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

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