Where I’m From

Teaching

This post will discuss how “Where I’m From” poetry helped provide a scaffold to better understand multilingual students and their evolving identities. This post is written by Emily Graham. Read more about Emily at the bottom of this post.

The question “Where are you from” is one often heard by multilingual learners (MLs). Although all the MLs at my school could answer this question simply by naming their birth country as either the US, Mexico, or Guatemala, this answer gives little information about each student’s identity. Through her poem, “Where I’m From”, George Ella Lyon shows us how we can tap into the more complex answer to this question. Lyon links together memories of special places, people, sayings, and stories from her past to tell us who she is, and this can serve as a powerful model for reflection and exploration of the rich and diverse identities among students.

In a poetry unit built from Lyon’s ideas, structure, and themes, my MLs explored and shared their own identities. Students’ poems and thoughts gave me a small window into my students’ past and present lives and their critical and creative thinking abilities. The “Where I’m From” Poetry Project allowed me to build a deeper, more complex understanding of who my students are and “where they are from” beyond just a geographic place.

There are countless get-to-know-you activities that require students to answer categorical questions such as: “What are your favorite foods?”; “What are your favorite songs?”; “Who is in your family?”; or “What do you like to do when you are not at school?” While I believe these questions are important, their answers do not always provide great insight into our students’ lives. Often these questions are asked and answered without much thought or reflection. Students may say: “My favorite foods are tamales”; “I don’t know my favorite song”; “I live with my dad, aunt, uncle, and sister”; and “I watch T.V.”, but there is little depth or passion to these responses.

When we use poetry to elicit these responses, we can reframe these questions in a way that requires reflection and deep thinking. When the questions are reframed to: “What are the family, foods, thoughts, and stories that make you who you are?” a teacher can gain a much deeper understanding of students and their unique identities. “Where I’m From” Poems provide a frame and an artistic lens for students to respond to those questions about identity.

Here is an example of how one student’s poem provided me with a glimpse into his rich and unfolding identity. Looking at his identity from a more reflective perspective helped me build an understanding of the student’s home life, language, family, and interests that I had not slowed down to see before.

Jimmy, a 3rd-grade multilingual student, was born in the United States and struggled with academic language and literacy. Although he was born in the US, he did not begin learning English until he started school in kindergarten. The first language, the language used most often, and the language that he used with the people he loved, was Spanish. Jimmy was considered a student who “struggled” in school. He often put his head down in class, he refused to work independently, and said things like, “I’m not smart” or “I can’t read.” Sometimes he participated in whole group discussions but more often seemed disengaged. Jimmy’s class was starting a unit on poetry, and I anticipated resistance from Jimmy. I decided to teach a unit to build background knowledge and confidence in poetry.

Jimmy initially seemed disinterested in the idea of studying and writing poetry. But that slowly started to change through the process of a close read of Lyon’s “Where I’m From.” At first, we looked at the literal meaning of Lyon’s words through translations, pictures, and discussion. Jimmy was able to confidently define big words from Lyon’s poem such as “carbon tetrachloride” and “forsythia bush”. He was able to explain how someone might lose a finger to an “auger”. He also was able to discuss big ideas like nostalgia and memories. In later readings, Jimmy stated Lyon’s voice reading her poem sounded like a ghost. He said Lyon talked about the past and memories like a ghost would. Jimmy seemed to enjoy building on the ideas of his group members. He was not afraid to share his opinion on the meaning of certain phrases and his thoughts about word choice. I was surprised by Jimmy’s desire to build an argument and support a claim in the discussion. He said, “I think the author likes to play in the dirt under her porch. Maybe she liked to hide there because that is what I do. My dogs also like to hide under the porch because it is cool, and they feel safe.” I was also impressed by Jimmy’s critical thinking and questions. He said, “I wonder why she said the ‘it tasted like beets.’ Maybe she is talking about when she was a little kid because little kids always put stuff in their mouths. They are curious and that is how they explore.”

Jimmy was not initially thrilled about the task of writing his own poem. He needed some support organizing his ideas. With the support of graphic organizers, help in spelling, and some motivation from a YouTube student example, Jimmy wrote. Here is his poem:

I am from fish tanks and from dirt

and my dog DJ

I am from broken glass in my backyard

I am from my broken T.V.

From Roblox and road trips

I am from sunflowers and bamboo

I am from tag with my brother and helping my mom

from Joseph and Marissa

I am from the sad puppies and Llama the puppies mama

from swings and broken pinatas

I am from my dad’s Honda

with a big engine

I am from my mom’s Hyundai

it has a push button to start

from riding my bike and making my own adventures

I am from digging holes and making traps

I am from inventions

Jimmy’s poem was a powerful representation of his identity, and his word choice was beautifully poetic. He was able to infuse his poem with alliteration and repetition, imagery, and emotion. He juxtaposed happy and sad memories, and purposefully ended his poem with positive attributes about himself. He talked about both joyful and upsetting times with his family. Times where they celebrated together — “broken pinatas” — and times of trouble — “broken T.V.” From reading and talking about Jimmy’s poem, I learned about ways Jimmy interacted with his family, some challenges in his life, and personal characteristics that he was proud of. Jimmy was proud to explain how he helped his mom with daily chores and sometimes would go to work with his dad. He talked about his dog Llama having puppies and the irresistible sad look on the puppies’ faces. He found joy in playing with the puppies. He talked about being devastated when some of the puppies got sick and died. He said he felt so bad for Llama, the puppy’s mama. Jimmy sometimes showed insecurities in the classroom but spoke with complete confidence when discussing his adventures and inventions outside of the classroom. He talked about his positive attributes like creativity, curiosity, and bravery. Jimmy took pride in his poem, so much so that he wanted a copy to take home and read to his family

Jimmy’s poem and the conversations that resulted from discussing poetry helped me shift from focusing on Jimmy’s struggles to identifying and sharing his strengths Before, I might have shared my frustrations on Jimmy’s lack of motivation or refusal to do work in my class. Now I had something so much more powerful and beneficial to share with other teachers — Look what Jimmy wrote, look what Jimmy can read, but most importantly look at some of the things that make Jimmy who he is! Through poetry I learned more about his academic abilities — Jimmy could craft meaning from metaphor and explain his theories about themes and lessons hidden in poems. I also learned about his interests and motivators. I discovered Jimmy’s empathy for others, passion for inequalities in his community, and desire to help others. Jimmy’s poem allowed me to understand his uniqueness and make connections to my own childhood curiosities and adventures. I felt the same empathy for animals and dreams of a more peaceful and equitable world.

I had the same kind of revelations and connections with my other students. I learned Alexander had a job caring for sheep in Mexico through his lines: “I am from a big river where the sheep used to cross” and “from a scary ram who chased me all day.” I learned Veronica’s older brother always said to her “sup bro and dap me up, bro.” I learned about Marta’s memories of Guatemalan cuisine: “tortilla’s (sic), tortas, tamales, and tacos.” Each poem was beautiful and unique and a window into my students’ lives. These poems provided voice for my students and a platform to share the individual identities that they were proud of. This background was both unique and unifying. The poems gave students an opportunity to be more clearly seen and heard.

Sometimes we want to get to know our students, but we don’t know the right questions to ask. The question “Where are you from?” seems simple on the surface but does not have a simple answer. Studying George Ella Lyon’s poem with my elementary multilingual learners helped me slow down and deepen my understanding of Lyon’s words and, more importantly, my students’ words. Although my initial purpose of the poetry unit was to provide academic background knowledge for my students, a more beautiful and poetic thing happened — poetry provided background knowledge for my students for me. The poems provided a space for me to do the learning and for my students to do the teaching. The format provided a space to merge home life and home language with school life and language. “Where I’m from Poems” allowed us to celebrate each student’s beautiful and unique identity.

Lyon, G. E. Where I’m from, a poem by George Ella Lyon: Writer and teacher Subtitle. http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html

Emily Graham is from Johns Island, South Carolina. She currently teaches grades K-5 as a Multilingual Learner Specialist in Charleston County Schools. She is a certified elementary educator and has served in several different teacher roles including as a Multilingual Learner Program Specialist, a second grade teacher, an English teacher abroad, a substitute teacher, and a teacher’s assistant. She speaks Spanish and enjoys traveling, creating, and being in nature. She lives with her husband, 8-month-old girl, and two rowdy rescue dogs.

Cover Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

For Teachers Desiring to Be Anti-Racist

Student Contribution

By: Amber Burton, Addison Lee, Nicole Mesimer, Kathleen Pennyway, and Eliana Pinckney

This list was developed by several students and teachers at Dreher High School. The students involved led a series of community gatherings called “Get Woke Talks” that centered around issues such as racism, gender identity, and activism. These recommendations come from the lived experiences of the writers. We hope you find them useful.

DO’s

1) Demonstrate care and compassion for your students’ identities.

Allow students to attend Black History Month Celebrations and other celebrations of their history and culture. These celebrations are not “extra,” they are essential.
Find books and materials that resonate with your students’ cultural identities. Cover them in class if possible or offer them to students who you know will be interested.
Show up for your students. If your student is a member of the dance team, or the volleyball team, or the debate team, support them and their interests.

2) Make a consistent effort to correctly pronounce a student’s name.

Names represent culture. Correctly pronouncing a student’s name can strengthen the relationship with that student, making them feel accepted and included.
Taking the time to learn a student’s name correctly also shows them that you believe they matter. If you say “it’s too hard” or “I’m never going to learn it,” you are really saying that you do not want to take the time to learn it.
Don’t give them or ask if they have a nickname, unless they tell you first. By asking your students for an alternate name, you continue the pattern of asking students of color to assimilate to white culture. You are renaming them to make you and/or others more comfortable.

3) Show your students that you are human too.

Let students know about your failures as well as your successes.
One of the things discussed in our group was trying to get a banned book approved for the classroom and getting pushback from other stakeholders in the community. This failure led to honest conversations about what teachers can and cannot do in the classroom.
If you make a mistake or cause harm, apologize, do what you can to repair the harm, and don’t make the mistake again. Expect the same from your students.

4) Be brave enough to take a stand.

When you encounter injustice, think about the consequences of staying silent, not just the consequences of speaking up.
Your students of color are watching how you handle racism in the classroom.
If a student makes a racist comment in your classroom and you say nothing, you are choosing your own comfort over the safety of your BIPOC students.

5) Call things what they are.

Call racism and other forms of oppression by their names.

6) Be intersectional.

Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” which is a theory describing how all our identities work together and intersect to create different areas of privilege and discrimination.
Understand that both you and your students interact with the world through various identities.
When someone speaks from a different lived experience, do not question their truth because you haven’t experienced it.

7) Treat all students of color the same, regardless of the type of classes they take.

A student who takes all AP and honors classes should be treated the same as a student who only takes CP classes.

8) Include authors from different backgrounds, and not just for work regarding their identity

BIPOC authors do not just write about racism and racial trauma. There are amazing books that highlight the joy and resilience of BIPOC. Make sure you are including those books as well as ones about racism.
You don’t have to just use a Black author for books about race; authors create stories for every aspect and concept of life.

9) Make additional efforts to build relationships with students of color and their families.

Realize that your knowledge of family and cultures is specific, not universal.

DON’Ts

1) Don’t try to be comfortable.

This work doesn’t end, and if you are comfortable then you are accepting the status quo.

2) Don’t assume that parents are talking to their kids about racism and cultural history.

Students have different needs and backgrounds.
Many historical textbooks used in classrooms were written by white authors. Only recently has the erasure of histories of BIPOC been made widely available and accessible.

3) Don’t ask a student of color to speak on behalf of their entire race.

Communities of color are not monolithic.
Putting your students of color on the spot and asking them to speak for their race is harmful and unfair.

4) For white teachers: Do not be a white savior. Don’t extend help based on what you assume a student of color needs. This feeds into the assumption all students of color undergo the same issues.

The white savior complex is ego-driven. It comes from the belief that students of color need “fixing” and that you have the power to do so. This is harmful.
If a student of color is having a bad day, don’t assume it’s because of the stereotypes associated with BIPOC. (Not all students of color come from low-income households or live with a single-parent, etc.) These students are affected by the same issues non-students of color are affected by.
A great example of a white savior in the classroom is the movie Freedom Writers.

Learn More About Antiracist Work

This list is not intended to be a complete list of everything you need to know about antiracist teaching, but hopefully this can give you some things to think about as you move forward in your journey. Some other resources you may find useful are listed below.

Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning
Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain
Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race

About the Authors

Pictured left to right are Nicole Mesimer, Kathleen Pennyway, Addison Lee, Eliana Pinckney, Amber Burton.

Amber Burton is 18. In the fall, she will be attending North Carolina A&T State University. She plans to double major in political science and African American studies, with aspirations of becoming a civil rights attorney and a political analyst.
Addison Lee is 17 and will be attending the University of South Carolina to major in public health. She hopes to minor in Women and Gender Studies in order to work on policy making and advocating for underserved communities.
Eliana Pinckney is 17. She will be attending Temple University in the fall to major in musical theatre and public relations.
Nicole Mesimer teaches Spanish at Dreher High School.
Kathleen Pennyway teaches Theatre at Dreher High School.

Don’t Be Afraid to be Anti-Racist

Teaching

By: Nikki Griffin, North Carolina High School Social Studies Teacher

Many times in my career, as a classroom history teacher, I have come across colleagues who are fearful of being anti-racists. These mostly well-meaning teachers are by no means racists, but sometimes lack the courage to be ANTI-RACIST. Here is an important distinction to make for ourselves and for our students – being an anti-racist requires more of us than simply not being racist. Being anti-racist requires action, not just a disposition. Being anti-racist moves us to actively address issues of systemic racism in our schools and in our society. Being anti-racist demands expression of anti-racist ideas that directly challenge racist ideas.

My Journey to Being Anti-Racist

Last year, following the horrific murder of George Floyd and the proliferation of protests across the United States and the world in support of Black Lives Matter, I decided to put my own beliefs about being racist into action and to NOT hide behind my role as a teacher to remain on the sidelines of “teaching history” so I could avoid the more uncomfortable role of being anti-racist. Many of my students sent me messages expressing their sense of frustration that there was nothing they could do to be anti-racist or that they did not know how to show action to express their anti-racist views. My answer to them was almost always the same, “Let your voice be heard” or “Counter racist ideas with getting your own anti-racist ideas out there!” Very often, I would remind these students that they had spent a whole year or more studying history with me and that they had the arsenal of knowledge with which to arm their anti-racist actions. Finally, I decided to take my own advice, step out of my role as classroom teacher, and publish a video called “Opportunity Lost.” Actually, this is a video series that I am still working on and intend to finish this summer.

My message to teachers is that being a teacher does not mean you can not express your own views to the wider world. Just as you expand understanding of anti-racism in your classroom, your unique knowledge of your subject area, students, and community put you in a unique position to share ideas to the broader world to pursue the goal inspiring anti-racism in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea8ULb42vvU&t=7s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvq3WJ7f0BM&t=31s

About the Author

Nicki Griffin has taught high school social studies in North Carolina for 29 years with a focus on AP History and AP Art History Teacher. She attended East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

The Advantages of Inquiry: Equity and the Economy

Research

By: Dr. Britnie Delinger Kane, Assistant Professor at the Citadel

In education, inquiry has long been considered foundational to all four major disciplines (e.g., Dewey, 1927)—English, social studies, science, and math—and it has been motivated and defended from a number of theoretical backdrops (i.e., critical literacy; social constructivist theories of learning; disciplinary literacy; engagement theory; and on and on). Others might choose a different conceptual framework from which to understand the place of inquiry in classrooms, but—for my money—I prefer to understand its utility from the standpoint of social constructivist theories of learning. This stance helps us to see connections between inquiry-oriented instruction, disciplinary literacy, and even more equitable forms of instruction.

Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on Unsplash

The term “constructivist” teaching is often bandied about, but it’s a deeply complex and potentially misleading term. If you have never read Marc Windschitl’s (2002) review of the research on “constructivist” or “student-centered” instruction, you should. It will change the way you think about every piece of educational research you happen across —not to mention every blog with ten tips for integrating into the classroom Chromebooks or SeeSaw or Lucy Calkins’s writing curricula. Windschitl’s main argument in that piece is that the field has been unfair to teachers in advocating for a nebulous idea of “constructivist” teaching. He then, in detailed and clear ways, distinguishes between two broad orientations to theories of learning, cognitive constructivism (think Piaget) and social constructivism (Vygotsky), which continue to inform thinking in the learning sciences.

So far, many of you may be nodding, straining to remember that Ed Psych class long ago where you kept getting the words assimilation and accommodation mixed up and someone asked you to make a poster about Vygotsky’s ZPD (only rarely have I been in a School of Ed that wasn’t plastered with posters of the ZPD). The point that Windschitl (2002) highlights is that humanity can file the articulation of coherent theories about human learning on its list of invaluable accomplishments of the last 100 years. However—and this is the clincher—theories of learning are NOT theories of teaching: Just because we know boatloads more about the ways that people learn does not necessarily mean that we can fill the same boats with our understanding of effective teaching. Windschitl proceeds to outline what—from a social constructivist standpoint—constitutes great teaching. He calls this ambitious instruction—or, how to teach in ways that will support what we understand, broadly, about the social nature of learning. The whole bullet-pointed list could sustain career-long consideration, but here’s my favorite line:

[When students are engaged in rich opportunities for conceptual learning, they are] routinely asked to apply knowledge in diverse and authentic contexts, to explain ideas, interpret texts, predict phenomena, and construct arguments based on evidence, rather than to focus exclusively on the acquisition of predetermined “right answers” (Windschitl, 2002, p. 137).

Windschitl calls such teaching ambitious, because it supports social constructivist forms of learning. Ultimately, Windschilt and other learning theorists seem to agree that ambitious instruction can support the rich forms of conceptual learning that students will need in order to succeed in our knowledge economy. Learning theorists have highlighted that such expertise involves not just memorization of important facts and procedures, but “a deep conceptual understanding of complex concepts and the ability to work with them creatively to generate new ideas, new theories, new products, and new knowledge” (Sawyer, 2014, p. 5). Indeed, it is a repeated finding of educational research that, by addressing complex, authentic, and relevant questions, students can learn to use their procedural and conceptual knowledge flexibly in order to solve novel problems while evaluating and communicating arguments clearly (Sawyer, 2014, p. 5).

In short, rich learning requires that students inquire into authentic and relevant problems, and so bringing inquiry into classrooms can be an important framework for teaching ambitiously. Of course, as a literacy person, I cannot think about discipline-specific forms of inquiry without also thinking about disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is about apprenticing students into the ways that experts use reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking in specific disciplines to inquire into questions of import to particular fields. At the heart of disciplinary literacy is the idea that students must learn both the content and processes through which knowledge is constructed in particular disciplines (Moje, 2007). As Moje (2007) emphasizes, understanding the processes through which knowledge is constructed is central to equitable forms of pedagogy—not only because understanding these processes helps students to reconstruct them and use them in their own lives, but because understanding those processes can support students, ultimately, in critiquing them. To my mind—understanding the processes through which knowledge is constructed in particular disciplines is about…well, inquiry. Spires and her colleagues (2016) agree. They have used inquiry as a means of supporting students’ disciplinary literacy, calling their framework for this work project-based inquiry (PBI). In their framework, PBI has five phases:

ask a compelling question,
gather and analyze sources,
creatively synthesize claims and evidences,
critically evaluate and revise, and
share, publish, and act

Early evidence suggests that, by focusing on disciplinary literacy within an inquiry paradigm, teachers and students are able to deepen their understanding of disciplinary literacy and engage in deeper, authentic, relevant, and engaging content-specific learning (Spires et al., 2016).

As research on disciplinary literacy centrally highlights, however, the processes through which disciplinarians construct knowledge—or, the modes of inquiry they use—are, of course, discipline specific (Dobbs, Ippolito & Charner-Laird, 2017; Moje, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; Spires et al., 2016). A number of articles, including those cited here, have written about this in great depth, so I will limit myself to a single example. In the PBI framework that Spires and her colleagues suggest, inquiry across disciplines begins, of course, with a compelling question. Students then gather and analyze sources. However, the ways in which they analyze these sources are different: literary critics deconstruct literary and rhetorical devices, such as irony and metaphor; scientists attend to an author’s credential and authority within the field; and historians contextualize primary sources, paying attention to both the author, purpose, audience, and time period in which the piece was written or created; mathematicians analyze the logic of an argument without attending as closely to the context of the author (Spires et al., 2016, p. 153). Thus, all disciplines inquire, but they do so differently.

In short, inquiry is a powerful framework for ambitious teaching, and it can be an important vehicle for supporting disciplinary literacy and content-area learning. By bringing inquiry projects into the classroom, students have opportunities to participate in disciplinary work, which can support students’ development of disciplinary literacy, as well as the content and processes that disciplinarians use to build knowledge. There are two major advantages to this: (1) inquiry can support students to develop the kinds of rich, flexible conceptual knowledge they will need in order to find success in the knowledge economy (Sawyer, 2014); and (2) inquiry allows students to participate in approximations of processes of discipline-specific knowledge construction, which is foundational to equitable teaching (Moje, 2007; Behrman, 2006).

References

Behrman, E. H. (2006). Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 490-498.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2016). Research on teaching and teacher education and its influence on policy and practice. Educational Researcher, 45(2), p. 83-91.

Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Athens, OH: Shallow.

Dobbs, C., Ippolito, J. & Charner-Laird, M. (2017). Investigating disciplinary literacy: A framework for collaborative professional learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Moje, E.B. (2007). Developing socially just subject-matter in- struction: A review of the literature on disciplinary literacy teaching. Review of Research in Education, 31(1), 1–44. doi:10. 3102/0091732X07300046001

Sawyer, R. K. (2014). Introduction: The new science of learning. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pp. 1-18).

Shanahan, T. and Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59.

Spires, H. A., Kerkhoff, S. N., Graham, A. C. K. (2016). Disciplinary literacy and inquiry: Teaching for deeper content learning. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, 60(2), p. 151-61. Windschitl, M. (2002). Framing constructivism in practice as the negotiation of dilemmas: An analysis of the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political challenges facing teachers. Review of Educational Research, 72(2), 131–175.

About the Author

Britnie Delinger Kane is an assistant professor of literacy in the Zucker Family School of Education at The Citadel in Charleston, SC. Dr. Kane’s teaching and research focuses on how teachers learn to teach ambitiously. Her work has focused on a number of content areas, including mathematics, writing, and computer science. This focus has led to her interest in disciplinary literacy, to which she brings a learning science perspective. She has studied teachers’ professional learning across their careers, from preservice teachers’ involvement in simulations of professional work to in-service teachers’ participation in teacher workgroups to instructional coaching.

Truth Finding in Young Adult Literature

Teaching

By: Kim Ferrari, South Carolina English Teacher

If you were to look through my high school yearbooks, you would quickly notice one thing. Almost everyone was white. I grew up in a very white community in one of the whitest states in America and could probably count on my fingers the number of Black people I knew. As far as I knew, racism didn’t exist any more. The Civil Rights Movement and desegregation brought an end to it and everyone was treated equally now.

I moved to South Carolina in 2014 and learned very quickly that everything I thought I knew about racism and civil rights was wrong.

I watched the news in shock, horror, and disgust as the truth became apparent: racism is very much alive today. This new reality became something that I had to grapple with. I realized that I needed to relearn my nation’s history. For the first time, I began to realize that what is written in our history books is not the absolute truth. There are many untold stories in our history, stories which paint a different picture. As an educator working at a school with predominantly students of color, I knew that I needed to do better and educate myself.

To better understand the new reality and the new culture that I was now surrounded by, I turned to books (as any English teacher would). One of the very first books I read on my journey of truth was The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin. I found myself on the verge of tears throughout the book, unable to believe that humans could be so cruel to one another. But then I turned on the news and saw the same types of things happening 60 years later.

Searching Inward

I continued reading books to help me process and understand what was happening around me, focusing on those books written by Black authors about Black youth. The first book that really made a difference was All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. One of the main characters, Rashad, a Black teen falsely accused of stealing a bag of chips from a convenience store, could have been one of my students. This was the first time that I saw not just a character in a book, but a student in my classroom. It caused me to question my personal biases. Did I treat my Black students differently? Was I unfair in my discipline? Did my students all feel valued and seen in my classroom? These were difficult questions to ask myself and I didn’t always like the answers I came up with, but I owed it to my students to ask myself them.

The more books I read by Black authors and about Black teens, the more I learned about the injustices they face. Each book with characters like my students helped me to realize that when one of them calls out “Yo, Miss,” before asking a question, they’re not being smart with me. When a student is more interested in the latest music release or shoe drop than my Shakespeare lesson, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad teacher. These are just some of the things that they grew up with as part of their culture. A culture that I never experienced, but a culture that I can learn about through books.

Making Connections

As police violence on Black people continues to happen, young adult novels like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, Ghost by Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and How it Went Down by Kikla Magoon have helped me to see perspectives that I hadn’t before. I saw these events through the eyes of my Black students and while I will never truly understand what it is like to be Black in America, these books offer me a window into their world.

Most importantly, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi taught me everything I never learned in school about slavery, racism, and segregation. What I thought I knew was challenged and I grappled with these new truths. Months later, I’m still questioning much of what I thought I knew about our nation’s history. This new (to me) information has helped me look at current events in a different light and to see how everything that happens today is connected to an event or decision in history.

While there have been many books published in the last few years that center on the injustices faced by Black people and while it is important for everyone to read these stories, there is also importance in reading and amplifying stories of Black joy. Instead of focusing on how Black people have suffered, stories of Black joy celebrate being Black, being human, and living life. Books like The Crossover, As Brave as You, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Children of Blood and Bone are just a few of the amazing stories of Black joy published in the last few years. With each book that I’ve read, I’ve learned about the importance of music, how different hair styles represent a person’s identity, and how stories are passed down from generation to generation to continue the culture.

Moving Forward

All of these books have helped me to become a better person, educator, friend, and ally. My journey has been difficult at times but it is far from over; I recognize that I still have so much more to learn. Young adult literature will continue to be a powerful resource for me, allowing me to connect with my Black students and to see just some of the ways in which racism still exists in our country.

If you have never read a book that serves as a window into the life of a Black person in America, then I encourage you to read one. If you are White and have never read a book by a Black author, I challenge you to read one now.

About the Author

Kim Ferrari is an English Teacher at Manning High School in Manning, SC. She received her Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from the University of Maine at Farmington and is working on her Master’s in Literacy from Clemson University.

What’s in the packet?

Teaching

By: Elizabeth McCauley McDonald, Manning High School Social Studies Teacher

Students A and B are in 11th grade. Student A reads at a 9th grade level and Student B at a 7th grade level. Student A has internet access at home and has transitioned to e-learning. Student A experiences some challenges understanding the work; however, they are able to attend virtual meetings with the teacher to get additional help. Student B does not have a reliable internet connection at home, so Student B’s parents go to the school and pick up a packet, so that their child can continue to learn. Student B opens the packets and begins to…

Right now in South Carolina, and America as a whole, middle and high school students are forced by circumstances to become their own teacher.

Some students are even teachers to their younger siblings. In many homes, parents of elementary students are able to support their child’s learning, but that is not always the case for students in middle and high school. Fortunately for some middle and high school students, they have access to reliable internet and can attend Zoom meetings with their teachers, email teachers, or even look up tutorials or videos explaining content. But notice that I said some students. The reality is that many middle and high school students do not have that luxury.

During this time the inequities of our school systems are laid bare.

Some folks are content pretending that everything is alright and the children will be just fine, but what if they aren’t?

Many schools have switched to an e-learning platform to provide instruction and instructional materials for their students. But what about students that do not have access to these platforms?

Many students are faced with the reality of these teacher created packets we see folks talk about on personal and school district social media pages.

So, what’s in the packets?

Well, it varies from district to district, school to school and sometimes teacher to teacher. There is one commonality found in most packets – reading activities. The goal of the reading activities seems to be for students to review and/or learn new content.

For science students, packets may include articles related to the field of science or secondary source material explaining science content. For history students, packets may include primary source documents, like letters or journals for analysis, or secondary source materials discussing content students need to review or learn. Math packets may include word problems allowing students to make real world connections to math concepts. English packets may include short stories or opportunities for students to engage writing with various prompts.

For some students these types of activities are manageable. So, let’s talk about why these types of activities are manageable for those students. Well, if you’re like me, you teach content area literacy strategies in your classroom. We read daily in my class and use literacy strategies when we read. On my board when you walk in my classroom, you’ll always see a section titled, “Daily Reading Moment.”

Many teachers are engaging in literacy practices in their classrooms. Teachers have students activate prior knowledge before reading texts, utilize activities while reading to increase student comprehension, and utilize activities after reading to assess comprehension. Many teachers focus on building vocabulary for students to be successful readers. Many classrooms across our state are classrooms where students are learning the literacy skills they need to tackle texts in the absence of their teacher.

I’m a social studies teacher, but I am a firm believer that literacy is everybody’s business, but unfortunately not all educators feel the same. Some folks feel as though it’s the job of English or Language Arts teachers to teach reading and literacy skills. And, maybe these teachers have been able to get by with that mentality for a while, but what about now, when teachers expect students to read and learn information from packets?

Let’s talk about access

Let’s go back to Student B that we read about in the beginning of this post. What happens when Student B attempts to read the various materials in the packet, but lacks the reading skills and vocabulary knowledge to be successful? What happens when Student B comes face to paper with this touted packet, but has never read in the safe space of the classroom from which this assignment hails?

What do we do now?

I know you care about your students and you want the best for them. The way for students to get the best is for teachers to give their best selves.

Here is my charge for all of the educators across our state:

Invest in your own professional development, during this time of self-distancing, to strengthen your implementation of literacy practices in your classroom.
Expand your repertoires of practice to include literacy strategies that will empower your students with the tools they need to deconstruct texts and gain meaning.
Enroll in a class about content area literacy.
Do a Google or YouTube search and learn about various literacy practices and literacy strategies.
Read the research. There are many research articles about best practices.
Reach out to folks that you know deliver professional development around content area reading strategies.

My charge for educators knowledgeable in content literacy strategies:

If you have delivered professional development in content area reading and writing strategies, deliver a virtual professional development for your colleagues.

This is a call I will also need to answer. Why should we wait until our various summer academies to learn with and from our colleagues?

Will you join me?

Photo by Julentto Photography on Unsplash

In South Carolina, we know one of our biggest mountains to climb in education is increasing student literacy. We also know that our greatest tools we have to climb that mountain are the educators in South Carolina classrooms. When we enter our classrooms again, will you be a part of the change? Will you help us climb the mountain? Let’s do the work…together!

If something of this magnitude happens again, we do not want to leave our students to fend for themselves. Instead, we want to leave our students with the knowledge and practices necessary to take ownership of their learning.

About the Author

Elizabeth McCauley McDonald is a high school social studies teacher in Manning, South Carolina, where she served as District Teacher of the Year for 2018-2019. She holds a Bachelor’s in Secondary Social Studies from Clemson University, a Masters in Education from Anderson University and a Masters in Educational Administration from the University of South Carolina. Elizabeth is currently pursuing a PhD. in Literacy, Language and Culture at Clemson University. Elizabeth also edits blogs for LiD.

If you are a South Carolina educator, complete this survey developed by LiD to learn more about the literacy teaching and learning in secondary classrooms in our state. (Link).