reinvent everyday, mundane experiences and create new ones. Like the Carey video, Laurie realized the importance of literacy and how it could lead to power. The power of literacy was enabling her to create hope for her in a discouraging situation. In my opinion, I felt Laurie could relate more to the woman’s role not only because she was female but because she only had female authority figures – both at home and school. Her perception and distinction of girl stuff from boy stuff was heavily influenced by the fact that she lacked a constant adult male role model. The only male influence was her brother and “boyfriends” in school, which both relationships involved Laurie taking the role of a caregiver. Even though her reading and writing skills were limited, Laurie had cultural literacy that was shaped by her working class family and female role within her family. For example, she was able to create drama when playing with her Barbie dolls. She used her experiences and understandings of the world around her to create a life for her lifeless dolls. As a child, I also did the same, where I would create situations for my dolls based on books, television shows, or social interactions that I had dealt with through the lens of my childhood. I envisioned Laurie creating the romantic, yet innocent, relationships between Barbie and Ken where Barbie stayed home taking care of the kids and cleaning while Ken worked and was the breadwinner of the family. This reenactment came to mind since Laurie so longed for something that was somewhat unfamiliar to her – a home with an active dad who provided for her family. I wonder how things would have been different for Laurie if she would have had such a being involved in her life from birth on. Perhaps the identity roles she had so much struggled with when defining herself as a female child aiming to achieve academic success as a “good student” and “good daughter” would have turned out differently.

Melissa Riley

Reading about Laurie being placed on ADD medication was disheartening. Her outbursts were probably a cry for attention, attention she needed to remain her vibrant self. Instead, her "voice" was subdued. I have seen many students' personalities changed by ADD medications, as well as feeling sick and looking more like a zombie than themselves. If a dose is missed once their bodies are used to the medications, then they truly act drugged with opposite effects like moving constantly, eyes glazed and appearing "high". I'd venture to say there are far more children on ADD medication that do not need to be. My daughter's 3rd grade teacher mentioned that medication might help her focus in class, because she seemed to daydream. In talking with her about the importance of paying attention to her teacher, comments were made that led us to believe she may have been bored. We chose not to go the medication route, and my daughter has performed at or above average in school ever since. She has just recently finished 8th grade. The drug overuse is a vitally important reason to learn more about our students' background, their "history".

It was disappointing to hear that Laurie's 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Rhodes, taught reading with a basal in a whole-class approach. Hopefully most teachers pair students with books on their instructional reading level and have small groups of students for guided reading lessons, as opposed to teaching reading to the entire class from a basal. A basal would not meet the needs of readers in a 1st grade classroom which could range from kindergarten level to 2nd grade or even higher. First grade alone has so many reading levels (DRA 4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18 - that's "8" levels!). Things might have turned out differently for Laurie had she been reading in appropriately leveled text all year.

It sounded like Mrs. Rhodes used several worksheets in her daily teaching. Using lots of worksheets is unengaging, busy work and is frowned upon at my school. If you were the student, wouldn't you rather be engaged in small group activities, working with a partner, using manipulatives, enjoying centers, or working independently on something besides worksheets? Worksheets are boring!

It's interesting to think about empowerment through academic success and how a loving, secure homelife can benefit children in school. While reading of Laurie's struggles at home, I thought of the students who confided in me their sadness of missing their dad as well as their excitement in telling me that they were going to see their dad this weekend. Emotions about homelife for students plays an integral part in their success at school.

As troubling as life was for Laurie at home and in school, she seemed to regain her voice through writing. Incorporating writing centers in the classroom seem to be a good way to learn the histories of students. The more teachers can learn about students' histories, the better teachers can meet their needs.

Carol Holt

A reader is a person in history, a person with a history. -Jane Miller

This is a powerful quote that we, as educators, need to keep fresh in our minds. Each student we teach will have a different history, values, and beliefs. We can not control what happens to these students before they enter our classroom, and we can not control what happens outside of our classroom. As educators, we need to understand that their history has an influence on everything they do from the way they speak, behave, and act to the way that they learn and what they learn. Whether a teacher has been in the classroom one year or thirty years, it is obvious to us that a child’s history and home life has a direct effect on their overall achievement in the classroom.

As I was reading these two chapters, it was obvious that Laurie is an excellent example to prove that a child’s history has an effect on achievement in the classroom. The text mentions that Laurie’s mother was seeking romance, and thought it important to have a man in her life. Laurie also values romantic relationships because she refers to it several times in her writing and talks about her relationships with Nicholas and Steven when talking with Deborah. The text also mentions that Laurie’s mother and grandmother loved her very much, and they had to make sacrifices in hopes of bettering the family. Laurie’s mother attended college (which is a great example of educational importance of Laurie) and her grandmother had to work two jobs to fulfill the financial obligations of the family. In the hustle and bustle of work, school, and tending to all three children, her mother and grandmother could not provide Laurie with the emotional attention she needed. In order to get the attention, Laurie would act out. As educators, I believe we see this situation too often in our own classrooms. Many parents work odd shifts or multiple jobs, so the children can not receive that necessary attention that a child needs. Students then resort to acting out or misbehaving because they want attention, positive or negative.

Laurie realized that she had not been a ‘good girl’ in first grade, and as she entered second grade she decided that she was going to work harder to be a good girl (or a teacher pleaser). She was working to have better behavior and she was also working diligently to improve academically. Although she still struggled in reading, Laurie enjoyed math. She was so proud of herself when she walked into the classroom during a lesson and found that taking ten away from eighteen would leave eight. She proudly told the teacher the answer, who in return praised Laurie. I believe it is very important to praise students for their accomplishments. Not only does it boost their confidence and self-esteem, but it offers that emotional attention that some students so desperately desire. I was guilty of being a teacher pleaser in school, and I loved to get praise from my teachers. I was a student who after being praised for an accomplishment, I would work very hard so that I might be praised again. Maybe some of our students are the same way and it would motivate them to work harder on academics or other aspects of their lives.

Lisa Beach

Chapter 3 described discourses very similar to those of my childhood. My parents made sure that I learned the traits of a Southern lady early on. On Sundays, I would be adorned with black patent leather shoes and dresses of ruffles and lace. I would sit quietly on the second pew while my mother played the piano. Many nights I recalled my mother lying in bed reading her Bible. I knew what was expected of me, and I always did my best in an effort to make my parents proud. It’s amazing how one’s childhood discourses influence his/her literacy.

I do believe that my eagerness to be a “good” student was influenced by my parents’ clear expectations. My mother was always very meticulous with any task she undertook, whether it were cooking, sewing, playing the piano, or planning Vacation Bible School. She was always my role model so I guess my attempts at doing well were a means of mimicking her. In class, I was the quiet student who answered questions only when called upon. Achievement was very important to me, but attention of any kind made me a little uncomfortable. In hindsight, I guess this aversion to attention stemmed from my parents’ avoidance of outwardly praising their children. It’s really interesting how this chapter has made me reflect upon my own personal discourses and how they influenced me as a reader and a student in general. With regards to becoming “hybrid”, I have noticed a personal trait that differs greatly when I am assuming the role of teacher. Although I was raised in a home where the Southern drawl was very pronounced, I make a conscious effort to enunciate my words clearly when teaching- for example, adding the –ing and pronouncing the short e as an e instead of as a short i.

As I read chapter 4, my heart became very heavy as I thought about all the Lauries I have encountered over the years. It is not that these children cannot learn; it’s more of an issue of cultural influence and expectations. Every day we encounter students who are affected by their parents’ value of education, financial struggles, domestic strife, etc. Self-efficacy too often becomes a negative driving force as opposed to a positive one. Laurie wanted to be viewed as a “good” student. When she could no longer keep up academically, she focused on getting attention for good behavior. (Hicks 79)

Not all children have the optimum preschool years. They want to fit their culture’s definition of normal. When they are set apart, they seek ways to gain acceptance. Laurie was being raised by her mother and grandmother so, for her, the concept of a “new daddy” made her feel acceptable. At this point, she knew she was academically behind her classmates. I believe the possibility of having a “new daddy” made her feel the security for which she longed.

One of the most troubling factors in Laurie’s story was the system’s expectations that all students read the same series at the same rate. Children are not made from cookie cutters, and we cannot expect them to consistently perform on the same level as their peers. I am thankful for Hicks’ intervention. Laurie’s teachers were expected to continue instruction for the average kindergarten, first, or second grade students. In any classroom, it is crucial that students have the opportunity to read at their own independent level and perform tasks for which they are developmentally ready. Unfortunately, state and federal demands put even more pressure on at-risk students. While striving to meet state and local demands, we also must be prepared to meet each child where he/she is and plan accordingly. With this mindset, I do believe that each child will grow and feel successful. I would rather a child work at his/her own pace and slowly grow than simply quit and ultimately “fall between the cracks”. We just need to equip them with the tools they need for success. If we do not give up on them, maybe they will not give up on themselves.

Holly Lawson

I really liked the quotation from Hicks’ 3rd chapter, last paragraph: “Teaching, like research, involves situated readings of students. We read students’ lives in ways that draw on our own histories as learners.” I hadn’t really thought of it in that way, but, as I read and considered Laurie’s story, I can see the validity of this statement. My childhood was safe and secure, centered in activities at our Southern Baptist Church. My earliest memories are of Vacation Bible School, similar to the memories of Deborah Hicks, and of listening to the music at Sunday services. Although we moved several times as I was growing up, my parents provided a loving and a literate home, and I always felt secure in my “place”. I was a good student, probably motivated as much by the fact that my parents expected me to be one as by my own intrinsic expectations. I could not conceive of anyone NOT wanting to be able to read – it was my favorite thing to do!

As I have mentioned before, teaching in the small, working-class town where I taught for many years was an eye-opening experience for me. For the first time I “ran up against” the Lauries of the world – students who lived with Grandma because Daddy was in jail, students whose fathers were not even in the picture at all, students who lived in a hotel (WHICH hotel was determined by which street-corner Mom worked the night before), and students who spoke little or no English. On several occasions I helped a fellow teacher pack a child’s bookbag with snacks before sending him home, knowing that he and his siblings might or might not have dinner that night. I worked with a student who had severe emotional problems because he had witnessed his father being brutally – and wrongfully – arrested. When I began working there, I had no idea how to relate to those family situations. I only know that my middle-class background was light years away from that of the children with whom I was working...and, knowing that their situations were not going to change, I had to develop some understanding of their lives and learn how to work with these children. I remember thinking to myself “It is no wonder these kids cannot focus on learning their ABC’s – they don’t even know if they will get to eat tonight!” Surviving had to be their priority. They, like Laurie, wanted that safety and security for their own lives, and, again like Laurie, they created those worlds for themselves in center time, particularly housekeeping, and in their writing. Often their writing, particularly around holiday times, did not reflect at all the realities of their actual holiday situations. Some of my students were open to building relationships with adults in our school. Those students were usually more successful, academically. Others were angry and/or resentful. It was difficult to help those students succeed with the academic requirements imposed by the state. I would like to think that my instructional leadership had a positive impact on my students, but as I have grown as a teacher, I know there were times when I could have done so much more.

Hicks states “The paths to creating negotiated movements between cultures and classes are, however, never simple – never reducible to a single method of teaching or theory of learning.” (p. 96) We, as teachers, need to learn to look past our own backgrounds, or discourses, and to respond to the needs of our students as those needs manifest themselves. Easier said than done, right? As Hicks also notes, “With classes that are too large to manage and increasingly stiff curriculum mandates, it has become difficult for teachers to come to know children with the kind of depth that engenders successful change.” (p. 96) However, if we are to become master teachers – “highly qualified” in truth, as well as in name – we must make it happen.

Marlee Wright

Seems like Hicks must have been a fly on the wall as she described her rural upbringing. Her story parallels mine in so many respects. I too was taught to be a "good girl" and did color pictures of Jesus as a young child on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Bible School and so on. I was taught to sit and listen to the preacher intently with my knees together and legs not crossed. I wore white anklets and black patent shoes and a little frilly dresses with tights if the weather was cold. We had many gatherings at the church and many dinners under the trees with ice cream socials being planned. Easter, Memorial Day and Christmas meant new clothes and a nice hairdo. I was taught to say "yes Mam" and "yes sir", never ask why and to be quiet until spoken to. I memorized the names of the books of the Bible in order and many verses. I knew every song in our hymnal and could sing up to 5 verses without looking at the words. As I grew I managed to collect 17 years of perfect attendance pens to church and taught Sunday School Class to young girls. They colored pictures of Jesus and sang Jesus Loves Me. That cycle continues to this day.
I feared going to hell even after I was saved and was baptized in a creek down the road from the church. We swam their too and had our own family of leeches attached to our skin when finished. I felt like my family and church family were without reproach and knew as I got older that I needed to be in at a respectable hour or people would look out their windows and see me. At that point I would be a bad girl.
This is the only world I knew until later in my teens years. I had never had a pizza until I was fifteen. This type of environment was safe, very safe. This was so safe that it hurt me in many ways in that I had that small town girl attitude and was at the point of thinking all others lived in dysfunctional families. It took me years to grow out of the close minded discourse I was used to and I spent many years wanting experiences and diverse friends, however, the lack of exposure left me unable to follow my yearnings. I became defiant in many ways to my mother. I can really relate now to my students that haven't broken out of their circle of upbringing. Many of these students come from dysfunctional families in my opinion, however, this is all they know.
They lack experiences and are shunned by others. They struggle in their grades and bring no diverse experiences to the literacy table. They comprehend little because they absolutely cannot relate to the text.
As for Laura, I wonder if she had grown up in a different environment if she would have been a totally different girl. Was it the motherly role at home and the strong emotional outbursts that infected her natural emotional well being? Was it the bossy attitude and the anger that created her ADHD and ability to learn? Did the teachers do all they could to help? I fear not. She needed intense one-on-one instruction in Kindergarten for the entire year? Instead she found herself sitting in the first grade and behind. She would now be behind forever. I felt her anger and frustration as I read. She could not do the work. Outburst and misbehavior was the only thing that rewarded her with attention. She shut down on academics. I have been there in algebra in highschool. Individualized attention and tutoring would have helped. Being behind and frustrated is no joke. It became impossible to do the homework and classwork. I was angry and miserable. My teacher told me in front of the class that I had a mental block. Did Laura feel hopeless and angry? I'm sure she did. Eventually she found attention through being a good girl even though she was still very far behind. She found her attention and reward in this tactic now.
I again wonder if with an environment change early in her life if she would have been more academically and emotionally sound?

I can certainly identify with the “good girl” mentality. I also grew up in the Bible belt listening to and learning from southern women and Baptist preachers. My earliest memories of literature were in Sunday school. I had two retired teachers as my pre-school and 1st grade teachers and we would look at the literature and do activities in the little books every Sunday. As we advanced in grades we would read round robin style in Sunday school. I always dreaded this because I was so worried about what I was going to read I couldn’t keep up with the story. I became a people pleaser in church and outside of church because I received positive attention when I helped out. I still have that desire to help others still which I think is a good thing.

Back to literacy, I don’t remember seeing my parents read when I lived at home. I was not encouraged to read at home. I was encouraged to play outside with my 2 siblings and the neighborhood children. I heard lots of Bible stories but not a lot of storytelling about my family or my heritage.

We would have been considered working-class but most of the people I knew were working-class as well. Our neighborhood was home to ten other children within three years of my age and I was a tomboy who played football with the boys rather than talk about them with the girls until I went to junior high school. My interest in sports very much overshadowed my desire to read. I did well academically, however, and still love my first grade teacher Mrs. Holland. I’m not sure if I was academically adept or the fact that I wanted to please my teachers was the result of all A’s on my report card. My junior high and high school years I remained involved in sports and still maintained good grades throughout. Those years I do remember experiencing the feeling that I was not good enough or did not have enough money to go to college.

I was interested in Laurie’s story because I think it is one that happens often. Her ups and downs in the early grades seemed to be linked to the happiness of her mother. It appears as if she slowly fell behind in reading, just enough to lag behind but not drastic enough to notice until 3rd grade when all the sudden she is two grades level behind. I also connected with the fact that Chapter One was portrayed as a safe haven for Laurie. It is my opinion that Response to Intervention has helped our school identify these students that slowly slip away earlier than we have in the past. With all the education about differentiation and individualized plans are working to ensure that students are having their needs met earlier than before. Maybe too late for Laurie but just in time for so many of our students.
Karen Gold

While reading these chapters my heart broke for Laurie and the struggles she faced. Reading of her difficulty with reading made me think about if I’ve had students in similar situations that faced similar problems without my recognition. I especially felt this way when Hicks described Laurie’s experiences in first grade. Her teacher, Mrs. Rhodes seemed unable to find a good balance between the standardized textbook teaching and differentiating lessons to meet the needs of all of her students. This is something I have continually struggled with. School districts pay thousands of dollars on textbooks and trainings, and they expect to see those dollars at work when visiting our classrooms. Principals often vary school to school on how much they regulate use of the standardized texts, but I think many teachers struggle with finding a balance. I do wish Mrs. Rhodes had found a better way to use her textbooks in the classroom. “Supplementing it with worksheets and whole-class lessons that she devised herself” is not differentiation. Laurie needed individual attention and assistance in order to succeed in the classroom. Mrs. Rhodes could have used the standardized textbook for some students in her class, but it should have been supplemented with additional reading materials at various levels. Worksheets do not cut it. It was hard to read about how she decided to focus on being a “Good Girl” to mask the academic difficulties she was facing. I’ve heard many times of students’ poor performance going unnoticed because they were flying under the radar with their wonderful behavior. As with pretty much everything we’ve read in this course, this reading has called on me to think back on my own teaching and reflect on what more I could be doing to assist my students.

As for Chapter 3, I found myself easily identifying with both Frame and Hicks in their love for reading. Like Frame, I thought that books were a wonderful way to travel to different locations on various adventures. Like Hicks, books offered me an escape when I felt life getting too boring. I wish I knew the secret to developing this love for reading in all children. I know that constantly reading as a child is what allowed me to develop a stronger vocabulary and understanding of the world around me. Even today as an adult, I find that I am never bored as long as I have a book with me (which I usually do)!

Andrea Schlobohm

Every child knows where they are academically. No matter how well a teacher does at providing text at his/her level or differentiating group’s students always know where they are. Like Laurie I have taught many students who feel the frustration of not performing on grade level. Laurie chose to use the “good girl” approach and mask her inabilities in school with the ability to be good. Many students follow this same path in the classroom. “Flying under the raider” with being good and passed on, while others choose to act out to compensate for their struggles within the classroom.

Laurie had many challenges to face not only at school, but also the ones at home. “She took events with some grounding in her lived experiences and rewrote them, casting herself and others in scenarios that were partly fictional.” (p.90) Even though Laurie struggled much of her first and second grade school years in writing, she learned to write about what she wanted in life. She had a defense to write about the fantasies that she wished to live.

“While Laurie wrote fantasies in which she was a valued and accepted friend, threaded into these were also reflections on the complexity of school relations for academically vulnerable girl.” (p. 87) She was a low emergent writer using repetitive sentences, but her writing of a fantasy world Laurie wished to lived made me think about Ch. 3 when Hicks wrote about how books can make you travel to new places. For Laurie she was able to use this strategy in her writing. She wrote about what she wished to have within her home life.

Laurie was fortunate to eventually find a teacher who worked outside the box. She had different strategies to use with Laurie. This is an important lesson for all teachers to look outside of our own discourses and help children with any strategy possible. There is no one carbon copy model to teach. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own comfort zone to reach children.

Kara S

Hicks described her experience as a young girl, practicing the fundamentalist discourses of the rural southeast. As I read her descriptions, I could relate well to several of her experiences. I agree with Hicks when she pointed out that Vacation Bible School provided literary experiences, “ones that forecast the life of a young reader”. Thinking back to my own experiences with Vacation Bible School, I remember creating illustrations for various Bible stories. This makes me think of current teaching practices, teachers ask their students to create mental images as they read.

As I read about hooks’ difficulty understanding gender roles I could relate to her struggle. From an early age I had strong feelings about gender roles. It made me angry that my “role” had been assigned without my permission. I had my own strong thoughts and opinions from an early age. Hicks stated, “If angry emotions were voiced in strong ways, they would not have been voiced, in my girlhood experiences, by women.” I found this to be true in my own upbringing, with the exception of my mother. She played a large part in making me feel confident at expressing myself, regardless of my gender. My grandparents had a dairy farm and as I child I spent my summers there, along with my brother and male cousin. I did not understand why the boys could drive the tractors and I could not. My grandfather encouraged me to stay inside with my grandmother and help prepare lunch. I had no desire to do such boring things inside. Growing up, I remember no one ever questioned my grandfather, except for me. My earliest memory of this was when I told him that I was not going to stay inside; I wanted to be on the tractor. Everyday after that I rode on the tractor with him, he even bought Barbie tapes and played them in the tractor. Thanksgiving also prompted questions and eventually resentment about gender roles. I wanted to know where was I when we voted that women had to cook and clean, while men ate and slept. This was (and still is) unacceptable for me. I am proud to be a southern female but this is one part of my southern and feminine discourses that I could happily do without. As a teenager, I remember blasting No Doubt’s song, “I’m Just a Girl” and having a strong and frustrating connection to each lyric.

Hicks described how Laurie’s embracement of feminine identity somewhat hindered her academically. “The feminine identity that Laurie readily appropriated also sometimes limited her engagements in academic activities.” Although Laurie was only a kindergartner, this makes me think adult women. The women who make a conscious decision to indefinitely terminate a desired education in order to maintain their feminine identify through a traditional gender role. Fortunately, this trend is slowly beginning to change. More females are “making time” to complete or continue their education.

Laurie’s desire to be “good” in school, made me think of students in my own classroom. Every year I have students who make poor choices, we discuss the problem, and when we talk about what needs to be done in order to prevent this behavior from happening again, I usually hear “I need to be good.” Year after year I have to tell students that they are already “good”, we just need to work on making better decisions. I do not want my students to ever feel as if I do not think they are “good” enough.

Stacy Durham

In Deborah Hicks’ Reading Lives, Chapters 3 and 4, we learn how young Laurie must negotiate between her home and school discourse while filling her needs of power and belonging in both worlds. She is obviously not fulfilled at home because of the absence of a father figure, who, in her fantasy, should be there to take care of her family both emotionally and financially. She shows signs of frustration with her position in the family, the oldest of three young children, and in the classroom where her friends’ acceptance is inconsistent. As with bell hooks’ childhood, Laurie uses fantasy in literacy practices to escape a lonely and conflicted life. Although Laurie does not have to deal with race, she is struggling with class and gender, both in her home discourse and at school. To mask her struggling academics, she resorts to being a good girl to win acceptance by her teachers and peers. While writing seems to give her an outlet for her imagination of good vs. evil and emotional needs, she finds difficulty in reading text that does not provide meaningful connections to her real life.

The first grade practices described in chapter 4 did not provide instructional material for individualized learning and provided Laurie with further setbacks as she was not able to maintain the linear path of development designed by the basal series. I have always taught using guided reading groups and find success working on a student’s instructional level rather than grade level material. We use the basal readers and Scholastic News for shared reading to expose all students to grade level material but the core of our instructional language arts block is constructed through leveled texts. I was glad to learn her second grade teacher used writing and reading workshops to meet the needs of different students. It was also a red flag when I read how Laurie’s motivation changed from just being a “good girl” that disguised her inadequacies with cooperative behavior to actually becoming a better student of literacy. When she thought she would soon have the father she dreamed of, her writing improved and she became more interested in the literacy rather than just pretending. This illustrated how important the home discourse becomes when students are functioning in another discourse. With Deborah Hicks tutoring Laurie, the small reading group she participated in, and her mother reading with her every night, I wonder what else could be put in place for Laurie to improve her literacy practice. Although her home discourse was conflicting to her actual fantasies of life on the farm or with her mom getting married, she did not appear to be abused or neglected. Could there be a learning disability that is difficult to diagnose in the K-2 years because of developmental delays in some children? Did she actually suffer from ADD or from frustration? Whatever the cause of her stagnant literacy skills, there are many students in our classrooms suffering from the same lack of confidence and success in today’s fast paced and demanding curriculums. Learning about our students' home discourse can help educators motivate those students who struggle with literacy skills in the classroom.

Michelle Carlson

Our identities as readers and writers are shaped through our relationships with others. Miller refers to these relationships as our situated histories. “Literacy learning is part of these histories, not something that children do as a cognitive task divorced from their lives” (p. 37). Laurie’s relationships with her mother and grandmother were crucial in her literacy development. She took the values and beliefs that she was learning from them and implemented them into her literacy activities at school. She took on the role of caretaker and nurturer, and this role sometimes “limited her engagements in academic activities” (p. 61). As educators, it is important for us to remember that our students’ learning is connected to their histories and their lives. We cannot expect students to come into our classroom and be autonomous learners. As children learn to read and write, they are also learning to engage in their culture and the practices that are a part of that culture (Miller, 1990, p. 158). Again, we must integrate and incorporate these cultural practices into our instruction if we hope to be successful in our quest to reach these students.

As Laurie progressed through first and second grade, she continued to experience academic difficulties in relation to reading and writing. While part of Laurie’s difficulties stemmed from the use of a basal series that was simply too difficult for her, she was also greatly affected by her relationship with her mother. Hicks writes, “…Laurie in first grade began living a dual existence as a model student who was learning how to fail” (p. 66). To mask these academic shortcomings, Laurie began to focus on “being good.” How many of our students end up taking this route, and how many educators miss the academic difficulties until it is too late because these students exhibit “exceptional” classroom behaviors? I am sure that I have made this mistake. In today’s classrooms educators are faced with so many constraints and obstacles, from strict curriculum guidelines to the pressures of standardized testing, that it is difficult to “come to know children with the kind of depth that engenders successful change” (p. 96).

However, as teachers, it is our charge to do just this. We must get to know our students and create classrooms where movement between and across histories of class, race, and gender are possible. It will require, as Hicks states, “the hard work of seeking to understand the realities of children’s lives and to respond in ways that extend from those contextualized understandings” (p. 96). This is where best practices in our classrooms should emerge. Like Laurie’s second grade teacher, we must individualize literacy instruction and create opportunities for success. I don’t want to be the teacher whose students, like Laurie, are “learning to fail.”

Leslie Rothenberger

In all honesty, I was was not looking forward to reading Chapters 3 and 4 because I had such a difficult time with the first two. I was pleasantly surprised because they were much easier to read and understand. I felt as though the author described Laurie well, in a way that I could really gain insight into her literacy development. One issue that I had was Laurie’s diagnosis of ADD and the decision to put her on medication. It is unfortunate how people in today’s world choose medication so quickly to solve problems with their kids. I feel as though Laurie’s issues were socially and emotionally related, not entirely academic. The fact that her anger issues initially drove the diagnosis, feels like an inappropriate choice. I was moved by Laurie’s creativity and motivation in Kindergarten. The medication that she was put on stunted that creativity, and made her feel uncharacteristically unsure of herself and distracted by what was going on with her body. My gut tells me that without the medication she would have progressed quicker and she wouldn’t have had such a hard time with peers.

I also found her relationship with Nicholas interesting. Having worked with directly with young kids for 10 years, kids don’t usually develop crushes in Kindergarten and First Grade. They actually usually turn up their noses with disgust at the opposite sex. I feel that Nicholas offered her the male that she was missing in her life, and the friend that she needed because her mother and grandmother were too burdened with trying to make ends meet that they weren’t paying attention to her in the way Nicholas was. I also think that due to Laurie’s home-life, she has to learn to balance her “care-taker” role and her “student” role. That can be hard to deal with so she can be wise beyond her years and a the same time, incredibly immature. She seems stuck in a lonely place and doesn’t seem to know how to remedy her loneliness. Her writings and fantasies appear to be an escape taken away from her by medication. No one teaches Laurie how to deal with her emotions and reactions. Instead, she is medicated. I think it is important for teachers to figure out how to help students without using medicine first.

-- Carrie Brown

This discussion of “complex childhood histories situated within hybrid identities and sometimes conflicted relations with others “(p. 52) is always shaped by our relationships and experiences with reading and writing.

What struck me in these chapters was the power of narratives in our situated histories. Hicks notes that in kindergarten Laurie had a strong sense of story, and her mother read with her every night. In first grade freedom to write her own narrative was replaced with a ‘once size fits all’ curriculum. This served to suffocate the brazenness and power Laurie had demonstrated in kindergarten. In trying to regain empowerment in her life she focuses on becoming the ‘good girl’.

I was interested in, yet saddened by Hick’s descriptions of Laurie’s shifting discourse and identity both at home and school. : “She was starting to live between the contradictory social spaces of unnoticed fumblings in her desk, and rewards for being good” (p. 75). The powerlessness she feels at school is transformed at home into open resistance against her mother. Hicks shrewdly observes, “ She was also clearly in need- but in need of what?” (p. 75). We have experienced this disconnect with students and asked ourselves this question many times in our classrooms. The reconnections come when there is powerful change. One student that I had was instantly more engaged as he counted down to his father’s release from prison. The change was profound to him and he literally joined the class. This would change again later in the year when his father went out of his life again. As a teacher I often feel helpless in these situations. You just have to keep trying.

Laurie’s participation in narrative practices changed dramatically during the period of time when she discussed the arrival of a new daddy. Changes at home and complexities in school have the effect of this ‘dual lens’ that Hicks discusses. Laurie’s engagement was again evident with the appearance of a new man in her mother’s life and her narratives again reflected this new hope of a happy ending. Stories, real and imagined affect our histories and vice versa. As Hicks notes Davies description: “we live them” (p. 85).

Laurie’s later interests in writing and drawing about horses, magical places, and fairies and mythical creatures demonstrate the importance of narrative to her: to recreate the life that she wanted to live. The wonderful second grade teacher is somewhat able to bring her out of her imagined spaces in the classroom. The idea of a whole child being nurtured by narrative is evident here with this teacher, the remediation she receives and the tutoring and friendship with Hicks. Writing served to transform her needs at home and school into a magical, powerful, happy ending. However as she lived out her complex life through elaborate fantasy stories it was clear that the words were still not enough. She remained disconnected.

Laurie struggled, as many of our students do with competing identities that are shaped by literary. Again the readings reinforced the necessity of a curriculum that encompasses what truly matters to the students we teach. She suggests more focus on media, literary texts, and social events may have helped Laurie as she moved between her two worlds. A differentiated literacy curriculum, with daily writer’s workshops can engage many children as they write about their experiences. Hicks reflected that deeper exploration of Laurie’s stories may have aided Laurie and further built her confidence. It is certainly not a simple process to understand the multiplicity of our students’ lives. However, I know we cannot let the demands of the curriculum day prevent us from trying because it could mean changing a narrative like Laurie’s into something entirely different for a child.

I could relate to Hicks’ description in her third chapter of the southern feminine “good girl” role. I remember going to summer “church” camp although not in the mountains, it was in the south and I too was introduced at an early age to a similar discourse. While there are many differences, I can find some parallels between Laurie’s story and that of not only several of my students but also my own.

I remember being really “into” boys and the social aspects of school even in kindergarten. Although I was never formally diagnosed with an attention problem as Laurie in chapter four, I am convinced inattentiveness and immaturity were contributing factors to my early struggles as a reader. Unlike Laurie, I grew up as an only child with a calm and stable home life. My mom and dad also read to me and played board games nightly. Despite this background and support, much like Laurie I found myself to always be behind and unable to keep up with the fast-paced reading program. I don’t remember any pull out or small groups that seemed to help and I was not retained.

Many of my former students and their families remind me of Laurie’s story- functional in a dysfunctional way. One student like Laurie, frequently spoke and wrote of the “fairy tale romance” she wished could be real life, often mimicked and role-played scenes from home, and struggled with reading and attention had a mom just like Laurie. She was supportive but overwhelmed often herself with balancing the demands of providing for her children financially, emotionally, and educationally. I can also recall other students who were diagnosed with ADHD, began medication, and had similar stories to that of Laurie.

I can only hope that in these cases I was able to provide a strong foundation of support for both my students and their parents. I tried my best to focus my small group instruction on their needs and deviated from the regular reading program when appropriate. I feel this is our duty as teachers to meet our students’ needs and help communicate with parents the vital role they can play at home as participants in their child’s educational success.

Ruth Ann Timmons

While reading chapters 3 and 4, I found that I could relate to being the “good girl” student myself when I started school as well. I always followed every rule, did what I was told, never acted out in class and I remember trying to hard to get my teachers (especially the ones I really liked when I was younger) to notice that I was “being good” so that they would give me that coveted compliment. However, my experiences differ from Laurie’s in the fact that I was very fortunate enough to be able to maintain good grades and stay on grade level in all my subjects. I never had any problems with reading, so I don’t how I might have reacted or how my behavior might have changed or been altered because of something like that.
I found I could relate to chapter 3 when I read about Frame and Hicks’ love for reading. I discovered books and the wonderful places they could take you when I was very young and it remains one of my favorite things to do. When I was in school (and even still sometimes today) I was very shy and quiet, and when free time was given, I always pulled a book out of my desk that I couldn’t wait to finish reading. To this day I still carry around the book I’m currently reading in my purse just in case I might have to wait in line somewhere and get chance to read it. This love of books was a no brainer for me because reading came naturally for me as a child. However, for so many children today it is not so easy, and they often lose sight of all the things books have to offer because of the difficulty or the frustration they encounter. It is up to us to help them discover how amazing books can be whether they are star or struggling readers.

Kim Strzelecki

Hick’s discussions about Jake prompted me to reflect on my teaching of preschool and kindergarten children when I taught in the UK. Jake’s freedom to move was indicative of the type of learning goals that we used for the four year olds who begin ‘formal’ schooling. Our curriculum from the outside, with an untrained eye looked chaotic. However, it enabled children like Jake to engage in what the government termed “free-flow play”. It was not without structure though and we had clear learning goals from which we had to teach. We would conference with parents to establish the modes through which their children ‘learned’ best; their play and discourses from home. We then planned and offered multi sensory concrete activities that reflected these interests but also ensured the children engaged in learning. We basically had individualized education plans based home identities and literacies. Like Jake, if a child was interested in cars, or dinosaurs, his math learning goals were achieved through this. It was definitely amazing to see students construct pulleys and tractors in their outdoor play, which can then begin a discussion about concepts about teamwork, measurement and so much more. Like Jake, there were boys who absolutely thrived on a curriculum of ‘action’. As Hick’s rights observed “Jake could become passionately interested in activities that were of interest to him” (p.100).

I often thought how great this would be if school in general could incorporate home identities with some freedom and action! Of course these students went into year one (first grade) and received a significant jolt to their system- kids quickly figured out, as Jake did, that in some of the first grade classrooms, it was a whole different world consisting of ‘serious’ things and little ‘space’ for children like him. This type of environment highlighted how “social practices at home were at odds with school” (Hicks, p.99). At first it appears that Jake figured out early how to “do school” and was adept at two different discourses (p. 113). Whilst there were no spaces for him in first grade, he adopted the role that Laurie did: the ‘good boy’ who did not want to get tickets for bad behavior. This was again in complete contrast to his aggressive, masculine play with his father, and the ‘lion’s roar’ of his interactions. (p. 113).

However, even though he moved between these two discourses it did not produce greater engagement with literacy practices. Hicks notes that this type of activity had to ‘make sense’ to Jake. For example, she discusses books about spiders that he had at home that were read to him because of his interest in spider’s webs. There was also conflict within conflict for him at home. The females in his home read fiction predominantly, whilst his dad was a reader of copious amounts of information texts. Jake identified with this genre too and yet time was not taken to incorporate experiences and interests like this that ‘made sense’ to Jake and would have engaged him in literacy. Academic struggle was the outcome just as it was for Laurie. Jake was fortunate, like Laurie that his second-grade curriculum was more akin to the action he thrived on in kindergarten. This classroom was indicative of a best practice classroom that we all know supports the interests of our students. Freedom to stretch, move around and read in comfortable spaces but best of all- at instructional level.
Like Laurie, Writer’s workshop was ‘action and freedom’ to Jake “ His written compositions suggest the hopefulness of living between discourses” (p.131) He gets to write about what he wants, what he likes. Whether it is piloting a boat or writing about family life he states that writing workshop is “lots of fun”. (P. 131). Like the play of his kindergarten years, Hicks explains how his ‘authorial self’ involved ‘drawing on action as a way of telling. He was very much close to himself to the point that he was the author and the character’ (p. 113).

Having been a teacher in kindergarten and now third grade, I could in some ways identify with the difficult transitions Jake encountered in how the curriculum is delivered. By trial and error I quickly came to understand that much of my direct practice I used in kindergarten worked successfully in the upper grades – kids in third grade still need the freedom and action of concrete experiences. I was forced to become extremely interested in what engaged this age group at home and school! I was on foreign ground! This was especially important with the boys in my classroom- many of which were caught somewhere between an indifference and a tiny bit if interest in the discourse of school. I may not have liked reading ‘Captain Underpants’ and graphic novels, but that was exactly what I did and ensured I had in my classroom! I have learned more about Star Wars and Pokémon than I will ever need to know again! I continue that same philosophy in Writer’s workshop- write about what matters to you. (If I can ever manage to consistently fit it into the schedule that is imposed on us!). Unfortunately for Jake, the “stakes were getting higher” (p. 122) and the increasing struggle between gender roles, literacy and different identities produced a disheartening reality. He did not feel the bridge between home and school with both equaled valued (p. 132).

Hicks sums up the tragedy of Jake’s experience by noting if only he had been given “a space on the side of the road” (Stewart p. 135) in his third grade classroom. In her philosophical discussion in chapter six about narratives she asserts that we have to risk opening up these spaces for students- to cultures, identities and to talk within these communities. This can enable us to include home discourses into school life no matter what grade level. Feeling is integral to how students come to know and value. (p. 142). In discussing Bakhtin and Murdoch (1993) Hicks notes how ‘regimes can distance individuals from belonging’ (p. 139) Clearly schools cannot operate from a distance. There has to be attention given to this notion. Jake’s resistance to school came at a high price-it jeopardized his future. Like Jake we need to be moved by action by what we see and feel with our students because “ In the midst of struggling with identity there is the hope of transformation if we value hybrid discourses and the students situated histories” (p. 151).

Karen Massey-Cerda

As I read about Jake and his experiences with literacy, I am reminded of many young boys just like him, honest and outgoing, who want absolutely nothing to do with school. I found myself in shock when Jake told Deborah or his teacher that the work was stupid or dumb. I have had students refuse to do work before, but they have never been so honest as to say that they thought the assignment was stupid. This scenario really made me step back and think about what I might say or do if a student gave me this type of response. The problem that Jake had with the assignments was that he wasn’t connecting to it or interested in it. Therefore, he saw no reason to complete the work. There are so many students, like Jake, who require extra effort on the teacher’s part to help them become engaged with literacy and interested in school overall. I believe if Jake’s teachers would have made more effort to interest him with activities, he would have had a better attitude towards school and been more successful with his schoolwork. As it was brought to attention in the text, math could have been taught just as easily using miniature NASCAR cars as it was with blocks. It is simple things like this that we need to consider and try when we have a child who may be difficult to reach and engage.

Another significant problem that Jake encountered was the conflict that was caused between the school system and their middle-class practices and his home life. At school, he was expected to progress in his education, going to college, and holding an important, successful position in a career. On the other hand, his expectations from home were that he would learn enough reading, writing, and math to successfully take over the family business. There needs to be a compromise in the curriculum and instruction that fulfills both expectations. Ideally we want all our students to attend college, but the reality is that they are not. Upon high school graduation, some students will immediately enter the workforce in hopes of establishing a career. For these students entering the workforce, we need to have provided them with the basic skills and knowledge that are required to be successful in whatever they decide to do. Jake was forced to participate in middle-class practices at school, although they were very unfamiliar and uncomfortable. At times, Jake probably felt like he was an outsider in his own classroom.

As teachers, what can we do to make school a welcoming environment for all students, regardless of race, class, or gender? Most importantly, we need to make it a point to get to know our students- their language, community, values, and beliefs. All of our histories vary, and so do our students’. We need to welcome their history into our classrooms, and use it as a resource to help them connect and engage with literacy. ‘The situated histories that can lie hidden amid discourses about cognitive learning are in fact some of the most meaningful truths about learning.’ (p. 155) The history that a student brings can not be changed, but it can be molded with new learning and experiences that will make a student proud of his history, and open possibilities for the future.

Lisa Beach

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can
think differently than one thinks,
perceive differently than one sees,
is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
-Michael Foucault

After reading the literature required for this course, it has really opened my eyes to the conflicts that many children face because of their race, class, or gender. As a student, I did not observe any ridicule based on these three components. When I was a child, the ridicule that a child was most likely to receive was because he wore glasses or braces, that child may be overweight, or because the other children realized that he was always in the lowest reading group (this didn’t start happening until approximately third grade on). As a teacher, I have witnessed racial discrimination, but never class or gender discrimination. As I have mentioned before, I have been very fortunate to work at a very diverse, low-income school where the majority of the population are Hispanics, and the number of African-American and White students are about equal. I have occasionally witnessed two students not allowing a student of another race to play with them on the playground or participate it their group in the classroom. Usually it is because one of the students has done something to make the others mad, and they are not actually alienating them because of their race. As an adult, this is what I know and observe, but I am sure that that child who is being alienated feels ‘like an outsider in their own classroom.’ (Reading Lives, p. 135)

Other than discussing and modeling appropriate behaviors and interactions with others, we can not control how students treat their peers. Hopefully, with the help of parents, we can teach students to have good morals and ethics and teach them to not notice the differences of others, but to look for similarities. As Daniel’s father said, “There is only one race, the human race. There’s good and bad [in all of us].” (Noll) Yes, each student in our classroom is different from their peers, just as all of us taking this course are very different. Although we are all different, it doesn’t make any of us ‘better’ than the others. We all think and perceive differently, but that is what makes us unique. I am reminded of a banner that hangs above the entrance of the aforementioned school I worked at. It reads, ‘Celebremos... We all smile in the same language.’ Every time I enter those doors I glance at that banner, and it reminds me that even though we are all different on the outside, we are the same on the inside. We each have a heart which fills us with emotion, a desire to be accepted, motivation to be ‘good’ and successful, and we would all like to be noticed (hopefully in a positive way). This is a concept that we need to help our students understand and express.

When our students enter our classrooms, they are bringing their history with them, along with secrets and stories from their past. In order to help students connect and engage with literacy, we need to connect with our students. We need to get to know them- their culture, values, beliefs, and traditions. We must encourage our students to use their voice to express themselves. For students who seem somewhat reluctant to exercising their voice, I really like the idea of having students write in a journal, and then I can respond to their writing. Students could use this journal as a way “to remember, instill cultural knowledge, grapple with a problem, rethink the status quo, soothe, empathize, inspire, speculate, justify a position, dispute, tattle, evaluate one’s and others’ identities, shame, tease, laud, entertain, among other ends.” (p. 321) Through reading and responding to their journal entries, the teacher is able to learn secrets and other important information about their history that could be useful in the classroom. Showing students that we are welcoming of their culture, language, and identity, they will be more receptive to the English culture and language.

Although we really have no power in determining how children treat others, we can control how we treat our students and how they feel when they are in our presence. We have to create a welcoming environment for all students regardless of race, class, or gender. All students wish for acceptance from others, and they especially need that acceptance from their teachers. Students need to feel that their teacher loves them and that we value the person that they are. Once students feel that they have pleased the teacher, they are usually motivated to continue to be ‘good’ and to try hard to be successful academically.

Through our reading I have noticed that often times when there is a disconnection or disengagement from a student; we automatically think the problem arises because of the student. Daniel, Lonnie, Jake, and Laurie are all excellent examples of how the problem is not always a direct result of the student. Sometimes, we need to step back and reflect about how we would feel, act, say, or think if we were in their situation. They were all caught between two conflicting discourses, home life and school. If their teacher would have stepped back, took a moment to reflect and see things out of their eyes, maybe school would have been a more positive experience for each of them.

Being a graduate of Lees-McRae College, I feel that self-reflection is necessary to improve and develop as a teacher. During their program, I was taught to reflect daily, on each lesson, and decide what works and what doesn’t, and adjust accordingly. It is our responsibility to reach our students, connect with them, and engage them in literacy whether it requires us to do a unit on American Indian Heroes to interest Daniel, encourage poetry writing in the classroom to meet Zonnie’s interests, do a math lesson with miniature NASCAR cars to engage Jake, or to teach a thematic unit based on the fantasy genre to grab Laurie’s attention. According to the quote, an effective teacher must be open-minded to other ways of learning and thinking and are able to view things in a different perspective. If we can not think or see differently than we do, then we can not change.

Race, class, and gender are real issues that we will face in our classrooms. Eventually we will be placed in an uncomfortable position, maybe in a lower-class school or at a school where white may be the minority, and it is at that point that we especially must be able to think differently and see things in another light, so that we may be able to reach and connect with our students. We must be able to see their perspective of things and know their culture, values, and beliefs in order to help them be successful. This quote reminds me of the old saying about not making judgments or assumptions about people before you walk in their shoes, and that sums up what I have learned in this course. Before I make judgments or decisions about others, I am going to take the time to step back, reflect, view things through their eyes, and ‘take a walk’ in their shoes. This will not only help me to be a more effective teacher, but a better person in general.

Lisa Beach

As I read about Jake I was reminded of many male students I have encountered over my career. For fifteen years I taught kindergarten and had many “Jakes” in my classroom – boys who resisted the two dimensional paper/pencil type activities that have become such a huge part of school literacy activities, even in kindergarten. I always viewed these students as my “concrete” or “kinesthetic” learners. These students, like Jake, were much more successful when working with manipulatives, blocks, puzzles and the like. I had never really thought about the home literacy experiences of children like this in the manner that Hicks describes them; as “apprenticeship learning” experiences. Looking back now, this is exactly the types of situations that these students came from. They had gone from learning by doing, building, and constructing to a more typical school discourse and it wasn’t working for them either. As Jake’s teacher stated they were also “on task; it just might not be [my] task” (p. 101). I can see why these types of students were and are resistant to typical school literacy experiences. While I tried to continue to incorporate as many of the concrete, hands-on types of activities into my lessons, the curriculum has been “pushed down” to the point that more and more of the two dimensional tasks were required. This created even more resistance in my students, and like Jake, they also began to struggle academically.

I also think that these students, like Jake, were greatly influenced by the views of other members of their families. As Hicks observes, “The stories voiced about us, by those whom we most love and value, shape our identities in ways more powerful than even the most authoritative institutional systems…” (p. 123). Just as Jake’s father asserted that Jake would take over the family business, many of my former students already had an idea for their future based on family members’ stated expectations for them. Like Jake, these students also practiced school literacies, but their family’s views of them were much more powerful in shaping their identities. School was just something they had to do.

I found Jake’s views on writing very interesting. I was also surprised to find that he was not overly excited about science, or rather writing about science. The fact that he enjoyed Writer’s Workshop so much was very telling for me. When given the option to write about a topic of his choice, Jake more freely participated in the writing activity. As educators, we need to remember this and offer students more choice in terms of writing assignments. The difference between these types of writing practices and those that are “assigned” is, according to Hicks, the possibility of “hybridity”. This hybridity allows Jake to write about things he values in his home life and still participate in a school literacy activity. This is an important concept for educators.

Creating classroom discourses that support this notion of “hybridity” is essential if we hope to reach children like Jake and Laurie. In order for us to accomplish this, “change also has to entail a moral shift, a willingness to open oneself up to the possibility of seeing those who differ from us” (p. 152). This is not an easy thing to do. I am often guilty of seeing things only from my perspective or discourse, no matter how hard I try to “see” things differently. When this happens, I fail to create a classroom in which my students feel that their home culture and discourses are valued. I have to keep working, and as Hicks so rightly observes, “This is very hard work, but work that lies at the heart of teaching” (p. 152).

Leslie Rothenberger

Hicks described Jake’s differences between his experiences at home and at school. At home Jake was free to move around whenever he pleased, doing instead of talking were common, and learning through hands-on experiences. At school Jake’s experience was quite the opposite. It became increasingly further from his experiences as he got older. Hicks explained how Jake’s kindergarten experience was a success for him. This was because he was allowed to move around as he pleased. His teacher seemed to have a positive outlook on Jake “roaming”. She stated, “He’s always on task; it just might not be your task.” I believe that this point of view should be welcomed by more teachers. Many kindergarten teachers do an excellent job at allowing their students to freely move around. This is especially important because these children are as Hicks explained, constructing connections with school on their own terms. Each year a child moves into a new grade, they need to have the opportunity to do this. We should not assume that just because a student has reached fifth grade that they do not need time to adapt and form their own connections with this new grade level.

Sega video games were a favorite past time of Jake’s. I found it interesting that Gilbert and Gilbert relate these video games to masculine discourses, which align with “power and aggression, with victory and winning, and with superiority and strength” (72). I agree that many video games such as the ones Jake enjoyed playing are marketed towards boys. It makes me wonder exactly why these games are so appealing to boys. Is it proof that this traditional male discourse is still in full swing? I believe so. I also wonder in the battle of brains versus brawn which one most parents would prefer their son to have. I would be afraid to view those results!

Jake and his father enjoyed collecting race car miniatures. It is not surprising that Jake was able to “read” the details of each car to identify the driver. Most children are able to do this with environmental print at an early age. However, I could not help but wish that more of his father’s time and energy was spent on helping him learn his ABC’s or sight words instead of NASCAR drivers and car identification. Jake’s father was a high school dropout and had little value for formal education. Jake’s mother was expressed her concern that Jake needed to learn how to read better in order to prepare him for college. My heart broke when his father stated that Jake was going to take over the family business. Why would his father be so selfish and make this decision so early for Jake? It is one thing to wish that your son would take over the family business but it is quite another to plan your child’s future and terminate the possibility of higher education. Of course Jake was happy with that idea because he disliked school so much.

To me, Jake’s outlook on school was a direct result of having difficulty developing a hybrid between his family social, and school discourses. Jake needed more freedom and connections to become successful in school. Were his teachers meeting his needs? I do not think so. I also do not think that they were doing this on purpose. When Jake’s teacher took his miniature race car away from him, she had no idea how much that tiny car meant to him. This situation makes me realize just how important it is to get to know our students and their discourses. Hicks made a statement that helped me come to a grim reality, “poor and working-class children don’t just reject our discourses; they reject us – the others whose gaze envelops them in a destructive value context.” This reminds me of just how important it is to develop relationships with my students. I know that I would not want to listen to or be critiqued by someone that I had no connection with, why should my students?

Stacy Durham

Reading chapter 5 of Reading Lives gave me a new perspective of the needs of many male students in the primary grades learning how to conform to a school discourse that does not involve the movement and choice awarded in the kindergarten classrooms. Learning about Jake’s difficult transition from a student-centered classroom into a more structured first grade curriculum where his home discourse is not recognized, illustrated how important a child’s view of school becomes when he feels disconnected from what he knows and loves best. Jake’s inability to move from his familiar language practices of home to the more unfamiliar textual practices of his first grade classroom caused him to view school as “dumb” because it did not meet his needs of video games, NASCAR racing, or his family business, in which he has already been designated as the future owner. Having never taught kindergarten, I did not realize how differently structured the classrooms are in first and second grade. I have taught second and third grade, where students have made the transition from a mobile, center-structured environment to a more traditional classroom of literacy practices that require more seat work that focus on skills and technique. His inability to “act out” his stories in first grade seemed to hinder his interest in storytelling in his writing workshop activities. If the teacher had been able to use Reader’s Theatre in the language arts block, perhaps he would have fulfilled his need for action in his classroom literacy practices. Jake and most boys in today’s culture, have a need for constant stimulation due to video games and the fast pace of most family households. The shift between their working-class home discourse and middle-class school discourse is often too difficult for our students to make and they become turned off by the demands of the classroom that do not meet their immediate needs.

How can we as teachers bridge this gap between boys who need stimulation in the classroom and the necessities of meeting the objectives of our curriculum while shaping competent students who can take standardized tests that evaluate their literacy success? When we have the ability to integrate the interests and needs of our students, we can create the hybrid student that shifts between discourses instead of separating them and ultimately choosing the one that solidifies his identity – home. The challenge is not to integrate one kind of home discourse but several in a classroom of twenty plus students. As I noted in a previous posting, I have basically three different cultures in my classroom and each have different literacy experiences in their home discourse. Fortunately, the interests of genders can usually be generalized among these different cultures and brought into the classroom to connect with many students at once. This year we talked about teen idols such as Justin Bieber and Hannah Montana that girls from all ethnicities admired, while the various boys displayed interest in soccer and video games. During independent reading and writer’s workshop, students were able to integrate their interests into the classroom where it was discussed and valued as part of their identity. (Although I must say, I was getting pretty tired of hearing about Justin Bieber and seeing his face on all the girls’ folders!)

Whether it is our male students or the females, understanding and recognizing their histories and identities in their classroom, can be crucial to building the critical literacy practices in the classroom that prepare for their success in a middle-class world.

Michelle Carlson

Kindergarten curriculum and hands on activities have historically been composed of diverse learning centers encompassing materials for real life experiences for both genders. In walking through the classrooms an observer can see kitchens with dishes, baby dolls with clothes, building blocks, cars, trucks, water tables, sand tables and science centers. However, with changes in curriculum, these centers are seen more and more in the preschool class rooms and less in the Kindergarten class rooms. The Kindergarten rooms are beginning to look more structured like the first grade and the first grade more like second. When reading about Jake in chapter 5, I began to understand more of the difficulty of his transiton from Kindergarten to grade 1. Kindergarten provided similar discourse to home and a chance to learn sharing and social interaction with a wide range of kids. Realizing that grade 1 at that time would not provide these centers, we still see that Jake had a chance to familiarize himself with school activities in K before going into grade 1. I applaud the fact that preschool still provides these wonderful centers now but not all children have the opportunity to attend preschool. Now what happens with the Jakes that will have a difficult time transitioning straight from home to a more structured K setting? Seems to me that the transition to Kindergarten from home will be even more difficult for boys especially. I know where I live, a majority of the boys live in homes where the fathers hold blue collar jobs. They have a skill. They are welders, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers, farmers and truck drivers. For recreation they work on old cars or go to the drag strip and sometimes enjoy Nascar. Many hunt and fish or play ball as a favorite pastime. These experiences are all part of a boy's literacy background but we as educators fail to expand on that. What type of transition activities will we offer these boys that are so adapted to the male discourse at home? No wonder our males are farther behind in literacy than the females. Transition cannot be nearly as tough for the girls. I am sure they are more used to sitting with mom and sewing or making a grocery list, talking about recipes or listening to women chat. There again, the boys are more used to traveling around with dad and are not always involved in groceries and recipes and sitting at chats. All of a sudden they are sitting at a desk and listening to most commonly, a woman talk. I am impressed that Jake was able to transition in behavior discourse from home to school but we failed miserably in the literacy department by not continuing to supply interests similar to his first learned discourse. I am sure that the kid has a valid reason in his mind that many of the school activities are dumb and he continues to get this type of negative reinforcement at home just because he is there. But are the vocations and values a male child grow up with really negative? Guess it is based on some of our school curriculum, but in the real world we see hard working men enjoying wholesome activities and teaching their sons in the only way they know how. How is that bad? Do we not want our children to grow up and work hard and be a valuable member of society? Our educational system tries to transform all children of similar and diverse discourse, male and female through the same mold. My biggest fear in education is that we are continuing along this path with more structure and harder curriculum a lot sooner for our kids. When are we going to wake up and understand that the diverse discourse of our children must be the impetus for our curriculum? Why are we taking skilled based instruction out of our school? How many years of drop out and failure do we as a nation have to endure before our eyes are opened. I am so fearful for all the Jakes out there that must survive in our educational system.

I could relate to Jake's story because I have a son who is still active at 17 and prefers to stay busy. Like Jake, my son likes constructive projects, creating or doing something worthwhile. Also like Jake, my son has a sister who is 3 years younger. He has a dark blue room, plays the drums, enjoys XBox Live with other boys all over the world, lifts weights and other male-oriented activities. His sister has a vanity in her pink room and has always loved girly things. It's interesting to think about how my husband and I added to those developing gender roles. We read all types of books, however.

It's sad to read about Jake's history as a struggling reader. With teaching practices that involve whole group reading from a basal with worksheets to follow, and silent reading time with books chosen that he cannot read, it's no wonder that Jake fell through the cracks. I would have loved to pair him with appropriately leveled books on racing, building and making things, and incorporating writing assignments on the same topics.

In 3rd grade, my son was placed in a 3/4 combination class with some very bright students. At one point he felt inadequate answering questions in class, because as he put it, "Everybody else is so fast". So one day my son's teacher allowed him to bring in all his little electric motors and mini lightbulbs to demonstrate how they worked to his classmates. The other students were very impressed with his knowledge and asked lots of questions. That really gave my son a boost of confidence among his peers.

The opposite of effective instruction seems to surface with Jake's confusion on what to do with a particular worksheet. This makes me wonder if I have ever had students to feel totally lost and unsure about a lesson. That would be one of the most horrible outcomes I could experience as a teacher. Like Jake demonstrated, I have observed struggling readers in a whole class setting "tuning out" by staring blankly or more interest is placed on items inside the student's desk.

Finding ways to keep the lines of communication open between school and home can be a challenge. I like the idea of involving family members in teaching practices and generating opportunities to learn more about student histories.

Carol Holt

Well, I didn't get very far in the reading before I came to a section that really spoke to me. "During his kindergarten year, Jake was able to move freely around the classroom, engaging in practices that were closer to those he experienced at home. In first and second grade, however, he encountered practices that were much farther removed from his experiences and values."(pg.99) For many children kindergarten is a very successful expierence because children tend to engage in learning at school in ways that mirror thier modes of learning at home. As a first grade teacher I see this type of student often. Thier not "trouble-makers" but just not interested in the activities I would like for them to engage in. It seemed with Jake that the activities he enjoyed most were the activities that he could control. For these students, I find it a very sensitive situation. It seems as I reflect back over the years that I can see a Jake in every class that I have taught. It is to fall into a battle of control with these boys, but you really have to take a step back and see the situation for what it is. Logan, my Jake this year, had a close connection with media culture. Logan's passion was video games. This was a literacy that Logan brought to the table that I had little knowledge of, but I used it to my advantage. The only way I could get him engaged in writing was to allow him to write adventure stories about the characters in his games. I allowed him to write these stories under my direct instruction of what needed to be included. This really worked for him. I'll have to admit that at first I was very apprehensive about letting him do this, but to my advantage it all worked out. Later in the year he moved his interest to animals. He was able to publish many pieces of nonfiction writing and I was happy with that. We had to use different types of texual forms to "reach" Logan, but in the end he was writing some great stuff. I had to find different ways of negotiating with Logan, but we finally found what worked for him. I think that through these different opportunities Logan experienced new identities and connected with different textual practices. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have taken the time to allow a student to have such control over our classroom expereiences, but I have learned (especially in this course) that you have to take the student as they are and use what they give you. All of these different discourses can be used as teaching tools/resources. "For Jake (or Logan) to engage with the kinds of literacy practices valued by school, he would have to see a space for the things he most valued." It is important that we understand that these students participate in two discourse communities. These kids are learning how to "do school" in first grade and for me that is very important to know. The literacy practices at home are important in understanding the history of our students as readers and writers.
It is critical for teachers not to allow these students to take the safer route: tunning out, fantasizing, resisting. We should allow time for them to move between identities,this may take place during Writer's Workshop. The overall goal would be to find ways to help Jake and others like him value literacy. I hope I can make a little difference in their lives at least to show understanding and give them the support they need in helping to bridge the gap between home and school.

Karin Scott

Jake was an interesting little fellow. I believe I have seen Jake before around my elementary school. As I read chapters 5 and 6 of Hicks book, Reading Lives, I couldn’t help but think about stereotypes, boys will be boys and the implications of the home school connection. First of all, Jakes father emulates the personality of many men from my school community. I admire the fact that they lift Jake up at home and talk about how “smart” he is and that he will be the owner of the family business. I think in their eyes that is what being successful entails. I know many contractors, builders, and electricians that never went to college but are doing just fine even in the midst of a recession. As an educator of course I realize that Jake needs to read at grade level and aspire to go to college. I want Jake to have the teachers that will foster his interest and necessity to be an active learner and provide instruction that heeds his active personality. It seemed to me that he could behave when he was highly engaged in instruction and while this takes energy, preparation and foresight to accomplish it is not an impossible task. I want Jake to be held accountable for his work and feel that he would respond positively to a teacher that understands and accepts his “blue-collar, masculinity identity.”(p.113). After all his second grade teacher figured out that he needed more movement and more choice in reading as he made great gains during that year. I feel this quote is the cornerstone for understanding the way children view circumstances they find themselves in, “the stories voiced about us, by those whom we most love and value, shape our identities in ways more powerful than even the most authoritative institutional systems of social regulation. It is up to us to us to find ways to help students negotiate the boundaries of race, class, ethnicity and gender.” (p.123). Classroom dialogue and forming relationships with students and community are extremely important to achieve this goal.
Karen S. Gold

Reading Jake's story had me questioning fairness in education. He was definitely a child who had experiences with literacy prior to beginning school. His mother and "mom mom" had read to him. Both ladies and Jake's father read at home- although for different purposes. It appears that his early childhood experiences supported academic success. However, he never seemed to make the connection between his world and school. “Like other things in his family life, reading had to make good sense to be something of value to Jake.” (Hicks 120)

Jake's lack of interest reminds me of so many of my students. How many students have entered our classrooms feeling that education was pointless? They just cannot see how education fulfills a purpose for them. I believe Jake already had begun to develop a sense of self before he started kindergarten. With his father being a strong male role model, Jake seemed to mimic much of his father's interests and activities. From what I gathered, his father had the same attitude towards life. For instance, he expected Jake to take over the family business one day.

Eight years ago, I taught a student very similar to Jake. “Davy” showed little interest in school. From the beginning, it was evident that he had built up a wall. By fourth grade, he already had decided that he wanted to own a logging business like his grandfather so he planned to drop out of school. I really tried to encourage Davy to consider pursuing a business degree for the purpose of being able to manage his future business. Because his grandfather had been able to run a logging business with little education, he believed he could do the same. Unfortunately, his mother offered little support. During a meeting with her and the EC teacher, I had expressed my concern that Davy lacked motivation and had an indifferent attitude toward education. To this day, I can still remember her exact words- “He’s always been that way.” It’s very difficult to motivate a child when his parents apparently have given up on him. Although, I recently heard that Davy had become a father in what would have been his junior year of high school, I still have faith that Davy will persevere in life. I just wish there was a program in high school that appealed to students like Davy.

In the educational world, it is difficult to bridge the gap for students like Jake and Davy. However, we must make an effort to make those real-world connections. It is not simply a matter of ideas about “‘what works’ for working-class children.” Instead, it is more about “this community, this neighborhood, this family.” (Hicks 154) More personal connections must be made; forming stereotypes and generalizations will not solve the problem. “Teaching can be reductively construed as remediation, as opposed to moral action that creatively responds to the particulars of situated histories.” What a powerful statement! We must not assume that students have a learning deficit. We must first consider who they are and what they are bringing to the classroom.

Holly Lawson

Reading about Jake and his experiences with literacy was fascinating. I was not surprised that Hicks’ relationship with Jake was not like the close relationship she developed with Laurie. My relationships with my female students are somewhat different from my relationships with my male students – I think we just relate in different ways. Jake sounds like so many of the little boys I have taught over the years, the ones whose mothers told me at the beginning of the year “He’s all boy!” They are typically very active, interested (if you find the right topic!), busy, good-natured children, but they can be difficult to keep “on task” with school literacies. It was clear that Jake had a good kindergarten experience. It sounded like he was in a classroom in which developmentally appropriate practices were encouraged. I am often concerned that, with the academics being pushed earlier and earlier by the state curriculum, our kindergarten classrooms are beginning to look more like little first grades – mine included! In Jake’s kindergarten and second grade classrooms, it seemed that he had the opportunity to learn naturally, and to build on his strengths – in our school’s multiple intelligences magnet, he would be known as “logic smart.” In that situation, he thrived, and saw himself as successful. It seems to me that the teacher in first grade should have built on those strengths; however, they seemed to try to fit him into the school mold rather than fitting the school literacy to Jake’s needs. In an ideal world all teachers would have the time and resources to build on the interests and intelligences of the students. In the real world, though, with full classrooms of children with diverse backgrounds and different needs, it is a daunting task to plan the instruction for each child based on his/her interests.

It was interesting to me that Jake had such a literate home, even though his father didn’t graduate from high school. I would have thought, with his father’s reading interests, that he would have encouraged Jake in his school endeavors; however, that did not seem to be the case. In fact, he didn’t seem to feel the need for Jake to work towards a college education – he seemed to take the attitude that he himself had done just fine without one, so why would Jake need one? Although his father did not seem to agree, Hicks states “Jake and students like him must gain access to school literacies if they are to succeed in school and in the workforce.” (p. 132) I agree with that statement for the most part, but I don’t think every student is cut out for a college career. I think that, for some students, learning a trade – carpentry, welding, etc. – might be the best idea. I do think that knowing how to read and how to express oneself on paper is an important skill, even for someone learning a trade, and I would think that Jake’s dad would encourage him in that endeavor.

As I finished reading these chapters, I thought that Deborah Hicks hit the nail on the head when she said “Teaching is in these ways a process of reading – of immersing oneself in the particulars of students’ lived realities and of creating new histories of practice with students.” (p. 153) However, as she went on to note, “Some understanding of the particulars of community life seems crucial. This is not so much a set of general theories about “what works” for working-class children. Rather, it is an effort to learn about this community, this neighborhood, this family.” (p. 154) After reading the articles and the book we have used for this course, I know that I need to plan to spend more time listening to students and their parents, both informally and formally, as I get to know my class for next year...a daunting task, as I mentioned earlier, but one that I feel is important if I am to be the teacher I want to be.

Marlee Wright

When I began to read chapter 5 on Jake I though Hicks was describing a typical boy immersed in all action and engaged in activities of interest in school. Kindergarten enabled Jake to be an average student in kindergarten “Jake engaged with classroom practices in kindergarten in ways that mirrored his mode of learning at home”. (p.100) His behavior in this chapter was also described as “roaming” for his educational behaviors in school which worked for Jake finding activities that involved avoiding literacy work.

As Jake entered his first and second grade years he began to develop resistance to his learning. The structure required in school was different from his home discourses where structure was less of a value. With my own work with students like Jake, I have found this to be true. Rather than reaching out for help with task that were not easy for him, he used the defense of resistance to the work that was hard. Jake did not take on the “being good” defense like Laurie, but rather less engaged in the work that was hard for him. On page 101 it said Jake was “always on task just might not be your task”.

Jakes relationship with his father also shaped his early learning. Jake had a hard time determining between the discourses at home and school. His home language with his father of NASCAR and mechanical work did not help Jake to develop his academic vocabulary needed for school. His father was also proud of his own accomplishment in life having not finished his own education. With that said I feel that Jakes father did not always support the advice from the teachers feeling Jake would do just fine in the world like he did. This is where I think it is significant for the teacher to get to know their students and develop a relationship with their students. Teachers need to get to know what interest the student may have. If his teachesr had taken Jakes interest into account he may have found more of an interest in literacy instead of avoiding those tasks in school.

Kara S

Reading about Jake, I was thinking about so many boys that I have had in my own classroom. I recall many conferences with parents where they claim, “But he’s an excellent reader at home!” Jake’s story gave me insight as to what might be happening at home vs. school in innumerable homes across the nation.

Jake appears to be a typical boy, who idolizes his father and learns from experience, especially by making mistakes. He’s very active and takes interest in primarily masculine activities. The literacy activities he takes part in at home involve informative reading and constructive action, things that are “real” to him. He has difficulty making the connection to many of the books that are available to him in school.

This discrepancy between home and school is understandable, yet it negatively influenced Jake’s motivation towards school. Students are going to take more of an interest in things that are relevant to what is happening in their lives. As Iris Murdoch states, “I can only choose within the world I can see…” (p. 151) That is why it is our job as teachers to get to know our students and know what drives them. I wish that Jake’s first grade teacher had introduced him to books that might interest him. I do think that you can learn a lot from a student by reading their writing. Jake’s writing in particular, and the fact that he was always engaged at writing center should have been a clue to the teacher that Jake felt constricted in other activities and excelled in that center because it was the least restrictive.

Like we read earlier in the Delpit/Dowdy article, in chapter 6 Hicks also admits to wanting to slough off her girlhood discourse, in order to be an academic and pursue a life of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. But then she realizes the importance of those young experiences and the relationships that shaped her. Jake should be entitled to embrace his own interests and cultural background, instead of being “good” and conforming to his teacher’s expectations of what is right. I’m not saying that he shouldn’t behave. We all KNOW how important good behavior is to learning. I just think Jake’s strengths and interests, such as writing or NASCAR, can be turned into learning opportunities instead of ignored.

-- Carrie Brown

While reading about Jake in Chapter 5, what stuck out the most to me was the need to provide work and readings that have a purpose. I’ve heard this so often in many of my Reading Education classes, but I appreciated the real life example of Jake to showcase why purpose is so important. As with Laurie, it broke my heart to read about Jake’s struggles as he made his way through first and second grade. I can understand how activities like finding hidden words and story maps would seem pointless to a boy like Jake who has been raised in an environment in which reading was a seamless part of everyday life, not something you stopped and analyzed piece by piece. A lot of the classroom practices that Jake balked at are practices that I have witnessed in most of my peers’ classrooms, and I know I have used some of them in my own. Although I know that I can identify a purpose to all of the activities I’m performing in my classroom, I realize now that the purpose may not always be clear to my students. I wonder how many of them have been resistant to work because, like Jake, they thought “It’s stupid.” I find myself, in this respect, lumped with Jake’s first-grade teacher Mrs. Rhodes, and I am hoping to get myself out of this position. As with most other steps towards becoming a more effective educator, this will take time. Perhaps if Mrs. Rhodes had taken the time to explain the purposes behind her assigned activities, Jake would have been more engaged in them. When in Mrs. Williams’s second-grade class, Jake continued to struggle with having no purpose for classroom activities such as writing sentences with weekly spelling words. He was thriving, however, at home where he was accompanying his dad on repair jobs. Hicks wrote:
“At home, he continued to be a brilliant young apprentice learner. In the classroom, he increasingly began resisting the values that defined being a successful student.” (p.120)

If we could manage to treat our students as apprentices, learning by acting and doing, instead of our audience, learning by watching, we would have less situations like Jake’s where they lose interest because it has no purpose for them. How to get to that point is a long process, but simple things like providing more hands-on activities and allowing more freedom of choice when selecting writing topics and books will send us in the right direction.

The biggest connection I noticed between Laurie and Jake was that both of them struggled after kindergarten due to a lack of differentiation. As the anthologies became increasingly difficult in the second half of first grade, Jake struggled because he had not yet solidified his emergent reader skills. Hicks noted that Jake needed more time to focus on these skills before being pushed on to more difficult ones. Jake’s mother questioned why it mattered if he was reading at a different pace than his classmates… as long as he was reading, why not let him read on his level? I agree with her wholeheartedly. That is another concept that has been emphasized in this Reading Education program: students will not learn if they are being taught at a high level that will cause frustration for them. That knowledge needs to be kept in the minds of all teachers as they split off from the standardized text and begin to plan readings for students to meet their individual needs.

Andrea Schlobohm

While reading chapters 5 and 6, I took particular notice of how Jake was only engaged in activities in school that he did not deem “stupid” or “dumb.” Whether or not they were “stupid” depended on if viewed them as having any real life value, or if it applied at all to the things he was interested in in his life at home, outside of school. Hicks comments several times that during whole class activities, Jake usually sat the furthest away from the teacher, near the back of the class on the rug, and only participated minimally. Yet, when there was a reading about the construction of a skyscraper, Jake was “alert and engaged.” He even raised his hand to volunteer information about his dad being a heating and air conditioning repairman. I feel as though once Jake’s teachers saw how interested and involved Jake became when there was a reading that engaged him, they could have worked to find more like it. We as teachers are always saying that children tend to learn better when the things we are teaching them are things that they can apply and relate to their lives in the real world and aren’t just abstract and arbitrary concepts. Jake didn’t see any point in learning some of the things in school because he knew what was important to him at home, so he only put forth an effort when he saw “the point” of doing it, or when he saw how it related to the life he knew outside of school.

In the discussion of chapters 3 and 4, the idea that maybe being the “good student” might be a gender trait was brought up. However, although the majority of those good students we see are “good girls,” as demonstrated by Jake, it isn’t strictly a female trait. As Hicks states, Jake also learned how to “do school” (p. 113). He learned that he needed to follow those ABC rules to earn the student of the week award. He created a hybrid identity for himself, because at home, he would let out his full lion roar and throw tantrums when he got angry or frustrated. Despite the fact that he learned how to meet the behavior expectations of his first and second grade teachers, it was clear he did better in Kindergarten, where there was less forced structure and he was allowed to “roam” to the centers that most interested him. Once he entered first and second grade, the increasingly restricting boundaries that were so unlike his life at home, started to make him resent school and the work that came with it.

So, yet again, here is another reason why it is important for teachers to get to know their students, their families and their lives outside of school. It may seem like a lot of work, but in the end, if it helps a child learn, isn’t it worth it?

Kim Strzelecki

I feel as though I have had several Jake’s in my class before. In fact one student and his brother, who I had two years later, were both nearly obsessed with NASCAR. This past school year each of our five kindergarten classes had 15 boys each…what an eye opening daily adventure! Typically kindergarten is more of a “hands-on” year than first or second grades. I believe children benefit greatly by actively participating and being engaged through more than more modality during lessons rather than passive participation. Don’t we all learn and retain more by doing? Our students are no different.

Jake’s home life and admiration for his father appear to be the main method by which he acquires new literacy knowledge. Like Hicks and Jake’s teachers, I too hate to see students become more and more disengaged and disconnected from school. Using the word “dumb” and telling his family he “didn’t like school” are not unheard of or that uncommon for struggling students. However it is one of the constant challenges of our job as teachers to really get to the root of that anger and find out exactly what factors are contributing to the child’s situation. Often the reasons are not clear cut or easy to fix, much like Jake there can be a deeply embedded discourse conflict at the foundation of the issue. As Hicks discusses in chapter six, it is vital for teachers to not make generalizations concerning the discourse students and their families represent but much more important and significant “to learn about this community, this neighborhood, this family” (p154). I am reminded again by these two chapters of the immense importance to truly and fully know my students- their families, their interests, their likes/dislikes, and basically what makes them tick as individuals in order to most effectively help them learn.

Ruth Ann Timmons

The discourses one involves himself in is not entirely due to the language used but the functions of that language in social relationships. We perform in dialogue in order to communicate with others – to establish our identity among others. Therefore, it becomes apparent why gender, race, and class affects one’s ability to grow and attain literacy education within a middle-class educational system, especially when we are first nurtured in these discourses by our living and actions at home with family that embodies us with love and empowerment. Though we are made to be individuals, we begin to define ourselves in relation to those around us and our personal commitments. No wonder children struggle when they first enter the school community. It’s because they are leaving an intimate relationship at home to be mixed within a limiting environment where already developed identities are conflicted with the expectations of school. School even alters the social setting one is allowed to partake in. Such became evident with Jake as he longed for environment that gave him choice and freedom to explore his interests. It’s ironic how Jake’s dad, a high school dropout, knew the reason for Jake’s conflictions and dislocation within school. He suggested that school needed to create an engaging environment that tapped into the interests of students in order to make a connection to literacy learning within the educational setting. I can’t help but think that his dad’s opinion and voice ring true because of the experiences and dislocations he felt with in the school setting. There is a need for schools to make changes in the way they deliver instruction, especially if we want them to experience a sense of belonging and security like the one felt at home.

For me, glimmers of hope began to shed upon Jake’s struggles as he found interest in writing and some of the second grade reading. This was only the result of the opportunity for Jake to write about anything he wanted. Through this, connections between school and home were beginning as he wrote about Nascar, trips, and his dad. As the structure and dynamics of the classroom changed and moved from less freedom of choice and exploratory methods, Jake’s conflictions and opposing feelings became more evident, especially as he acted out. The structure in school was new and unfamiliar, and he wanted to go with something that was more safe and familiar, which was his mode of learning and interacting at home in hands-on roles.

The role of gender in Jake’s view of school became obvious with the influences and expectations of his parents. Despite his mother’s voice promoting reading in order to achieve college, he ultimately listened to the voice of his father who felt he should take over the family business instead. These views show how voices shape an individual’s identity. Though two voices gave Jake two different identities, he decided to embrace the one from the person he admired the most – his dad. Perhaps, Jake saw himself becoming his dad as he grew older, especially with his father affirming that Jake was just like he was in school and also declaring that school wasn’t meeting his needs in the means best fit for his son. At home, sitting and talking and reading was associated with the female’s roles; therefore, when he was expected to do this at school, he felt conflict as it went against his identity of the male role of doing.

The story of Jake suggests that education needs to step up and do a better job at meeting the needs of each student. We have to make connections from home to school. Though kindergarten most closely resembled the hands-on exploratory learner completed at home, a transition needs to be made to carefully intertwine home within school in the upper grades. The goal shouldn’t be to establish differences and set perimeters that make home and school separate. Instead, educators must find a way to infuse home within education so students will be more open and successful within the classroom. Thus confirming the need for teachers to know who their students are beyond school, and a great way to accustom ourselves with their interests in order to tie it into their learning is to deliver simple interest surveys. By doing this, we aren’t forcing them to distract themselves because they are frustrated with the mode of instruction, which is similar to the episode of Jake playing with a car on his desk during instruction. He was doing so because his interest in Nascar gave him an outlet to avoid dealing with something unfamiliar and opposite to the identity he had incurred at home. Our role as a teacher needs to focus on building the relationship between our working-class students, or any student for that matter, in order reach and effectively educate them. Wondering the “what if’s” in Jake’s situation, what if Jake’s teacher would have been male? Would there been a difference in how he reacted towards the teacher and the tasks delivered by the male teacher? Would the modes of instruction shifted more towards the needs of Jake’s? These questions leave me suggesting that Jake would have most definitely embraced the school community differently, possibly being more accepting of it as his idea of the male gender role shifted to include teaching and the skills it required. One of the shortfalls of primary education is the lack of male teachers. Because we know gender roles affect how a person perceives things, offering a male influence within the classroom would change how our students view school and how they are taught as they are taught from the discourses presented by a male teacher.

Melissa Riley

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks,
and perceive differently than one sees is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. ~ Michel Foucault

This quote inspires me to examine the racist attitudes that I grew up hearing about and reminds me to keep myself in check about those ideas. I know that being raised in an environment where other cultures are not accepted does not mean that one can’t break away from those influences and form opinions about people that differ from what was learned. I attended elementary school beginning in the mid-60s. Desegregation was fairly new, but I really knew nothing about that until I studied it in high school. I felt tension around me sometimes but have always had the mindset that people were people. The older I became the more I learned of racism and bias. The moment I became aware of such was an incident where I was riding on the back of a truck and waved hello to a black boy that I went to school with as we passed through his neighborhood. When I got home my father was very angry with me and told me not to do that again. I now understand that came from his attitudes and that I did nothing wrong.

This class and the readings we used reminded me constantly of the need for me personally and as an educator to always be conscious of all people and the need to be sensitive to all regardless of race, gender and/or class. All the readings involving Daniel, Lonnie, Laurie and Jake were real examples of issues that students face every day in the classroom. One specific issue that I deal with is the labeling of students. As a result of No Child Left Behind every student in every public school is labeled and put into categories as a subgroup. I am a Title I teacher and I fight the battle of labeling every day with students, parents and fellow staff members. My attitude about hat is that the government may require us to label students on paper but we certainly have the power as educators not to carry that over to the classroom.

This class has opened my eyes to the implications that students are different because of social, political and cultural backgrounds but for each individual to be successful I need to educate myself about their differences especially when they are different from my own. I need to be understanding of their nature, ability to learn, and learning style and make accommodations that support them and their families. To me, if this means I may feel uncomfortable at times then I will be fine. The more I understand students, their families and my community the more they can understand me and accept that I want their children to be successful.

I have a friend, Ron Harrill that participates in our school Raising Achievement and Closing the Gap Committee. I hear his words frequently, “I have never met a parent that does not want their child to be successful.” I often hear adults say things like, “their parents just don’t care,” and I must admit that before hearing Ron talk about that I used to think and sometimes say that myself. At times when reading the stories and articles in this class I would think do the parents care and do they understand what is happening (Jake in particular). But in reflection I think that they too were parents that want the best for their child and for him to be successful. I want to believe that I am objective and accepting when it comes to race, class and gender but I also know that there is room for improvement. I will continue to educate myself to help my students become successful.
Karen S. Gold

Candy Kee

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks,
and perceive differently than one sees is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. ~ Michel Foucault

It is very sad that we cannot embrace and accept diversity in gender, class and color as the spice of life. Differences in people do not reflect disability. We are all created equal, however, we as humans create the tension and assign disability when it comes to diversity.

I really never entertained diversity as much as I have during this class. In the past when I thought of diversity, my mind raced down the differences in color path. This is obvious diversity but there again I was seeing a cover and not content. Diversity, I have found during the readings comes in all shapes, colors and sizes and ability level. Diversity is color of course but its also gender, religion, education, background, jobs, grades, health, wealth, hair color, height, sports related, vernacular, location, likes, dislikes, age, ability, talent, skills and the list goes on. We are all different in many ways. Now that I have started to think about it even more it also includes marital status and sex orientation. All people of a certain group tend to cling together in a clique. They influence each other in many ways to be close minded and tight knit and not accept others. A good example would be in our county we have the Country Club people and then the others. I am one of the others. One can feel immediate tension when grouped with people of another clique. It is hard to break into the circle.

I am reminded about a situation in a small country community I live close to. In this community we have a couple of service stations with a grill inside. For the past 25 years, Jerry's Mini Mart has been the most popular and people meet and eat there everyday. This is a clique and is predominately white. The customers are farmers, builders, retirees, hunters and such. The food is down home and delicious and business booms. Jerry decided suddenly after 25 years that he wanted to sell the place and do something different. To everyone's disgruntled dismay, he sold the place to what is commonly referred to as a "Blue Dot Indian". Oh know!!! Everyones little world crashed. They cannot perceive or think outside their little community box. They boycotted this place and it no longer is the place to meet and eat. One could cut the tension in the community with a knife. Many of the regulars no longer speak to Jerry. He betrayed them. The community has discontinued thriving. This is unfortunate.

Diversity is a key driver to development, growth and making the world a better place for everyone. Societies with little diversity are rarely economically and educationally developed.
Little do these people know about what the knew owners diversity can bring to the table. They see a cover and not content. I appreciate my eyes being opened more to our diverse world in taking this class. I shall try to be more cognizant of diversity in our world and more embracing. Oh yea, one more thing, I still go to Jerry's Mini Mart. My hope is that I can become a better person by perceiving and thinking of what I cannot.

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.” - Michel Foucault

This quote is representative of my feelings about what I have learned from this course. It is often necessary to question, reflect, and change our attitudes and perspectives if we are to become better educators. The readings for this course have caused me to do just this. I have questioned my instructional practices, reflected on my views of literacy, and hopefully have made changes in my thinking that will make me a better educator and advocate for children.

The readings have helped me to perceive literacy in a way that is different from my previous views. While I knew that it was important for children to be exposed to literature and to be read to before they came to school, I still viewed literacy as the ability to read and write and something that occurred mainly at school for most children. As I read Deborah Hicks’ book Reading Lives, I came to realize that this was not the case. As Hicks points out, literacy is not a school-based, individualized activity. Rather, literacy is a social and cultural activity, much more than just reading and writing. Children do not, as Hicks observes, “approach literacy practices as autonomous reasoners who then individually construct knowledge about literacy practices” (p. 15). This view of literacy learning is important for me as an educator, as I am faced with meeting the needs of all my students. I must remember that there are many factors at work when students are struggling to make meaning of my literacy instruction.

One of the most important factors that influence a child’s literacy learning is his or her home discourse or language practices. Several of our readings have stressed the importance of a child’s home discourse. In Dowdy’s article, she relates the hardship of wearing what she terms “the mask of language” when she was forced to speak the “Queen’s English” instead of her native Trinidadian. She felt she was in two places, “ovuh dyuh” and “over there,” being forced to experience life in two languages. The underlying concern for Dowdy was the issue of being able to “go back and forth between her home language and the public language without feeling a sense of inferiority” (p. 13). Lisa Delpit also refers to the ability to go back and forth between discourses or ‘code switching.” Most students we encounter in our classrooms participate in code switching on a daily basis. This is necessary for them to participate in our Standard English, middle-class school discourses. Delpit also asserts that students who sound different, that is students who do not speak Standard English, are often viewed as having cognitive deficiencies. This is an attitude that educators need to constantly question, reflect on, and change.

Another important factor that influences a child’s literacy learning is the cultural practices he or she engages in outside of school. Oftentimes educators fail to consider a child’s cultural practices as relevant to his or her literacy learning. In fact as Noll states, “Historically, schools have served to promote mainstream cultural values and expectations and have disregarded the experiences, languages, and cultural understandings of American Indians and other underrepresented groups” (p. 206). This is also a practice that educators need to question, reflect on, and change. Children like Daniel and Zonnie who have rich, culturally saturated home lives, sometimes experience difficulty in the school setting because of their inability to connect with the school discourses and culture. Educators must find a way to bridge these home and school discourses and cultures in order to ensure that these students feel a sense of belonging in school and to create opportunities for academic success. To do this, we must get to know our students and their cultures. We must “come to know children with the kind of depth that engenders successful change” (Hicks, p. 96).

A child’s identity also influences his literacy learning. According to Hicks, children “come to be and know with others as they engage in discourses fully saturated with cultural meanings” (p. 23). When they enter the school setting, the must learn to navigate a new discourse, thus causing a shift in their identity. Children must practice this new school discourse and act in new ways. Hicks refers to this as “hybrid” ways of acting, talking, and knowing. As I stated in an earlier post, for me, this idea of “hybridity” is the sum of all of our readings. Whether we call it code switching (Delpit), finding their “voice” (Henry), reauthorization (Staples), or building a bridge between home and school (Noll), we must create “classroom spaces where students [can] begin to move between cultural discourses without giving up the richness of their community experiences and language practices” (Hicks, p. 25).

While this is no easy task, it is necessary if educators are to meet the literacy needs of all students. We must continually question, reflect on, and change our instructional practices. In the words of Deborah Hicks, teachers need to “confront their own racisms and classisms before they [can] see the richness of children’s culturally saturated lives” (p. 26). We must think differently than we think and perceive differently than we see if we want to truly understand our students. By doing this, we can begin to value, appreciate, celebrate, and integrate the many different cultures and discourses present in our classrooms.

Leslie Rothenberger

“There are times in life when the question of knowing, if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.”
Michel Foucault

Now that I have completed the ASU Graduate program in Reading Education, I appreciate what I have learned in this course along with all the others, and reflect on how social relationships with my students and their families help shape literacy learning. In reading Hick’s book, Reading Lives, Working Class Children and Literacy Learning, I not only have a richer understanding of the importance of the experiences that students bring with them to school, but also a better understanding of social relations with my extended family members. During this course, it occurred to me why these relatives value cleaning and parenting as acceptable female roles. I realize that importance was placed upon the role of mothering and domestic activities when they were growing up. As a result, compliments are ample for cooking a good meal, baking cakes, and parenting in the manner in which they value. On the other hand, mowing the yard and tilling the garden are seen as a man’s job, and a husband and wife who share in parenting, cleaning and cooking is seen as foreign in their eyes. This course has given me knowledge of these family members and a deeper understanding of my relationship with them.

While taking this course, I have thought about the teachers whom I admire, and those teachers all have a way of developing positive relationships with their students. These teachers connect with and respect their students and, as a result, the students show respect to their teacher. I believe that these powerful relationships pave the way to literacy learning.

When it comes to teaching reading, I know more than ever before, that becoming familiar with students’ histories is crucial to uncovering student interest and how they learn best. Meeting the needs of students may require that I adopt new approaches to instruction, which may take me out of my pedagogical comfort zone. The key is to engage students with school literacy practices. My method of teaching and learning should be varied to meet the needs of all students. Engagement must allow students access to school literacies if they are to be successful readers and writers. Access to school literacies should allow for some choice on independent reading as well as small group guided reading instruction. I believe giving students the opportunity to choose their own books to read is empowering and encouraging. Allowing for choice within the classroom can not only come in the form of self-selected reading material, but also in centers or anchor activities, and tic tac toe homework sheets where students pick three assignments (out of nine) to complete by the end of the week.

In a guided reading lesson, I find discussions of texts a learning experience for everyone in the group. Students not only learn from the teacher but also from each other, because they can all bring something valuable into the discussion. This course has given new light on these social interactions after reading about various students’ unique lived experiences. Using their voice, each student has a special contribution they can make. I find a positive aspect of teaching in small groups is that it is easier to create a warm, inviting atmosphere that feels comfortable for everyone in the group. If students are at ease they will be more receptive to instruction. I believe it will be important to continue to use journals so that students have an opportunity to use their voice in a non-threatening manner. This seems to help my ESL students participate in discussions without being put on the spot to have to speak.

This next school year I look forward to delving into my students’ histories, coming to know and engage with them, attempting to uncover their interests, their preference of reading topics, what they value, and the way they maneuver through life within their world. Building positive, personal relationships with my students and their families seems more important than ever before. By using a variety of teaching methods and allowing for choice, I hope reading will be engaging and interesting for all of my students. My plan is to be thoughtful, supportive, and flexible and open to new pedagogical practices as I continue to try to meet the needs of my students in literacy education.

Carol Holt

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all- Michel Foucault.

Central to the issues of race, class and gender in literacy has been the need for shifts in perspectives by the teachers charged to bring meaningful literacy experiences to students’ lives. Foucault’s quote represents the importance of perceiving differently. Every time we encounter new thoughts, observations or philosophies can we reflect and truly see in order to continue to see and reflect at all? As a teacher, these shifts in perspective are considerable if I am to understand and see my students’ situated histories. There is a need to not just celebrate diversity but to see further and deeper, layer-by-layer: to see the ‘whole child’s’ hybrid identity.

The readings challenged me to think and perceive differently about my current literacy practices. As Noll notes, meaningful literacy opportunities that link home and school “ Can serve to make visible students cultural knowledge and perspectives” and reveal the literacy strengths of students”. Whilst I recognize the importance of this in my teaching, Hicks discussion of literacy has produced a significant shift in my thinking. Literacy is not just reading and writing, but a cultural and social activity. The children that I teach are not approaching “literacy practices as autonomous reasoners who then individually construct knowledge about literacy practices” (p.15). Daniel and Zonnie were wonderful at “re-authoring” themselves outside of school. They were dancers, poets, and musicians. In these roles they displayed an identity that made sense to them. If their teachers had been more aware of literacy as a social activity and had valued this home discourse then Daniel and Zonnie would not have experienced such conflict and separation. Staples in particular seemed to find a way to help her students bridge the gap. By using relevant movies and books, she was able to engage students in purposeful literacy that encompassed cultural and social practices.

Henry’s discussions about the roadblocks students encountered in ‘coming to voice’ further reinforced the need for a shift in my perceptions. Voice is identity and part of the whole child. I need to think beyond the notion of ‘one right answer’ in the classroom. As I discussed in recent posts, too often we experience teachers who expect the ‘right answer’. These are classrooms where the teacher does all of the thinking; discussion and imposing of a correct ‘view’ or ‘voice’ and students sit silently without giving voice to their ideas. Planning for discussion, without the teacher always being at the center of it with defined roles for student ‘voice’ is essential. Delpit’s article reinforced the necessity of ‘code switching’ in all of our lives. Henry summed up the needs that our students have: ‘they are anxious for spaces” and we must strive to provide them because ‘voice is identity, voice is power and a sense of purpose’. Continuous reflection will help me to attempt to ‘read the lives’ of children as they negotiate their hybrid discourses of home and school.

Recognizing the power of narratives in students’ histories also necessitates reflection on my current practices. Storytelling is a necessary and powerful tool that I am in a unique position to give to student ‘voice’. It can succeed in developing a strong sense of self. Perry’s discussion of the lost boys of Sudan spoke volumes about transformative storytelling in the lives of students. This type of storytelling maintained their cultural identities but also motivated them to push for change and engage in print literacies.

This class highlighted how competing identities shape literacy and how important it is to truly teach what matters to my students. To try to perceive deeper, to see my students, I could encourage them to write their own literacy histories, specifically as we did and continue the power of narratives in my Writer’s workshop. Students like Laurie that Hicks discussed would have benefitted from discussing and writing about media texts and social events that would have helped her to move between her two worlds. I can also strive to teach critical literacy that addresses the varying diversities that I will encounter: “those involving relations of ethnicity, race, gender and class”. (Hicks). There is a need to offer a curriculum that “embraces listening, watching, feeling and understanding” (p.13). This serves to create those spaces in an otherwise full day and recognize the hybrid languages of inquiry that my students have (Hicks, p. 157).

It is evident that these shifts in perspective need to not just take place within my instruction and knowledge about my students’ communities and cultures. There is a need for what Hicks terms “a moral shift”- “a willingness to open oneself up to the possibilities of seeing those who differ from us”. (p. 152). This means truly ‘listening beyond’ language form and how we think certain types of people will behave. We cannot ignore the impact of the middle class values of schools that we work in. This is uncomfortable but vital. I am not just turning the lens on my teaching but on the very beliefs and values that I shared when writing my own literacy history for this class.

Hicks explores these necessary shifts in teaching and in self. She defines the struggles of Jake and Laurie as “one of confronting the hegemony of an educational system still deeply informed by the myths and metaphors of mainstream psychology”. These myths construct a politics of learning and achievement that can be devastating for students. “They distance the field from the histories and practices that could be the starting point of social action”. (p. 158). Through the work of Williams (1977) Hicks argues for “confronting a hegemony in the fibers of self”. As teachers we struggle with our own histories and the hybrid discourses we shift between. We also have to recognize that just as we struggle so do our students. We have to be patient and attentive within our self otherwise students will distance themselves from us and learning and children will be reduced to mere labels. We have to be moved by what we see in the whole child, their situated histories and hybrid discourses: a necessary ‘sense of oughtness’ (Hicks). The critical struggle is then to teach without assimilation or social criteria and value the uniqueness of each child. This class brings hope for renewal and that “In the midst of struggle lie the seeds of poetic transformation”. (Hicks, p.159).

Karen Massey-Cerda

Text of pleasure: the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading.
Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts, unsettles the reader’s historical cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his [sic] tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his [sic] relation with language.
Roland Barthes

This quote by Roland Barthes, reflects the relationship a reader develops with literacy and the feelings generated by that relationship. After reading the quote several times, it seems to me that Barthes is trying to distinguish the level of comfort a reader feels when engaged with literacy practices. A text of pleasure is the kind of literature we choose to read, write, or communicate because it is familiar and when consumed it fulfills a desire or need from within thus creating a sense of contentment. These are the texts that meet our cultural history and personal identities. A text of bliss, on the other hand, refers to text that is foreign and creates uneasiness to the reader or writer. These forms of literacy are difficult to comprehend and make connections because they do not mirror the participant’s cultural discourse. As an educator, these different relationships or reactions to text a reader creates are important as our students develop language skills that will shape their future attitudes towards literacy in the classroom.

As I read the various assigned articles concerning gender, race, and class. as well as the chapters from Reading Lives about Laurie and Jake, the relationships that were made between reader and text became more outward when thinking about this quote. The study and research of Elizabeth Noll involving two Native American students clearly illustrates the relationship Daniel and Zonnie experienced with the literature they engaged in both at home and at school. Their cultural history of Native American life included music, dance, and art to express and convey meaning. Daniel’s texts of pleasure included stories about Native American heroes and life including, the local paper, Indian Country Today, and horror stories. When engaged with these forms of literacy, he felt pleasure as they met his cultural history and the identity that he valued most. The content of these forms of language gave Daniel the feeling of belonging that the racial discrimination he encountered at school did not. The information in text found at school concerned “White man stuff” which was inconsistent to his taste and values. These would be considered texts of bliss and because of his discontent and lack of participation, earned him low grades. When Zonnie wrote letters to her father in prison and poetry to express her feelings, she engaged in texts of pleasure. Connecting with her father and expressing herself in poetry and music, Zonnie felt connected and joyful. The words flowed easily and became an important part of her identity at home as well as school. When given writing assignments in school, she felt disconnected when trying to make up stories that had no personal meaning. She had already learned that writing should be purposeful to be gratifying. When engaged with text, Daniel and Zonnie struggled to construct personal understanding of their identities through literacy practices, while some brought pleasure and others brought resentment.

The article written by Annette Henry, outlines her research with adolescent Caribbean girls finding “their voice” or identity through literacy activities. By providing students with issues relevant to their own lives, these girls were able to think, reflect, understand, and even extend the text through writing to their own personal experiences. The students showed passion when asserting their voice about current events that connected to their own cultural discourse. When two of the girls wrote a play about their home discourse, they found the text pleasing and meaningful because it was about their cultural history; females cooking a dish from their home country. These afterschool literacy experiences, unlike those in class, would be considered texts of pleasure because they integrated the participants’ cultural identity to the experience. The results of this study of students who rarely see themselves reflected in the curriculum, confirms that when text is irrelevant to a reader or writer, it is difficult to accomplish and creates a disengaged student who loses interest in the task.

This was also apparent when learning about Jake’s literacy experiences in first grade as described by Deborah Hicks in Reading Lives. Unlike his center structured kindergarten writing and storytelling, his choice and expressiveness was confined to what his first grade teacher deemed relevant to the curriculum. His personal identity was not recognized and the shift between his home discourse and school became difficult. We learned a student’s home discourse will prevail in this conflict because that is where the identity is strongest and most influenced.

When I read the various postings of our class blog, I found the critiques and comments insightful and meaningful because we connected with our own experiences as educators and early learners to understand these new ideas of race, culture, gender, and class in literacy. Although I have often thought about how race and culture affects a student’s literacy history, I had not considered how class can emotionally impact these experiences. The relationships with text can be positive or negative, depending on the text and the reader or writer. I plan to create more positive experiences with texts of pleasure by getting to know my students and integrating their other discourses into the classroom where identity and voice can be nurtured.

Michelle Carlson

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks,
and perceive differently than one sees,
is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
-Michel Foucault

To me this quote means that if a person wants to acquire new knowledge, they must be open minded. There would be no point in hearing others’ perspectives if you are not attempting to understand their perspective. I feel as if this quote relates well to higher education. Seeking out higher education is a choice. It is doubtful that any one applied to graduate school without a desire to learn more. The knowledge that is gained must be gathered, evaluated, and determined how it should be implemented in one’s own life. Taking the time to digest another person’s opinion can be difficult, but it is absolutely necessary for true learning to take to place. This quote also ties in nicely with my thoughts about this course. We all viewed the same video clips, read the same articles, case studies, etc. but each person had a different view. This was because everyone brought various background knowledge and life experiences to the table, or blog I should say.

There were a few times when I began to read another person’s post and I found myself disagreeing with their opinions. However, after I read their post all the way through, I found myself questioning my own stances. This was a result of being open and taking the time to reflect on the reasoning behind their thinking. In almost every person’s post, I related to at least a piece of their reasoning. If I did not relate to their reasoning or opinion, it was still beneficial. I learned a lot from the diversity of the responses and comments. One comment that I particularly benefited from came after I had posted my response to Reading Lives, chapters 5 & 6. My understanding was that Jake’s father was holding him back from any possibility of a college education because he wanted Jake to take over the family business. Marlee pointed out the fact that Jake’s father’s comment did the opposite, it showed how much confidence he had in his son. This comment forced me to reevaluate my thoughts on Jake’s father. After doing so, I began to see that because of his own discourse, Jake’s father thought that taking over the family business equaled success. He was not being selfish at all.

The two articles that helped me to dig deeper into my own thoughts and piece together my own understanding was, Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense” and Dowdy’s “Ovuh Dyuh”. Each of these articles brought up an issue that I had questioned but never understood. While writing my reflection, I had to use my prior knowledge and form a well thought explanation. This process alone helped me to focus on my own thoughts and feelings about this subject. I found this to be a challenging task because I’ve never felt as if I had an answer to this question. The article did not offer a clear cut answer to this question. In some aspects, I was glad that there was not an “answer”. The fact that so many people have such a hard time explaining why this is so important should be food for thought. It definitely was for me. I reflected on times when I have made a judgment about a person’s intelligence based on the sound of their voice. This is an unfair assessment. The articles did shed light onto how language plays a large part in one’s social discourse. Throughout our posts, comments, and Dr. Jackson’s podcasts, I have a much stronger understanding of the weight our discourses hold. Also, I had never thought so in depth about the hybrids we all have. Of course I have practiced (and still do) carrying out various hybrids to match my situation. However, these hybrids came so natural, I had never stepped back to really think about what I was doing and why.

My favorite article from this semester was the Noll article. I found myself really living out the ideals from Michel Foucault’s quote. As an educator, I am used to providing questions and answers. This was something that I realized needs to be changed and already has been to some degree. As I was reading, my thinking began changing. It started out, “how help them understand?” while teaching students of diverse cultures. Then I began to realize that this should not be the first question I ask myself. It should be more along the lines of, “how can I understand my student?” When I began thinking differently and perceiving my role differently, I benefited from this understanding but more importantly, my students benefited from this change.

This whole process of changing and/or expanding my own thinking happened each time I read others’ posts and comments. It was truly a thought provoking and beneficial experience. I believe the link we all had as educators helped us to make relevant connections, which expanded our thinking. Connections were a huge part of this course. We found connections within each other’s posts and comments on a regular basis. Many of us also found that helping our students make connections to the material we teach, can make a world of difference. In several articles of the articles it was evident that when students were able to make a connection to something that had meaning to them, they were much more engaged. At the beginning of each school year from now on, I am going to give my students an interest inventory. If I am able to begin the school year armed with any insight into my students’ discourses, I will be more likely to promote interest and engage my students. I believe that this will happen and it will be a result of thinking and perceiving differently.

Stacy Durham

"There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks,and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all." (Michel Foucault)

When I first started this course I had no idea that I would learn so much from an on-line class. I have learned so much about what I don't know about my students. I didn't realize what a sheltered life I have lived. I guess I have never really seen my students through the lenses of different cultures, races and gender. I didn't know how important it is to acknowledge and accept the differences of my students and what a tremendous impact those differences have on their literacy learning. The one thing that caught me by surprise through the reading materials was that I really got involved in the articles and with the children in the articles. It became a very intense and personal process, but it was very helpful in understanding the main concepts in this class. These major concepts brought out through the reading material influenced me not only as a professional, but within my personal life also. I am ashamed, but I'll have to admit that the only thoughts I have ever had about diversity have been about color. I see now that my students have different discourses that they bring to my classroom everyday. I don't want them to feel that they live in different cultures or feel seperated within their own lives. My greatest desire for my students is that can feel comfortable with who they are and where they come from. I don't want them to feel like they have to sound a certain way, look a certain way, or act a certain way to be a part of my classroom or our school. I don't want them to put on a "mask" everyday to come to school. I think my new quote is going to be, "It doesn't matter what other people think about you, you have to be who you are." (Delpit) I have learned how powerful literature and writing can be to my students. To help me understand the personal and social issues that are important to them. Through them I can have a better understanding of how others in thier lives interpret literacy and types of experiences they bring with them when they walk through my door. So many times I have dismissed my students when they were wanting to share a story but now I understand that, "literacy learning should be built on meaningful social engagements with reading and writing (Noll)." When students are engaged in literacy activities that stem from their worlds they are more meaningful. Supporting students and adapting new ways to engage and question them are important in literacy learning. Allowing them to tell thier stories and have a voice within the culture of the classroom is what I want for my classroom. I want all my students to feel like they have the "power" to success and literacy gives them that power.
I will do a better job of knowing who my students are and where they come from. This will involve knowing their parents, finding out about their belief system, what's important to their culture, their family and especially to them. The next time I have a Jake or Laurie I will do my best to understand why he/she reacts a certain way or why he/she feels a certain way about something. I hope I can make a difference in a child's life in that I can understand and try to advocate for him/her why he/she is the way he/she is. They need a voice, they don't have on,e and it is important for the child that we try to ensure their needs/stories are heard.
So in a final reflection of the famous quote, I can say that I do think differently about my students. I have a deeper understanding that they bring many discourses with them when they come through my door. I do see my students beyond color or the ethnic group to which they belong. There is a deeper culture and history to which I must learn in order to understand and successfully teach my students. My thoughts and my perceptions will no longer stop at the door when I meet my students. They will continue throughout the year as I learn who my students are and I will strive to help them become lifelong learners. I must change in order to improve my classroom and give all my students the feeling that they truly belong in my classroom and in our school.

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
Michael Foucault

From the first article I read in this class, Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense,” I have been questioning the way I look at the world. I had never thought of myself as someone who discriminates on race, class, or gender, but articles we read in this class made me question how I accommodate the diverse population of children in my classroom. I have critiqued Zonnie’s reading teacher who could not even identify the types of literature Zonnie enjoyed and Jake’s first grade teacher who did not allow him to develop at his own pace. While critiquing others, however, I often felt that I must also turn the mirror on myself and examine my own teaching practices. Reflection is essential in order to be an effective teacher, and I am grateful that this course has granted me this opportunity to reflect on the way I perceive and interact with my students and their home communities.

The initial quote that got me thinking about my treatment of diverse discourses in the classroom was from Delpit’s article “No Kinda Sense”: “To speak out against the language that children bring to school means that we are speaking out against their mothers, that their mothers are not good enough to be a part of the school world.” When correcting students’ grammar in the classroom to be Standard English, I have always attempted to be discreet and felt that by correcting their grammar I was helping them to become better students. Reading this line from Delpit’s article, however, made me realize that what I thought of as assistance in speaking “correctly” was probably being interpreted by my students as a criticism of not just their speaking but also the culture in which they grew up. I want my classroom to be a safe haven for my students, so this feeling of rejection is not one I want to foster, and Delpit’s article helped me to see how my words may be being differently from how they were intended.

As I read about Daniel in Noll’s article, I began to question how much of the history and social studies I taught in my classroom was considered to be “white man’s stuff” by my mostly Hispanic classes. I’ve always explored different traditions and cultures from throughout the world when we had “Holidays Around the World” in December or celebrated “Culture Week” in the spring, but now it seems so obvious that this was not enough. Reading children’s literature with culturally diverse characters does not count as helping students to connect to the material. I need to consciously integrate a variety of historical and current events from multiple cultures into my curriculum. By providing students with the true history of their cultures in the academic setting, they will realize that their culture is not only accepted by the classroom, it is embraced as another topic of learning and discovery.

Reading Staples’s article about re-authoring made me think back on how often I have unconsciously labeled a child because he or she did not act or perform the way I expected my students to. For example, how often have I said a child is lazy because he or she does not do the work assigned? Perhaps that child is not doing the work because he does not understand the purpose behind it or he feels disconnected to what is being studied. Instead of labeling that child, I should be attempting to rework the curriculum to better to suit his interests and needs. This article helped to change my perception and made me realize that I want to make my classroom a place where students do not need to re-author themselves, because they are already accepted and supported for who they are. Given the middle-class focus of most curriculums, this is not something that will happen without effort. In addition to making myself more open to the various students I have in my classroom, I hope to follow the examples of critical literacies presented in Hicks’ book (p.31) by looking closely at texts read in class to make sure they raise up the students’ individuality instead of oppressing it.

Finally, in Hicks’ book, Jake’s lack of motivation to do work because it seemed pointless and “stupid” helped to change my perception of how classwork is viewed by students. I realized I so often give students assignments without helping them to build a connection to it or helping them to understand the purpose behind it. Often they complete their work because they have been trained that that is what they are supposed to do at school…work without questioning authority. This lack of connection to what they are doing, however, will lead to frustration with school which may later manifest itself through dropping out or no longer trying. Just like I want my students to feel a connection to what they are learning in the classroom, I also want them to feel a connection with what they are doing in the classroom.
This course has made me reflect on how I interact with my students, the material I teach my students, and the activities I require of my students. This reflection of my own teaching has not left me feeling that I am a poor teacher, unworthy of the profession. Instead, I am taking my own reflections as constructive criticism in an effort to becoming the most effective teacher I can be. Through the readings in this course I have explored how to improve myself as an educator by embracing the home and school lives of my students.

Andrea Schlobohm

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.”

Michel Foucault

I think that this quotation from Michel Foucault sums up the lesson I will take from Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research. I think Foucault is telling us that, if I am going to reflect on my practices, in my case, my teaching, then I need to try to see those practices from the point of view, or perspective, of discourses other than my own. It is only when I am able to reflect on my teaching from the perspectives of my students and their parents that I will be able to build the relationships which will allow for the most advantageous learning environment for my students.

This lesson was brought home time and time again as I read for this course. Beginning with Noll’s case study of two American Indian youths, Daniel and Zonnie, I realized the importance of learning about the perspectives of the students. Daniel and Zonnie were clearly intelligent young people. They were also clearly uninterested and uninspired by their schooling, feeling disconnected and unappreciated, both by their teachers and by their classmates. They seemed to feel comfortable with themselves only when they were functioning in their own tribal discourse, which they did regularly and successfully. Even with parents who were supportive of their educational endeavors, Daniel and Zonnie were not the strong students they could have been, had the teachers taken the time and made the effort to understand and appreciate their cultural background. Learning about their cultural was only the beginning, though, as Noll made it clear. She wanted us to “capture the meaning that they confer on what they (do) and on the way other people react to what they (do).” She reported on THEIR perception of what they did and the reactions of others, rather than on her own perceptions, which might have been totally different from theirs. As I noted in my blog, I think that, too often, we become so caught up in what we THINK our students are saying that we miss what they are really communicating to us...in other words, we superimpose the ideologies of our own discourses on our understandings of what our students are communicating to us.

Allowing our students to express themselves through the many different kinds of literacy is significant too, as it was to the African Caribbean girls, researched in Henry’s article Speaking Out, and Staples research article Hustle and Flow. Their research affirmed the importance of making connections with our students which go beyond our school relationships. Staples and Henry both found that it is vital for us to, not only understand the various discourses from which our students come, but to also use that knowledge to help us support our students learning with texts which are relevant within their discourses and allow them to use their different learning styles, cultural expressions, or intelligences to express themselves. We must respect their native languages or dialects, accepting their communications as legitimate methods of expression, even as we work to teach our students how to communicate in Standard English. I agree fully with Delpit’s statement that “To speak out against the language that children bring to school means that we are speaking out against their mother, that their mother are not good enough to be a part of the school world.” Although the use of Standard English is important as we prepare our children for future successes in the working world, we need to support and encourage their efforts with literacy in whatever language, rather than disparaging those efforts as inadequate. It seems that it is only when we develop these supportive, trusting relationships with our students that they are able to “buy into” the relevance and importance of the literacies we are sharing with them.

Previous to these readings, I had not thought of all of us – teachers and students alike – as storytellers. Now, as I reflect on the Hicks text and the articles we read, I realize that all of the students who participated in the research had stories of their own to tell. Indeed, some have stories of persecution, such as the Lost Boys of the Sudan. Some have stories that help them pass along traditional stories of their cultures and preserve their heritage, such as those of the American Indians, or the African Caribbean girls. Yet others have more commonplace stories of events and experiences in their own communities, like Laurie and Jake. Through their stories, we, as teachers, develop a better understanding of our students and “where they come from.”

Understanding the discourses from which our students come to us is vital if we are to plan appropriate learning experiences for them. For example, understanding Jake’s and Laurie’s home life and their experiences with literacy at home would help a resourceful teacher know better how to approach them in a school situation. Perhaps connecting to current events from the American Indian community would have promoted the interest necessary to engage Daniel and Zonnie in their class work. If relevant materials were used with the students involved in Staples’ and Henry’s research – song lyrics, or plays, or even current events that directly affected these students’ lives, for example - maybe they would have felt more empowered in their connection with their own education.

I think that, although providing a rich library of multicultural literature is a good beginning point for creating understanding of different cultures, Michel Foucault would have us dig a little deeper than just reading about them. He would ask us to examine and try to understand our students’ perceptions of their experiences from their own points of view. He would ask us to try to keep our understandings from being colored by our own discourses, and to be open to the feelings, experiences, and cultures of the children in our classes. By doing so, we enrich our own lives as well as the lives of our students, and we create the bonds and connections which enable us to provide rich instructional environments in our classrooms. We, as educators, must open our eyes to the lives of our students, and, as the saying goes, “Walk a mile in their shoes.” Only then can we be the effective, “highly qualified” teachers we aspire to be.

Marlee Wright

Written by Karin Scott

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.” - Michel Foucault

This quote certainly reflects my feelings about what I have learned during this course. The world of education is constantly changing and if we, as teachers, cannot adapt and change our thinking with it, we will not be as effective as we can be. Being able to take on other points of view to see the view from the other side is crucial for teachers, since we have so many different different views in each of our classrooms each year. If we continue to only see our own way of thinking as the right way of thinking and hold on to our biases and preconceived notions of race, class and gender, we will never achieve our goal of reaching every child.

One of the most important concepts that I took away from this course has to deal with the concept that our students don’t come to us as blank slates ready to be filled with information, as discussed in the Reading Lives chapters. Since the day they entered the world, every experience and interaction they’ve had has begun the process of shaping them as learners and it is crucial for me as a teacher to figure out how to use that to my advantage when teaching them instead of viewing it as a hinderance. Just as Laurie and Jake’s home lives influenced their outlooks on and the outcomes of learning, so will my future students. From this course, I now realize the high priority I must give to getting to know my students and their families both inside the classroom as well as out.

The concept of children having “hybrid” identities also opened my eyes to a lot of new ideas and notions about the two different lives that children lead both in and out of school. Delpit discusses the concept of “code switching” which I was aware of in the past, but had never been able to give a formal name. It made me think a lot deeper about how much children do switch “codes” between friends and adults, school and home, etc. Hicks spoke about “hybrid identities” that children develop to exist both inside the classroom and inside their homes. We saw how sometimes these identities need assistance from the teacher to help develop channels between the two, especially with Jake. If one of his first or second grade teachers had picked up on his love of NASCAR or his interest in construction/heating and air conditioning repair because of his father’s interest in it, and how much more he was engaged in learning when information was presented in those formats, he may have been much more attentive and successful in school. Once again, getting to know the whole student can make a huge difference in how we teach and the outcomes we achieve for them.
hybrid identity, code switching

I also learned a lot about what it’s like to grow up as a girl in the south. From reading about Hicks’ experiences as a young girl as well as others’ discussions in their posts, I gathered a lot of new information about southern culture that I didn’t possess before now. Growing up in upstate New York in a nonreligious family, I did not have nearly the experiences and I think learning this new information is helpful because although I’m sure things have changed some, the basic concepts are still the same and to understand that is just one step to further understand where my future students are coming from.

Giving work that has a purpose, for a real audience, is another concept that I took away from this class. Not that I didn’t know that was important before, but during this course I was really able to think deeper about exactly why it is that kids need to understand the purpose for what they are doing. Also, it’s not good enough to just tell them “you’ll need this later on in life.” A lot of students have to actually see the use for it or they will become disengaged. This was seen in Perry’s study, when Chol wanted to publish his autobiography in a magazine. If we as teachers can pick up on those kinds of things and find authentic, real, live audiences for our students’ work, we can give them a real purpose for doing the work, instead of just for a grade.

Though I have not had my own classroom yet, and cannot use the knowledge I’ve gained to reflect on past experiences outside of tutoring, I can certainly use it for my future classrooms. The tools I have gained from this class helped me to understand how truly important it is to get to know your students-the whole student, not just what you see in the classroom, but their families, values, cultures, pasts, presents and futures as well. As we can clearly see through the readings for this course, learning this information will help us greatly in the work to reach each and every student and help them succeed in school and in life.

Kim Strzelecki