Seeing Themselves in the Text: Exploring How Critical Literacy Aids in Student’s Examining Their Position in the Spaces They Occupy

Teaching

By: Steven Jernigan, South Carolina English Language Arts Teacher

In her 2021 inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb,” poet Amanda Gorman says, “We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black / girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can / dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” The quote establishes Gorman’s position in the pageantry as the public figure representing art and youth and diversity, while also fully cementing that position in the context of the arduous journey it took to get there – her personal history and the country’s alike. There’s more in that poem – and moment – that is worth dissecting and poring over, but it is that line specifically – high visibility and positioning oneself within the narrative – that there lies a connection between culturally sustaining pedagogy and student’s emotional wellbeing. Author Jennifer Buehler (2019) writes, “We are always making sense of our own and others’ lives in terms of storylines that tell us what to expect in social situations” (pg. 12). Here, Gorman is providing the narrative and the storyline wherein Black children – Black girls specifically – can be seen and heard and admired. One must ask however, what happens if that narrative is not the dominating one in the classroom? It should lead to educators asking questions of their practice such as: What storylines and narratives are we presenting to our students? Furthermore, what are these stories conveying about a student’s own position in the classroom and the world around them?

Narratives in the ELA Classroom

During my time as an English teacher, these questions have served as the basis for most of the teaching decisions. The texts we choose to read in class, if not directly offering students the ability to see themselves in the classroom, are often centered around discourse and writing where students examine and analyze their position both in the classroom and broader society as a whole. Authors Baker-Bell, Butler, and Johnson (2017), in their article “The Pain and the Wounds: A Call for Critical Race English Education in the Wake of Racial Violence,” highlight how English teachers “invoke racial violence when we don’t cultivate critical media literacies that Black and Brown youth can use to critique, rewrite, and dismantle the damaging narratives that mainstream media has written about them” (pg. 124). While the call here is to provide students with the tools and knowledge for how to identify and rectify the power structures they are subjected to and perhaps even uphold, the consequence of not doing so should not go unnoticed – the continued upholding of a system that enacts violence on the bodies of Black and Brown youth. And while that consequence provides enough justification for critical examination in the classroom, it is worth noting that research (Andolina & Gonklin, 2019; Scriuba, 2014) suggests engaging students in such practices promotes the building of empathy, importance of community, and need for equity within our students.

Creating a Culturally Sustaining ELA Environment

In specifically addressing these questions and concerns in my classroom this year, I and the other English 2 teachers have centered our world literature curriculum around the pairing of whole class text with student choice, YA novels. As a whole, our school has actively engaged in students doing some version of self selected, independent reading. At its best, this practice was used to dedicate one day a week to sustained reading with perhaps a whole class discussion follow up. At its worst however, it was used to fill time after quizzes and tests. While there is nothing inherently wrong with using time after assessment as an opportunity to get students to read, we felt that this year there was something more we could do. So, we went about finding YA books that fit with the more traditional texts that had been a part of the curriculum for years. In our reading of Shakespeare’s Othello for example, we are having students choose from a selection of works that sit systemic racism as a central conflict in their narratives. We are then setting aside one day a week to the readings of these choice texts. During these readings, we will also be breaking students up into groups where they will participate in conversations around text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world comparisons. In addition, the students will be maintaining blogs as a space to talk about their conversations and overall impressions from their study of the two works of literature. A project similar to this – students created text sets that related to central ideas of their two novels – was done with the reading of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; those projects allowed for some excellent conversation around the ways in which societies – both our own and others – struggle with progress and tradition.

Aside from fully revamping a course’s entire curriculum however, there are other ways to get storylines and narratives into the classroom that have students examine, critique, and see themselves in the world they occupy. In my English 3 American Literature course, this has been done by examining poetry like Amanda Gorman’s. In looking at poetry as both a form of argumentation and as emotional expression, students are reading Gorman’s and Angelou’s inaugural poems to see how poets – Black poets specifically – were using their craft to discuss and critique American society. The students are to not only examine the argument present in both these works, but to identify challenges and obstacles that are present in their own lives and communities that could be addressed with poetry too. While the dream would be to have a room full poet laureates that all have my class to thank as their genesis, the overall goal is for these students to see themselves as agents of change in their own world – to position themselves in places they are heard, seen, and appreciated.

The specific practices offered here sit not as quick fixes to systemic, holistic problems, but rather as a push to get educators to acknowledge the narratives and stories elevated in their classroom. As noted in Kristina Montero’s book review of Paris and Alim’s Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017), creating a more equitable world for our students means rooting out the white supremacist and colonial practices that have and continue to pervade our field. Doing so, requires self-examination and identification of our own role in the maintenance of a system that oppresses and silences. In other words, the work is inward as much as it is outward. As noted by Gorman however, “For there is always light / If only we are brave enough to see it / If only we are brave enough to be it.”

References:

Andolina, M. W., & Conklin, H. G. (2020). Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning From Project Soapbox. American Educational Research Journal, 57(3), 1203–1240. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219869599

Baker-Bell, A., Butler, T., Johnson, L. (2017). The Pain and the Wounds: A Call for Critical Race English Education in the Wake of Racial Violence. English Education, volume 49 (2), 115-129. Retrieved From https://library.ncte.org/journals/ee/issues/v49-2/28917.

Buehler, Jennifer (2019). Positioning Theory: Exploring power, Social Location, and Moral Choices of the American Dream in American Street. In R. Ginsberg and W. J. Glenn (Eds.), Engaging with Multicultural YA Literacy in the Secondary Classroom (pp. 11-21). Taylor and Francis Group.

Montero, M. (2019). Creating Cultural Sustenance in the Classroom: A Review of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(6), 698–701. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.956Sciurba, Katie (2014).

Texts as Mirrors, Texts as Windows: Black Adolescent Boys and the Complexities of Textual Relevance. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 58( 4), 308– 316. doi: 10.1002/jaal.358.

About the Author

Steven Jernigan has three years of teaching experience and is currently an English Language Arts teacher in Greenville, South Carolina and a Graduate Student in the Literacy Masters Program at Clemson University.

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 in the World Have you Been Doing?

Collaboration

By: Jeni Nix, SC School Librarian, and Rene Harris, SC Elementary School Principal

The Tale

There is a tale of a couple given a cruise as a wedding gift. They were excited and grateful for the generous offering. They embarked on the journey with great expectations. But once on the ship, their excitement and joy reversed mid-trip. For most of the trip, they remained in their cabin.

Near the cruise’s end, they met an elderly couple, and struck up a conversation comparing their impressions of their nautical excursions. The honeymoon couple shared how boring the trip had been, even expressing disappointment. But the elderly couple told how invigorated and engaged their experience had been, looking forward to the opportunity to travel this way again. Intrigued and perplexed by the evaluation of the honeymoon couple, they asked a series of questions. Did you go to the Deserted Island Luau party? Had you enjoyed the night of games in the Vegas lounge? Wasn’t the tropical water slide with exotic drinks at the pool bar amazing? The honeymooners looked at each other with puzzled faces. The wife spoke first and explained that they hadn’t experienced any of these events. The husband chimed in that they were unaware that these activities were options, and questioned the cost of the happenings.

The elderly couple now looked at each other with puzzled faces and smiled. The wife spoke first, “There was no extra cost, these things were included in the cruise package.”

“What in the world have you been doing!” the elderly man blurted out in confusion.

The young couple’s embarrassment was evident. “Well, we’ve mostly been eating, sleeping, and walking along the edge of the ship.” That’s when it dawned on the seasoned pair that the honeymooners had never ventured beyond the edge, never explored the inside of the boat, or pursued all of the amenities their trip had offered.

The Practice

As a young child, I loved to write but hated to read. I spent my entire youthful career on the edge of books, only walking among the book jackets and back covers, creating book reports and projects from a few marketing ads and summaries. Cliff was my BFF. It wasn’t until I was required to take the obligatory “Children’s Literature” course in grad school that I got to experience the joy and delight that an excellent book offers.

As the instructional leader, I want to ensure that no child is left behind on the shore or in their cabin. I am honored to work with talented teachers who embrace our mission to promote reading as a pathway to success. Our explicit, overt attempts to celebrate reading as a choice versus chore have been productive and positive. While I operate at the helm, standing in the bridge of the ship, our media center is the deck of our vessel with exponential and far-reaching impact.

Our library is the center of our boat, helping us to enjoy a multitude of amenities propelled by its creativity and spirit. Our book vending machine, reading lounge, Palmetto Shore amphitheater, and secret garden are all extensions of the media center and its strategies for promoting reading for enjoyment. Icons of “what teachers are reading now” and endorsements of great reads, monthly celebrations of Terrific Readers are all portholes and pathways to the most happening place aboard our ship. I may be the captain, but I know who is driving this rusty bucket… the Media Specialist.

We strive to work together to create a print-rich environment where literacy is organically infused into our learning community. We strive to move away from extrinsic motivational tricks or reading tallies for counting’s sake. We model the importance of reading by being explicit about the value and joy of reading. As we cruise through our reading quest, we strive to ensure that every child enjoys the amenities along the way, so that reading is more than a rudimentary process, and becomes a lifelong pleasure.

As my principal so eloquently painted the picture of a childhood spent on the periphery of the journey to immersing herself in a good book it reminds me of the fact that the library fills many different roles in our students’ lives. No matter what the reason for visiting, the library is a safe haven for all children.

Before the pandemic, our students would come in daily seeking a variety of things. Some would be there because they were told to come and it was my challenge to lead them to the book that would finally make a trip to the library a treat instead of a mandate. For others, it was a place they sought out for their next adventure or to find a character or scenario that made them feel a little less alone. A place where they could see themselves between the pages and know there was someone in the world that saw what they saw or felt what they felt. That is why it’s more important now than ever before to strive for inclusive collections that equally represent all of the diversity in the students and families that we serve.

In addition, librarians need to continue reaching out to students through social media outlets, and other platforms, to share new books and help them find the truth in the barrage of information coming at them every day. Our roles may have temporarily changed physical location but the importance and impact of the services we provide as librarians is more important than ever before.

About the Authors

Mrs. Rene Wyatt Harris, Principal- Beech Hill Elementary School Rene has thirty-two years of teaching experience and is the principal of Beech Hill Elementary School.

Mrs. Jeni Nix, Media Specialist- Beech Hill Elementary Jeni has 25 years in education, as a teacher and a librarian in Dorchester District Two Schools. This Nationally-Board certified teacher is serving as the 2020-2021 SCASL School Librarian of the Year.

For the love of literacy

Collaboration

By: Charlene Aldrich, retired literacy instructor

I KNEW from an early age that books had an important place in life. I was adventurous and brave with Encyclopedia Brown. I dreamed about being a nurse with Cherry Ames. I pondered survival instincts through The Lord of the Flies. I cried about Rascal and fell in love on The Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I was always the one who brought every textbook home on the first day of school. I HAD to know what we were going to learn that year. And besides, ‘Library’ didn’t begin until the second week of school!

But I soon realized that magazines were pretty great also: Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, even Popular Mechanics! Whatever my parents had on the table became fodder for my mind. So, maybe it wasn’t ‘books’ that were important; maybe it was just, plain reading!That made choosing a career pretty difficult – Write books? Work in a bookstore? Be a librarian? OR do research? How does someone decide what they want to do for 40 years of his/her life?

Content Area Literacy and the Librarian

Read or write? How about read AND write? Isn’t that what teaching is all about? That and having summers off? So what began in a second grade classroom morphed, over many years, into teaching Content Area Reading and Writing (CARW), first to students preparing for college courses and then to content area teachers who were required to become ‘reading and writing teachers’. But that’s not exactly what the R2S law said; concerning teacher education, the law’s intention was for all teachers to be confident in USING reading and writing in their content area. And who is the best resource for that? The person in the school in charge of the books! The librarian, aka media specialist.

I LOVE providing reading and writing research, literacy resources, and instructional ideas for content area teachers to embrace reading and writing as valuable instructional practices. Even better is when librarians sign up for my CARW courses. You see, I believe that literacy is everyone’s responsibility and that collaborating across grade levels and across content areas improves the probability that literacy is possible.

Librarians are in the perfect position to orchestrate this collaboration. BUT you have to ask. They aren’t mind readers. By becoming partners in literacy, you both can ‘do good things for students’. HOW?

Parallel Reading suggestions connecting content areas
LMS Embedded Librarians for immediate and ongoing student access
Direct Instruction for efficient research

What does the number one provider of research information say about librarians?

“The primary purpose is to support the students, teachers, and curriculum of the school or school district. Often, teacher-librarians are qualified teachers who take academic courses for school library certification or earn a master’s degree in Library Science” (Wikipedia).

South Carolina only employs ‘teacher-librarians’ in the schools. Yes, their duties overflow into media, but first and foremost, they are your partners. They can connect content to reading resources; they can connect reading resources to students.

Overall literacy proficiency is grown within the classroom; through the collaborative efforts of teachers and teacher-librarians, it overflows into students’ out-of-classroom learning experiences. But the best indicators of overall literacy proficiency are the graduates/adults/employees/employers/parents who model lifetime learning through reading and writing. They value the ability to apply their literacy to listen, read, analyze, evaluate, and respond to the plethora of messages that the 24-hour media services produce.

PS: Summers off – the joke was on me. I found out that improving reading, writing, and math literacy is a year-round gig. And it was my pleasure to serve.

References

Wikipedia contributors. (2020, May 18). Librarian. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:32, May 26, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Librarian&oldid=957428603

About the Author

After 20 years of growing literacy in under-prepared college students, Charlene retired to focus on state-wide literacy initiatives such as LiD, 6-12 and her R2S approved literacy courses at College of Charleston. She lets her life speak by empowering teachers to have the confidence and competence to implement a literacy model of instruction in any content area and at every grade level. Her best Covid-19 memory is teaching her grandson Algebra 1 via phone calls, Zoom, ztext messaging, and FaceTime. It was online instruction at its best – synchronously and interactively.

We Need S’More Literacy from the Library!

Collaboration

By: Amanda Harris, South Carolina High Media Specialist

I love reading books, cataloging and shelving books, shopping for books, and placing books in readers’ hands, but as a high school media specialist, all that fun with books is only a small portion of my actual job. As a highly qualified educator who shares my literacy instruction skills with students and colleagues every day, my role goes far beyond the library stacks.

Since it’s summertime and I’m a girl who loves chocolate, indulge me for a few minutes and let me explain the library’s role in school-wide literacy instruction as an ooey, gooey, warm, melty, delicious s’more.

The Graham Cracker

The foundation of a s’more is the graham cracker, providing support and structure on both sides to hold the entire concoction together. My goal as a media specialist is to provide resources and support for all content areas so that all teachers can be more effective in guiding students to content-specific literacy. Even though my district has 1:1 Chromebooks and students may think they can just Google everything for research, someone still has to teach them how to wade through their search results! One of the most important items on my to-do list in this graham cracker part of my job is to actively recruit teachers to share their classes with me. Once I have led them to realize how desperately they needed to schedule time for co-teaching (sometimes with free coffee involved in the persuasion), I make a point of threading my info literacy standards and skills over and over through every unit I teach across the curriculum.

Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash

When I’m handing out the metaphorical graham crackers for the s’mores, I have to be intentional with teacher relationships, creative with my curriculum ideas, and even a little bit repetitive with teaching the skills to students, but without these graham crackers, the whole s’more falls apart and students lose opportunities for big-picture literacy application across the curriculum.

Mmmm…Chocolate

My favorite part of the s’more, of course, is the chocolate, and my favorite part of being a school media specialist is definitely the fun library offerings: student book clubs over Chick-fil-a lunch boxes, faculty book clubs with grown-up conversation over breakfast snacks, author visits, makerspace crafting days, games and Legos out on the tables, and independent choice reading checkouts. These are the pieces of the school-wide curriculum puzzle that make the whole idea of literacy more enjoyable.

The obvious sticking point here is that by the time students reach high school, very few of them are going to seek pleasure reading opportunities or spend their free time hanging out with a book club. How do I offer chocolate for the s’mores of students who are reluctant readers? I’m grateful to have some fantastic colleagues (not just in the English department!) who value choice reading enough to bring their students to me for independent reading checkouts. Sometimes they have target genres, sometimes they have target themes, and sometimes they want students to just pick anything that looks interesting.

During this past year, we blocked off a weekly time with some of the English 1 and 2 classes to just come into the library for a routine sustained reading period. Their classroom teacher, my fellow media specialist, and I all sat down with them on the couches and modeled reading for fun, too! (Well, that was the plan. I actually spent more of my time up out of my seat, in the stacks, helping students find their next books to read, but that was fine with me!) When we suddenly switched to distance learning, I missed all of my students, but these two classes were the ones I most desperately wished to see.

Pleasure reading and finding a book to enjoy is the chocolate in the middle of the school-wide literacy s’more, and while I do love chocolate with all my heart, seeing reluctant readers find books they like and seeing students come to the library for fun in their free time brings me more joy than an entire one-year supply of my favorite Harry & David dark chocolate truffles.

Sticky Marshmallows

Finally, I must address the sticky, fire-roasted marshmallow that holds everything together between the graham crackers. At my school, this is the part of my media specialist role that doesn’t exactly fit the typical mold, but it just makes sense. If the library is the heart of the school and the media specialists should be dabbling in teaching with every department in the building, why not have your media specialist(s) serve as writing instructional lead teachers?

I’m on a flex schedule and my teaching calendar does fill up with research projects and other library lessons. However, because there are two of us serving as full-time media specialists, we are able to schedule time to actively help teachers with writing instruction. We conference with teachers during their planning periods, or we go to their classrooms and help with a writing lesson or student writing conferences. The best part about this role is that sitting down to brainstorm a writing assignment with a teacher gives me an easy opportunity to market the library’s resources.

I’ll be honest: Writing can sometimes be the stickiest part of school-wide literacy. Sure, everybody can fit more reading into their classrooms, but writing? Writing takes time to assess! Writing takes time to actually do in the classroom, precious time that is also needed to teach content-specific skills! Some students just don’t want to write, and it’s just more painful for everyone involved! Yes, yes, and yes. I totally get it, especially after 10 years in the English classroom and many hours of sleep lost to essay grading, but that doesn’t mean that writing instruction can just be swept aside. Writing = thinking, and it’s a critical part of the learning process.

Helping teachers regularly include more quality writing in their daily classroom routine has challenged me. I have had to study and learn more about how content literacy should look different across the departments, and I have had to lead some tense meetings, but I have also been able to see the exciting success my colleagues are having. To return to the marshmallow comparison, sometimes I accidentally drop my actual literal marshmallow in the fire, so I have to toss it and try again. Sometimes I don’t leave it in the fire long enough, so I have to try again. In the big literacy picture, writing instruction is the marshmallow, and sometimes we have to toss what we did and try again. Isn’t that what drafting and revising is all about? In the end, while the marshmallow is challenging to get just right, the finished s’more just isn’t complete without it.

Are you ready to go make some s’mores yet? If you want to get started on some figurative s’mores, go ahead and email your media specialist to get started on ideas for collaboration this year. If you want literal s’mores, keep the campfire far, far away from the library books.

About the Author

Amanda has twelve years of teaching experience and is beginning her third year as a high school media specialist at Walhalla High School.

The School Librarian and You

Collaboration

By: Kelley Rider, South Carolina School Librarian

I believe that the library should be the heart of the school. It is usually the largest academic space in the building. The librarian is trained to meet the curricular and non-curricular literacy needs of students. The library has books, technology, and other materials that students and teachers can use and enjoy. However, sometimes the library doesn’t get used to its full potential because teachers and students don’t realize the wealth of resources that are available there.

The school librarian can be a resource for teachers and students. The librarian is a teacher who is trained to teach, collaborate, find resources, and support literacy. I’d like to encourage any educator to reach out to their school librarian to collaborate and enhance student achievement.

Ways teachers can collaborate with the school librarian to enhance learning in content area classrooms:

Bounce ideas around with your librarian.

Once the AP biology teacher came into my school library. She looked like she needed someone to talk to, so I approached her and asked if she needed help. She had been teaching about cell membranes. She felt like the students had recently hit a wall. She needed to mix up the next lesson so she didn’t lose their attention. We talked for a bit about what she had done in the past and what her learning objectives were for her students. Then, I gave her an idea to try a different approach. Together we came up with a plan to have the students divide the cell into four sections and each student had to draw and label the cell in their quadrant. Then the students had to collaborate, help each other, and rationalize to the group what he/she had drawn. The teacher just needed some inspiration to try a new strategy.

Procure resources from your librarian.

Many of the English teachers in my building require students to read a book of their choice independently for a unit of study. Each teacher’s requirement for this assignment looks a little different than the next. They will often ask if I can pull appropriate materials for this assignment for the students to browse through. As students are browsing, I often tell them about selections to help them make their final decisions. Additionally, the school librarian can share information about non-fiction materials for research, Discus databases, and technology available to students.

Plan lessons or units with your librarian.

A little over a year ago I was introduced to a teacher who had just been hired for the upcoming school year. She came by the school library to introduce herself and see what my library collection looked like so that she could prepare for the fall. I enthusiastically showed her around and sincerely told her that I would love to help to find resources or even teach lessons when appropriate in the next school year.

A couple months went by, summer came, and then I got an email from her asking me to review a list of books she was interested in purchasing for her classroom library. She was worried that some of the novels would be too mature, and she wanted to get my opinion on how our community would react to themes in the books. These exchanges have led to this teacher and I having a great working relationship where she comes to me for help planning lessons and units.

She wanted to embrace the teaching of Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher’s work which encourages teachers to allow students choice in what they read. What began with this teacher creating a more robust classroom library turned into me encouraging her to go with her gut to create a literary choice unit. The students selected a book from a teacher made list and then worked in small reading groups (lit circles) to complete assignments in class. I helped her facilitate this by helping to choose appropriate books and by teaching a couple lessons to her classes.

The unit was such a success that she tried it again in the second semester. The instructional coach and I helped her procure books to facilitate themed lit circles. I added those new books to the library collection so that we could better track lost items.

About the Author

Kelley Rider is a third year high school librarian and former English teacher in Anderson, SC. She is Pendleton High School’s 2020 Teacher of the Year. She serves on the Advocacy and Awards committees for the South Carolina Association of School Librarians.

Who Needs a “Media Specialist” When Google’s Got It All?

Collaboration

By: Betty (BT) Bouton, South Carolina Teacher-librarian

Right off the rip, I prefer the title teacher-librarian (TL). That’s what we are, and “media specialist” sounds inflatedly special. And as for whether TLs have anything to offer teachers in the world of unlimited access to almost everything, “Dang right, we do!”

Given the ongoing COVID-19 changes in instruction, I’ve divided my comments into two parts, like the vinyl 45 records that were THE medium in my youth.

Side A (also known as the “Big Hit”): Dream Dream Dream

Side A is the big hit — what your teacher-librarian is itching to do to help embed literacy skills in your classes in the “normal” school environment. (Warning: focus on SS, science, ELA, arts, and exceptional children. Math, I need help.) TLs truly “dream” of ways we can help our colleagues plan, gather resources, teach, and evaluate, using our standards along with state curriculum standards.

Resources

Teachers need resources to deliver personalized and differentiated instruction, and Google supplies LOTS of results. Your TL is popping to be your teammate in selecting the BEST sites and sources.

We will curate the open-source material; but even better, we can guide teachers and students to powerful information resources and student-friendly tools (leveled articles, translations, audio, built-in dictionaries, and citation creators) available in databases, which are not the natural go-to sources for students and many teachers. For example, Charleston County School District provides access to SC Discus and additional databases through MackinVia, and our Destiny library system allows for TLs to create resource collections (on any topic/standard) that include books, websites, and database articles — all available to teachers and students. Ask, and we will collaborate!

Collaboration

But even Side A has its challenges: teachers create and assign great projects, but then are disappointed with students’ underwhelming results. Again, TLs are classroom teachers’ backup when it comes to down-and-dirty teaching: collaborating in direct instruction to guide students as they form research questions, evaluate sources, process information, and synthesize their results. TLs can also help with innovative methods for students to “publish” their work.

Some of my most productive teaching experiences recently have been in science classrooms, collaborating on DBQs. As a co-teacher in an eighth-grade science unit about travel to Mars, the classroom teacher was the “science,” and I was the “search, source, cite.” Together, we addressed the needs of a range of students: the high fliers, students with IEPs, students with English as their second language, and struggling learners. The science teacher and I together planned, delivered instruction, created the scoring rubric, and graded students’ work.

Technology

But there’s more! I’ve just begun using MakerSpace projects to support literacy, admittedly late realizing how powerful hands-on activities are in improving literacy and learning. This year I hosted Maker lunches for 6th graders, using simple, fun activities to complement content standards. In a session on electrical circuits, students watched a short BrainPop video twice: before and after I led them through directions for a pre-made activity (with their hands on the supplies and directions). Then we let it roll. The light bulbs went off literally, and also figuratively for several at-risk students: “Hey, this is what we’re doing in science!”

And the possibilities for Ozobots in HS history and MS SS, especially for interactive timelines! Here’s an elementary-level project provided by Ozobot – substitute your content and start dreaming of teaming with your TL.

Side B (also known as the “Flip Side”): Hang on Sloopy

Photo by Victrola Record Players on Unsplash

Well, this side of the vinyl is not yet a hit. The 12 weeks of “online learning” were a cipher and challenge to me as a TL. As I try to plan for the new school year, some days I can’t even get my Side B to spin on the turntable. That chipper “song” writer for Side A has been replaced by this less confident, but still hopeful TL.

On the plus, I did district-wide read-alouds of Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhart, my school’s guest author in 2019. Dan participated in one of the first sessions, trading time reading with me and talking about his next novel. But student engagement was low, as it was for most of our district-sponsored read-alouds for MS and HS.

On the minus, I struggled to find my traction for how to help content-area teachers. I created/updated a spreadsheet with online resources that supported the Quarter 4 standards for each subject/grade level; worked with some Related Arts teachers to set up Google classrooms (which they had not previously needed), and trouble-shot teachers’ and students’ technical issues. But I did not establish new and meaningful ways to support literacy. Shame on me.

But even during this summer limbo, TLs are spinning the turntable: sharing ideas about supporting literacy with new instructional models. As we teachers “hang on” to learn what instruction will look like, your school’s TL is ready to jump in to make the new model work for you and your students. With collaboration, Side B has the potential to be a chart-topping hit!

About the Author

BT has been teaching for 36 years, the last 12 as a teacher-librarian at Camp Road Middle School on James Island, SC.

In the Middle of It All

Collaboration

By: Cynthia Johnson, SC Media Specialist

“How do the narratives shape or create our understanding of mortality? Cynthia, would you like to respond? “

I froze.

Was it my daydreaming gaze that gave away that I had not read a page or line from Hamlet? I never read any of the classics while matriculating through High School, where the classics were deemed an important rite of passage which could not be avoided. I managed to bob and weave through them as an active listener, a benefit in the battle with books by a self-declared non-reader.

As I entered Spelman College, I realized that it wasn’t reading that I hated. It was the selection of text and, more specifically, the absence of my voice and my perspective within the selected texts. I am not ashamed of my lack of knowledge in classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, Hamlet, or “The Iliad.” It shaped me into a better literacy instructor and more relatable librarian, someone both students and teachers alike could seek out for authenticity in thoughts and suggestions.

Literacy Instruction Begins With Choice

When I became a school librarian, I wanted to introduce students and adults to reading in a way to make them realize that we are all readers. We just need the right book that sparks our interest. “Reader’s choice” became my mantra for increasing students reading in and out of the classroom. I intentionally created class activities to share with teachers to show that when we provide students options, they will and can read text to master and accomplish skills they seek.

Coffee, Cake, and a Cool Takeaway

Initially, I enticed teachers with “Coffee, Cake, and a Cool Takeaway.” In order to share what I can offer and how Media Center resources can be used. I invited teachers and staff to come to the media center during their planning periods to enjoy coffee, juice, and cake. It didn’t hurt that I had Media Center resources set out for viewing and interaction, too. I began with content collection development, using various multimedia, public library resources, websites, and primary sources. Many teachers create their own collections; however, in a very short period of time I was able to show how I could help.

I also shared the newest information on our state virtual library and its various databases in order to offer resources to engage students in diverse texts. Overall, I was able to sell my services and the media center resources for teachers to use as they facilitate lessons for students to master standards.

The Roots of My Beliefs Concerning Literacy

I believe that literacy needs to be deeply rooted in personal experiences. This allows students to examine their own histories as they make choices and connections in literacy. For the past two years, I have shared this belief in my collaboration with two teams of teachers. One team was the 6th grade English Language Arts teachers. We selected books from various time periods, but each narrative was told through the lens of an African American perspective. Students were allowed to choose which book interested them and we formed student cohorts based on the books chosen by the students. Each teacher, including myself, taught one book to a cohort of students. During that time, students received literacy instruction based on the book of their choice.

Suggesting reading materials and teaching materials are two completely different experiences; therefore, I immersed myself in weekly, if not daily, conversations with my team as we moved through our books to ensure standards were mastered and engagement was maintained. We concluded the unit by hosting author, India Hill Brown, who spoke about writing and the history of unmarked graves and cemeteries in South Carolina.

Creating literacy rich environments requires collaboration, as well as choice. I have discovered that in order to collaborate, you must build relationships. My teachers have come to trust my expertise based on my actions and not just my words. Whether it’s having a school wide read using diverse texts like Kwame Alexander’s Crossover or House Arrest by KA Holt, picture book Read-Alouds and discussions, specifically highlighting Black, Indigenous, other People of Color and LGBTQA in the books, in advisory classes, or Book Tastings focusing on challenging or interesting themes (e.g. George by Alex Gino), I always provide choice. I learned from one of my most avid readers while we discussed books one day. She informed me that she had a goal to read 100 books in 1 year. She was 76 books in! Clearly, this was a student who loved to read. She revealed to me, though, that the moment her teacher told her she had to read a specific book, whether it was an excellent read or not, she was unmotivated. That conversation drove me to examine teaching literacy even more closely, as I changed lenses to look through the eyes of the ever-changing middle school student.

As I looked at my own relationship with students – and, in turn, their relationship with reading. I realized that my practice of always offering choice has made book talks and other various activities an easy sell because the children knew my intentions were pure, and I was advocating for them. They trusted the suggestions and practices I brought them. They could relax, knowing that I wouldn’t battle them on content. I just want them to read a book.

About the Author

Cynthia Johnson is an 8-year veteran school librarian at Longleaf Middle School, Columbia SC. She is a Member at Large for the South Carolina Association of School Librarians.

School Librarians: Your Literacy Partners

Collaboration

By: Tamara Cox and Pamela Williams, SC Media Specialists

“What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.”
Jim Trelease

One of our goals as educators is to help students become life-long readers. Too often we focus solely on the mechanics of reading without addressing how we build the love of reading. Life-long readers find joy in reading. We want our students to enjoy reading, which will fuel their desire to read and help them build habits to carry them throughout school and into their future. The school librarian can help spark that love of reading.

The school librarian can be your partner in nurturing readers and building those habits. As educators we all have different roles to play in the process of teaching students. The expertise of the school librarian can strengthen your school’s reading culture and literacy outcomes. School librarians fill an important “interdisciplinary, instructional role, particularly in teaching students to be better consumers and producers of information” (Lance, 2014).

Research

Numerous studies spanning multiple states and decades have shown that a high-quality library program positively impacts student achievement, graduation rates, and mastery of academic standards. These correlations exist regardless of student demographics or school funding levels. In fact, these correlations are most pronounced in our vulnerable student populations, including students of color, students from low income homes, and students with disabilities (Lance, 2018). School library impact studies have been conducted in 24 states, including South Carolina. The South Carolina study confirmed the findings of other studies by showing that having a fully staffed school library (certified school librarian and assistant) that is well-funded results in higher test scores (Lance, 2014).

Let’s Work Together

There are many ways that the librarian can be your partner in literacy. Please reach out to your librarian so that you can find ways to work together. Here are some of the impactful ways that librarians can support the literacy goals of the school:

Collaborate with classroom teachers by planning lessons together.
Curate print and digital resources for lessons and standards.
Plan reading programs and celebrations.
Share booktalks and recommended book lists with teachers, students, and families.
Provide reader advisory services.
Provide book access for recreational reading, no reading level limits.
Curate recommended book lists around a theme, unit, or topic.
Assist with literature circle discussions.
Organize or help with a faculty and/or student book club.
Organize and host online and in-person author chats.
Share reading resources and strategies with families.
Host book fairs to help increase book access and ownership.
Provide professional development on a variety of literacy and technology topics.
Help teachers integrate technology tools into their literacy lessons.
Teach lessons on information and media literacy.
Provide instruction on research skills.
Work with teachers to build an inclusive, engaging library collection that supports the curriculum.
Serve on school-wide literacy and leadership committees.
Create a library space that is safe and welcoming to all students.

Conclusion

The benefits of a robust and effective library program under the leadership of a certified librarian are undeniable. By utilizing the librarian’s expertise and nurturing collaboration with your librarian, your school can see positive changes in student learning and achievement. The school library program can be your partner in literacy success!

References

Lance, K. C., & Kachel, D. E. (2018). Why school librarians matter: What years of research tell us. Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved from https://www.kappanonline.org/lance-kachel-school-librarians-matter-years-research/

Lance, K. C., Schwarz, B., & Rodney, M. J. (2014). How libraries transform schools by contributing to student success: Evidence linking South Carolina school libraries and PASS & HSAP results. In RSL research group. Retrieved from https://scasl.memberclicks.net/assets/phase%20i.pdf

Lance, K. C., Schwarz, B., & Rodney, M. J. (2014). How libraries transform schools by contributing to student success: Evidence linking South Carolina school libraries and PASS & HSAP results, phase II. In RSL research group. Retrieved from https://scasl.memberclicks.net/assets/phase%202.pdf

South Carolina Association of School Librarians. (2015). South Carolina school librarians make schools stronger [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.scasl.net/south-carolina-impact-study

An entire page dedicated to research sharing how librarians impact reading and literacy: http://www.ala.org/tools/research/librariesmatter/taxonomy/term/137.?page=23

About the Authors

Tamara Cox is the National Board certified librarian at Wren High School, Awards Chair for the SC Association of School Librarians, 2020 Library Journal Mover & Shaker, 2019-2020 South Carolina School Librarian of the Year, Honor Roll finalist for the South Carolina Teacher of the Year, and recipient of the 2018 I Love My Librarian Award. Contact her at coxt@apps.anderson1.org or @coxtl on Twitter.

Pamela Williams is the 2019-2020 President of the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL), a National Board certified school librarian at Richland Northeast High School, and a former South Carolina School Librarian of the Year. She can be contacted by email at pwilliams@richland2.org or on Twitter @readingrocksPam.

New Literacy Studies: For What It’s Worth…

Research

By: Dr. Todd Lilly, University of South Carolina

(For what it’s worth, this blog is peppered with a few hyperlinks to entertain the reader and to illustrate New Literacy Studies… for what it’s worth. Enjoy!)

Here’s a scene you might recognize: Everyone is concerned about the mental health of the young prince. The father of his fiancé finds him alone in a room in the castle, absorbed in a book. “What do you read, my lord?” The prince stops reading, flips through his book as if to try to find an answer to this most-important question. Then, as if making an astonishing discovery, he answers: “Words. Words. Words!”

I know what you’re thinking: “I’m not an English teacher! What’s this got to do with me?” Well… In the context of New Literacy Studies…Plenty. For what it’s worth, there was certainly a whole lot more in the prince’s book than words, and that should interest all of us.

“private property” by Lost Albatross is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Our house backs up to a popular public recreation area, so our Home Owners’ Association (HOA) posted signs: “Private Property/ No Trespassing!”

Many third graders would have no trouble sounding out the words:

“Pr…Pr… Pr as in Pretzel”

“Tr…Tr…Tr… as in Truck”

Hmmmm… I have no idea why the ‘ATE’ in “ PRIVATE” shouldn’t be pronounced like “8” or why the ‘ei’ in “eight” should. What exactly is a ‘ə’ anyway? “I’m not a reading teacher!” Anyway, that’s the gist of old literacy studies.

So, maybe we secondary teachers don’t actually know all that much about Old Literacy Studies, but still, we get the idea: If kids know enough rules to sound out words, they can read just about anything we give them, whether it’s a social studies text book or Hamlet. It’s an autonomous design: Learn to decode and you have power. It’s that simple.

Well… actually, no, it’s not that simple. And neither are the literacy events and practices we expect students to engage in when they enter our classrooms. That’s where New Literacy Studies gets interesting.

About 30 years ago, just about the same time as “You’ve got mail!” several out-of-the-box smart people from a few English-speaking countries got together and kicked around the idea that literacy was more than decoding, semiotics, and semantics. In the mid-1990s they saw how the rise in popularity of digital technology had the potential to radically change the way people produced and consumed all kinds of texts. They got so excited about this “New” idea that they made plans to meet in a small New England town, New London, New Hampshire, just to talk about it. And they did. They came to be known as “The New London Group.” What was their conclusion?

This might be a good time to get up, stretch, visit the bathroom and/or the refrigerator, maybe do a little yoga… Ok, here goes:

They decided that literacy is a social event embedded in a complex web of power-laden social and technological contexts that all revolve around texts and language. (Yes, English teachers; that’s what Pygmalion, written a century ago was all about… “Duh!”). Another way of looking at it is that literacy exists by means of some technology (a book, a sign, a billboard…) in a social space between a producer and a consumer. It involves ways of speaking, thinking, acting, and believing, which would mean that one’s identity and membership in social groups can and does affect meaning. This mutation from literacy as merely decoding to literacy as a social practice was coined “the social turn.”

So there. Move over Gutenberg!

That’s pretty much what they could agree upon. I can imagine the discussion got a bit contentious when they started thinking about the definition of “text.” Is an embroidery of birds on a pillowcase a text? Seriously, that’s an important question in the context of multiliteracies, but we’ll save that for another blog.

For now, let’s consider the “No Trespassing” sign above as a text. It’s not a Falkner novel or a Shakespeare play, “but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.”

Someone created the sign, someone nailed it to a tree, and there are indeed people who have come along and read it. The sign successfully transfers an idea from the sign’s producer to the consumer: “Keep off OUR property!” The literacy event is accomplished. What more might these New Literacy folks say?

Well…plenty. They would point out that that the posting and reading of the sign was but an event, part of a larger practice that brought together myriad social and power connections. The sign was initially a reaction to a legal context. At our annual HOA meeting, our lawyer noted that if we hadn’t posted these signs, we would be liable for any damages incurred by anyone who stepped onto our property. (Don’t you just LOVE lawyers?)

There’s also, of course, a power dynamic. Who are these potential trespassers? We can only imagine them happening by and reading our message: We own something/ you don’t/ you can’t have it/ We deserve it/ You don’t. Nanananana… “The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside…Ugh!”

I’m sure y’all noticed the graffiti on the sign, probably a tag, a unique form of literacy that a certain group of people (in this case, graffiti writers) use to identify their work: Loosely translated, it says: “Hey, I’m somebody too!” And am I wrong to deduce a bit of anger and animosity?

If literacy, then, is all about contexts and social memberships, who gets to decide meaning? ELA teachers have heard this refrain before; it’s not new.

Student: “Mr. Lilly, I think Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is about Santa Claus.”

I can’t remember my reply, but now in my current life, I call forth the literacy gurus:

Louise Rosenblatt would have said, “Ok, a reader has a right to make meaning out of otherwise meaningless symbols.”

E.D. Hirsch might exclain: “Hogwash! Go ask Frost!”

Michel Foucault would look up from his bath: “Go for it kid ‘cuz Robert Frost is dead!”

Here’s some song lyrics that were a bit more popular than Frost when I was a kid:

“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re aways afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
–Stephen Stills

In the words of the great Yogi Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” For you youngins (“Ok, Boomer…”), long before Post Malone, Lizzo, Chance, JayZ/ Beyoncé; long before Justin and Taylor, even before Back Street Boyz and still further back before AC/DC there was the Buffalo Springfield. Band member Stephen Stills, in 1967, during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights, immortalized these words in his “For What It’s Worth” which rocketed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Ok, what’s it about? Vietnam Protests? The Generation Gap? Was it a precursor to NWA? “Words, words, words.”

Nope, it was about an event in which riot police confronted a large gathering of young people who came together to protest a curfew in Hollywood, California. But to hundreds of thousands, it represented a division in America, an anti-establishment movement that exists to this day. If you don’t recognize the lyrics, I’ll bet if you click on the above link, you’ll recognize the tune. And if so, is the tune an integral part of the text? (If you actually click on that link, you’ve officially become involved in New Literacy Studies!)

Ok, that’s cool, but here’s the kicker: What happens to a text when it becomes older than the generation for which it was written? In the 1990s, about the same time the New London Group met in New Hampshire, the Buffalo Springfield band members (minus Neil Young, of course) all in middle-age, allowed their song to be used in a Miller Beer commercial. What?! An anthem of protest converted into an anthem of capitalism?! “Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Well, actually, it is quite clear. The baton had been passed to a new generation. The context, the setting, the medium, the identities and power dynamics of the producers and consumers had changed from social injustice to quaffing a cold one. If you think about it, it’s much like what kids experience when they march from math to social studies to ELA and to lunch, all in the course of a typical morning. Everything changes. Students might read the same word in each class’ lesson, (“plot,” for example), but it will have a totally different meaning as the bell rings and students march from one class to another. The fact that they can pull this off day after day demonstrates remarkable sophistication. No science teacher is going to accept a lab report written as a rhetorical composition. As soon as students cross the threshold into the science room, they abandon the aesthetics of poetry that defined the day’s ELA class and magically conform to the inductive reasoning espoused by Francis Bacon, whoever he was.

Where old school technology goes to die-
Alex Watson, CC.org

Nothing is benign; a literacy event is always at the intersection of competing contexts (identities, histories, cultures, purposes, technologies) that can wax and wane over time. While in the course of a single day, we demand students think like a historian, think like an artist, think like an author, think like a scientist, think like a mathematician, think like a musician; all of which require a different literacy practice.

This past March, those kids were sequestered to rooms in their home “castles” somewhere in the village or in places even Verizon won’t go. And at the flip of a switch we were found alone at our laptop at our kitchen table desperately trying to replicate the old literacy practices of a face-to-face classroom and project it onto the new, unseen, unfamiliar contexts of the students’ existence. We tapped out words that were meant to convey the same curriculum and the same standards, but we all sensed the inevitable: “Something’s happening here/ What it is ain’t exactly clear.” More than a few of us have been confronted students’ equivalent of “No Trespassing/ Keep Out;” maybe not in so many words,

This could be a very long, very hot summer!

Robert Davy “Protest” Licensed through Creative Commons

“What a field-day for the heat. A thousand people in the street. Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, “Hooray for our sign!’…You step out of line, the man come and take you away. It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down…”

For what it’s worth, this New Literacy Studies stuff never gets old.

“It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away” –Shakespeare (Just kidding; it was the Bee Gees, and if that makes a difference to you, welcome to New Literacy Studies!)

About the Author

Todd Lilly has been a teacher for over 40 years, the majority of which was invested in middle and high school ELA and theater classes in and around Rochester, NY. Over the past 10 years he has served on undergraduate and graduate faculties in Wisconsin and currently at the University of South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include out-of-school literacy practices and the stories of marginalized, disenfranchised students. He is married to Dr. Catherine Compton-Lilly who holds the John C. Hungerpiller chair in the College of Education, University of South Carolina