Critical Literacy and the Resident Expert Project: Inspired by Ira Shore and a quality TED Talk

I wanted to take a moment and share we are as a class and some of the readings and experiences that have led me to be in this particular space and time with my students. As I am spending this Georgia State semester considering and reconsidering Critical Pedagogy, I have come to understand the heart of my study of voice is really a quest for a Critical Pedagogy, and specifically, a Critical Literacy, in our classroom.  As a first grade teacher who works with open-minded six and seven-year olds and as a Liberal Arts College educated woman who was taught to challenge the “is” for the “what could be,” I see the core of Critical Pedagogy in Critical Literacy. Ira Shore writes that Critical Literacy is founded in the reality that

“we are what we say and do. The way we speak and are spoken to help shape us into the people we become. Through words and other actions, we build ourselves in a world that is building us. . . Yet, though language is fateful in teaching us what kind of people to become and what kind of society to make, discourse is not destiny. We can redefine ourselves and remake society, if we choose, through alternative rhetoric and dissident projects. This is where critical literacy begins, for questioning power relations, discourses, and identities in a world not yet finished, just, or humane”  (1). 

Shore’s words resonate with the critical teacher that I am working to become and call into question the ways I am setting kids up to become the people they truly are and desire to be, rather than becoming what the  sweeping systems of accountability and cut-and-dry standards  say they should be.  While I believe that the public school system can work against Critical Literacy in difficult and iron-gripping ways, I also believe that the vision and heartbeat of my charter school community and leadership “to give voice, courage, and  hope to refugee, immigrant, and local children” leave space for Critical Literacy to take root and push up beyond the ground in spite of deafening accountability measures. To put it simply, I have space to rethink what I am doing with my students in my classroom on a day to day basis.  As I have explored what Critical Literacy is and what Critical Literacy means for my context as an educator in a unique, charter school setting, I have found vivid anecdotes in A Critical Inquiry Framework for K-12 Teachers.  The opening pages by editor JoBeth Allen explain that “critical literacy. . . is a central curricular manifestation of critical pedagogy. Reading and writing must be for “something that children need and that we too need,” noted Freire (1998, p.24); literacy must be meaningful to students and serve a purpose in their lives” (7).  

So, I found myself considering how I can provide “dissident projects” and literacy that is “meaningful to students and serve a purpose in their lives.”  With this in my head and heart, I had the opportunity to watch a TED Talk that was shared with me by my former roommate entitled “Build a School in the Cloud” by Sugata Mitra.  Mitra shares his experience of putting computers with high level concepts (i.e. Biochemistry) in English into walls in slums and rural villages of India (where children do not speak English) and finding that students not only learned English, but also learned the high-level concepts described in English.  I encourage you to watch the video to really understand his experience and argument, but he closes declaring that perhaps we need to shift from a school system that produces similar children as if for parts of a machine to “learning as the process of self-organizing,” for, “it’s not about making learning happen, but setting opportunities up and then standing back and watching children learn with admiration.”  Check out the video here: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html

     With thoughts about Critical Pedagogy and Critical Literacy swirling around in my head, and with the inspiration of this TED Talk, I thought back to a project I had seen before when observing in a high income public school about two years ago called “The Resident Expert Project.” I realized that my work with a small group of students was inspiring me to rethink my during-the-day curriculum structures and that this project might be a way to do so. In this project,  students choose a topic they are interested in and then pursued understanding of this topic and selected a way in which to share their learning. They were now the “resident expert” of their classroom in their chosen topic.  I saw them give oral presentations and show posters.  What if I proposed this same project in my classroom and integrated our first  science standards about the basic needs of animals by setting kids up to select any animal to become an expert on? What if instead of just making posters and doing oral reports they could do sculpture, write poetry and songs, create T.V. commercials or puppet shows, build habitats, create new board games, make books, or share their information in any way they could think of. So, I tried this. I knew that this was a project that would matter to them and that integrated reading (especially non-fiction texts) and writing and inquiry and science and collaboration.  I set them up by providing texts about different animals and modeling how to read a non-fiction texts, mark facts that are interesting, and write them in your own words. Then, I sat back and “watched in admiration” as students curled up in corners and composed songs about wild horses and created board games about lions with cards that say, “Your pride (family group) is in danger, move back 2 spaces” or “You just caught a zebra for dinner, move forward 3 spaces.”  At first the project was individual, but students began to pair up or even form groups of three. A group of girls kept their original topics but decided to make one nature show about both chameleons and wild horses.  How beautiful that I didn’t tell them what to do and that they came up with ideas far more creative than I could have offered them. How much they are learning about the pouches of marsupials, the ears of polar bears, or the cold-blood of alligators!  In this way, with this student engagement (that we engaged in everyday and carried over a couple of weeks) I was able to see the power of student voice and self-expression. We were accomplishing standards, but we were doing so in a way much less controlled by the teachers and much more controlled by the students themselves.  I got to sit back and provide scraps of material or popsicle sticks or index cards or whatever it was that the particular child needed to communicate their particular animal expertise with the world.  

Easter Island, The Story Behind the Name, Potential Structures, and Book Characters Galore (What can voice look like?)

As I write my third blog post, I realize I never clarified the blog’s title. In a recent conversation with a peer, I told them the story behind the name of the blog, and they encouraged me to share these stories. As I consider student voice this semester, I desire to consider what students share when they get to CHOOSE what they share. I want to know what kids think, feel, and believe outside of the response to the promptings of others. Three specific children and their unbridled voices are behind this name: “Rhinoceri, Peace, and Indomitable Spirit.” I have an amazing student who loves to tell me riddles. He has the greatest Ethiopian accent, and I so love hearing his stories and riddles. At the beginning of the year, I was sitting at lunch when he asked me. . .”Ms. Rector, what is the most ferocious animal in all the land?!” Trying to quickly down my lunch, I responded by saying: “I don’t know. . . a rhinocerous?” He quickly came back with, “NO, Ms. Rector. I said ANIMAL. Not dinosaur, silly. It’s the cheetah of course!!” We thus began a conversation about the difference between and animals and dinosaurs. . .but, not in a way to crush his enthusiasm. The “Peace” of the name comes from my ever peaceful child from Bhutan. He called me over during recess to look at what he had drawn in the dirt with a stick. I approached the three large hards drawn in the dust, and questioned him about the words he had inscribed inside of the hearts. They read “love, good, and peace.” “Why did you choose those words?” I asked. He explained, “Well, if you love everyone that is very good and it is very peaceful and when you are very peaceful that is good because you can love everyone.” What great truth! Finally, “indomitable spirit” are words straight from the mouth of a student last year during morning meeting. We always began the day discussing a “word of the week” such as integrity, creativity, respect. One day, my student said he had a suggestion for our word of the week. I asked him what his suggestion was. He responded by saying, “Indomitable Spirit.” He had learned about this attitude of bravery and tenacity during his karate class, and thus we began to work to embody indomitable spirits in our classrooms. I share all this to stress that I am certain that when kids speak their own hearts and mind, beautiful things take place. They almost always come up with something their teacher could never prompt them to say, for their words are far outside of the more compartmentalized and goal-oriented nature of their teacher (namely, me). What joy we can experience in our classroom and our world, when kids have space to share their voice!

I have appreciated the comments on my blog speaking to potential structures for this project. While I am still very much in the learning stages, as I consider these encouragements and suggestions and continue to teach my students every day, I realize ALL of my students are crying out to be heard. I am at a place in the year where my classroom is taking a turn for the negative, and I am realizing that kids are crying out to be heard because I am not honoring them because I am not creating a space to be heard in positive ways. Perhaps it is best to begin to rethink my classroom structures and how they allow kids to express themselves, and then follow these lines and work with a few students after school as well. I believe that centers and Writing Workshop are very respectable structures, but if I am holding onto these structures just to hold onto them while sacrificing space for dramatic response, student selected-inquiry projects, scientific explorations, and opening students worlds to the great wide world through the use of technology and texts, then I am falling short of what it means to educate children. If I want my students to be explorers and discoverers, but I am keeping them from exploring and discovering and voicing their thoughts, then I am effectively squashing what I am driving toward. I recently sent home a “Resident Expert Project” with one of my students. I basically spoke with her mother and encouraged the child to pick a topic she was interested in and then find out more about it and choose a way to share what she learned with the class. That was all I did. She came in the following week with the poster below:

She stood up in front of the class and proudly shared what she had learned about Easter Island. She shared facts and images, and responded to students’ questions with information beyond what was included on her poster. She really became our “Resident Expert” on Easter Island. How powerful to see her passion, and to see the intense and focused ways the other students learned from her! I know that this required a lot of parent supports and that not all students (in my classroom or yours) have this. However, it was easy for me to see this was a lot more about my student’s voice and passion than her mother’s or father’s. This same experience could be true in my classroom. What if students researched Beluga Whales and then shared a song full of Beluga facts with the class? What if students researched Amelia Earhart and then stood inside a large cardboard box converted into a “television” and gave a news report full of facts on this inspiring individual?

Thinking about how to continue to get my kids to fall in love with reading, I asked my students to come to school Friday dressed as their favorite book character. I knew many families might not have the time to help fashion intricate costumes, so I just sent home a paper plate with each child and asked that they make a mask of the character they wanted to be. I dressed up as the one and only Ms. Frizzle of the Magic School Bus and covered my dress, ears, boots, neck, and hair with magnets of all sorts, magnetic objects, and words such as attract and repel. I was amazed at the creativity of my kids! As I stood in morning carpool, I witness Madeline herself step out of her uncle’s truck (complete with straw hat and black Mary Janes) and Fleur Delacour (from Harry Potter) skip into the classroom. These students certainly had parent help. My little guy who game in with a shirt with sharks on it and a paper fin he asked me to tape to his back didn’t. One child came with her paper plate parsed in two. I asked her what she was. She explained she was the bird from Dr. Suess’ Are You My Mother? OF COURSE SHE IS. That is her FAVORITE book. She’s read it nearly every day ALL year. Of course she is dressed as the bird from Are You My Mother? I didn’t ask my kids to come dressed as book characters because I was thinking about my Capstone Project. I asked them to come dressed as book characters because I thought it would be a good way to keep them enthused about reading, but as they walked into the classroom, I realized that through this experience I was seeing new sides of them. They were sharing their voices and expressing themselves! Even students who showed up without costumes were stoked to transform into book characters with the help of their classmates and teachers. My little friend who loves riddles became Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy by quickly stapling together 4 paper plates and tying them to his back as wings and creating large buggy eyes with black antennae sticking straight out of them. How fun to watch Fly Guy himself play football during recess as his wings flapped in the wind. Creative man himself fashioned big black wings and taped them to both sides of his arm to transform into a bat from a non-fiction text. Perhaps I will continue to pursue exploring voice with a small group of students afterschool. I also want to rethink what I am doing on a daily basis on the classroom and allow for more student expression and sharing of voice as a whole group. This week has taught me just how beautiful that can be.

 

Check out Garfield in the back, Ted Arnold's Fly Guy with large eyes, Madeline herself, and the bird from Are You My Mother? (in front with pink sweater). 

 

Amelia Bedelia (front far right), me as Ms. Frizzle the magnet lady, Ms. Frizzle's student Tim from Magic School Bus (no, Tim and I did not coordinate our characters--it just worked out that way!), Ginny Weasely (bottom left), Ben Ten (top right). 

 

On a side note, but certainly connected, was a conversation I recently had with one of my students who speaks Nepali. He told me, “I can’t tell you my words because they are silly, Ms. Rector.” I responded by assuring him “his words” weren’t silly at all.” He suggested I could ask his mom or sister about his words. What about school, and specifically, my classroom community, is making him feel that his words are “silly?” Something to think about . . .
 

Mostly, I am learning how to listen to kids’ voices from my own students. Yet, as I read and explore texts, I am realizing more and more that this is a question and exploration many educators have thought about.  I keep being brought back to bell hooks and her text Teaching to Transgress. I have not yet read this text, but I was recently reading an article by Kirsten Olson Lanier entitled “The Teaching Philosophy of bell hooks: The Classroom As A Site For Passionate Interrogation” and was again encouraged to seek out this text. What would it look like for my own classroom to be a classroom like hooks describes: full of the “joys of learning in such a freed environment, when the classroom becomes a "location of possibility...a place where paradise can be created” (p. 207) (Lanier, 5) How can I rethink the idea that I want my students to listen to me and begin thinking about how they can share their own voices and listen to one another? hooks very “ deliberately attempts to turn students away from her voice and her presence, to listening to each other” (Lanier 11).  I am hopeful that this question can be unfurled in the coming months as I continue to pursue what it means to be an educator. . .

* Lanier, K. (2001). The Teaching Philosophy of bell hooks: The Classroom as a Site for Passionate Interrogation.

Chilean Inspiration and Questions about Structure

                

*Check out this video if you want to get a glimpse of the "voices"  (musical in this case) in the Chilean school described below.

As an undergraduate, I spent a semester in Chile studying comparative education and social change.  For the final month of my time in the country, I participated in a self-created, independent study. I lived with an amazing family in a rural Mapuche village (the Mapuche are the largest group of indigenous people in Chile)  of Chapod working with students 4-8^th grades to consider history, geography, and world cultures using the World Cup 2010 to frame the journey.  Throughout the course of history, and especially during the time of Pinochet’s dictatorship, the Mapuche people have been heinously discriminated against. Their ancestral lands have been stripped from them, they were asked to longer build their traditional homes, and were forbidden to speak their language. As a result, many Mapuche face lives of poverty, continued discrimination in the workplace, and have not passed on their language of Mapungundun to their children. Interestingly, there is a move by the young adults to go back to school and learn their family’s language.  Chapod is situated one hour by bus from the major city. Very few people have cars and there is neither a gas station nor any store to speak of. The village consists of a school, a church, and a cluster of homes full of kind and gracious families.  During my time in the village, I worked with the 4^th-8^th grade student to consider cultures, history, and geography of the world using the upcoming World Cup as our framework. Each week,  I would go to the city by bus and download photo after photo of people, animals, landscapes, and events from around the world. I would bring them on my computer to the school (where there is no internet) and show the kids. Students responded with such enthusiasm! As they encountered the diversity of the world, I hoped they would own their own unique contributions as Mapuche people.  One of the most powerful experiences occurred one afternoon when I had tea with the founder of the school. He talked about what it felt like when he was told he must only speak Castellano (Spanish).  He talked about the heart wrench he experienced as he lost his own voice. . . As I consider the ways in which voice can empower students, I continue to think back to my time in Chile and to all that I learned about identity and voice through the students there.

As I have read and reflected upon readings for Critical Pedagogy and Teachers for Critical Inquiry this week, I have been struck by the frequent references to the power of voice.  In bell hooks, “Confronting Class in the Classroom,” she makes a powerful reference to the words of Jane Ellen Wilson:

“Only by coming to terms with my own past, my own background, and seeing that in the context of the world at large, have I begun to find my true voice and to understand that, since it is my own voice, that no pre-cut niche exists for it; that part of the work to be done is making a place, with others, where my and our voices, can stand clear of the background noise and voice our concerns as part of a larger song” (The Critical Pedagogy Reader, 139).

hooks continues, explaining that a “distinction must be made between a shallow emphasis on coming to voice, which wrongly suggests there can be some democratization of voice wherein everyone’s words will be given equal time and be seen as equally valuable. . . and the more complex recognition of the uniqueness of each voice and a willingness to create spaces in the classroom where all voices can be heard because all students are free to speak, knowing their presence will be recognized and valued. . .just the physical experience of hearing, of listening intently, to each particular voice strengthens our capacity to learn together” (The Critical Pedagogy Reader ,139). 

With this in mind, I continue to consider how this work will unfold. Beginning with public speaking skills as a foundation to promote self-confidence, we will move together toward student-selected projects that build conceptual understanding of what it means to share what we care about and who we are in ways that impact and transform ourselves, our communities, and our world.  As a people, we are asked to explain where we come from, who we are, and what matters to us in multiple contexts, be it interviews to gain acceptance into charter and private middle and high schools, to secure jobs and opportunities, or to open doors for our children by articulating why they deserve scholarships to summer programs or colleges.  Expression is foundational to life—musicians compose and perform, dancers choreograph, sculptures breathe life into clay, photographers capture life in a manner that is sharable, athletes hone their trademark moves, poets slam, chefs marinate and present with parsley.  If childhood and schooling doesn’t allow for the movement of imagination and the articulation of self, where will our artists be? Our athletes? Our leaders? Our freedom fighters?

I need your help. I plan to begin meeting with students next Wednesday, March 5^th.  I am currently between two structures to make this happen. The first involves staying after with students from 3:15 until just after 4 when the bus arrives to take them home.  This would allow us to meet in our classroom and meet for a specific amount of time. I would ask about 10 students (current and former first graders) to participate in this time.  I am currently thinking of students with beautiful stories who are 1. Local kids with powerful advocates as parents who are painfully shy and 2. Refugee students who will likely have to advocate for themselves in major ways in their lifetimes and will need strong voices to do so.  The second structure is quite different in that it would be limited to three children and I would be able to commit to taking these three children home after the session. This would allow us to meet at school or somewhere else and not have a restrained amount of time nor environment.  I could add a couple students if their parents would be willing to pick them up.  This would allow me to really focus on building the voices of the very small group I work alongside.  Does anyone have any suggestions between these two structures? Or have ideas for what I should do to build student confidence and introduce the project/get input from kids during our first meeting next week?

I look forward to your voices. . . .

-Maggie

Hello All,
 If kids were free to express themselves, what would they say? What could I find out about kids? Just last week, I had an experience with a student in my school that will forever challenge my understanding of the oppressed and of oppressors as well as what dialogue and perspective really mean. I attended a “wax museum” exhibit put on by the third graders at my school. Each student was dressed as an individual they deemed to be a “freedom fighter” and had a paper “button” at their feet labeled with their assumed identity. Students were dressed as Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Visitors to the exhibit were to step on the button to hear each child’s speech and step on the button when the child completed their spiel.

One student, the older brother of my former first grade student, was representing his father. I had met his father and spoken with him over the phone, so I thought it might be interesting to learn about him. The child was enthusiastic to share with me and I was enthusiastic to hear from him. This is an energetic and friendly child who is spending his second year in third grade. He is from Burma. He began to speak about his father. He explained that his father was the president of his university, the great-grandson of the President of Burma, and a Karen warrior who fought for freedom and justice for his people. The child shared rapidly and then stopped, returning to his frozen position. How often do words follow this “wax museum” model? It was not in the “model” for me to question or share my reactions. The words are shared but the dialogue about how these words affect others (I was moved in incredible ways and my perspective greatly challenged. How much I have to learn about the stories of the families of my students! And of my students themselves!) or how they challenge and perplex the speaker is not always voiced. Mutual trust between dialougers is something that must be intentionally sought after and engaged in by both parties, yet I believe that with humility and in love, it is possible. I believe that the interaction between young children is a fertile ground for mutual trust to flourish and this is an interaction that I want to witness and be inspired and challenged by. I taught this child's little sister for a year and I never knew any of what her older brother shared with me in twenty seconds. What he CHOSE to share. How often I sat with both children as the little first grade encouraged her brother to read basic words when she could fly across the page and fill her head with stories. . . How many phone calls did I exchange with her father about things such as her reading progress or if I could drive her home from an after school event? How little I listened to who he was!

 This semester I want to listen to my students. I want to hear their voices. I plan to carve out time after school once a week to just delight in the stories of my kids. Who are they? What are their perspectives? What stories do they want to share? How do they want to share them? I would like to have just a small group of former and current students to run alongside in this project. I think that if as a teacher I learned to listen to my students stories, I would be a much better educator and partner of students and their families. I think it is important for me to start this outside the classroom context so that I don't feel like I am trying to get across a specific standard or have kids stand in line quietly in the hallway. I want kids to be freed up and be themselves. I feel like I know a lot about my kids. . . but maybe I only know what I ask them. Maybe I only know what I want to hear or what they think I want to hear.

 As I was reading for our Critical Pedagogy class, I was struck by the chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed about dialogue and the role of mutual trust in dialogue. When a child experiences what it is to be known and honored rather than deposited into and directed, I believe there is an opportunity for unparalleled growth. My students’ stories have the potential to “transform the world” if only they are shared, heard, and honored (87). What might it look like for “mutual dialogue” to exist between my students? How can students learn to seek the “constructive elements” of words (87)? In reality, who am I to teach six and seven year olds anything about the power of dialogue. Children are often those who most genuinely “love the world,” “love life,” and “love people” (90). They are therefore well equipped to enter into dialogue. Without this dialogue, “there is not communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (92). If I call myself an educator, is it not my first and foremost goal to promote communication?

 I don't know yet exactly what this work might look like. I am hopeful I can create a vision for it alongside my kids. I look forward to hearing if anyone has any recommendations of further readings around this theme. Today I had an exciting turn of events in that one of my 2 team members at school voiced that she would be interested in working alongside me in this work. She was a Kindergarten teacher last year and taught many of my students. She also has her masters in Multicultural Education and a real passion for Critical Pedagogy. I look forward to what this could look like. . .