Sharing (my dislike of sharing) Cultural Treasures

Hello folks,

I want to remind you that next week we will share cultural treasures (an object, photos, etc) that signifies something about you.

(This message is associated with Literacy Culture & Tchg Readng)

I generally don’t use these activities.  I thought out my feelings on this activity and wrote out my rationale for why I shy away from this type of sharing.

1. I never feel that my treasures are really of any importance, or that I’ll have missed the point entirely while everyone else will speak for five poetic moments and I’ll just say “Uh, I like baseball.”  Problem is, I never just say “I like baseball.” I felt that I was dredging up feelings I’d settled already.  The “signifying something” part often requires me to examine feelings I’m done dealing with. This examination just snowballs until I’m reliving my adolescence.  I go to see baseball stadia because my family was poor and we could never afford vacations. I travel now because I have the means to.  I use the word stadia because I’m desperately trying to not sound like the poor girl from Queens.  I’ve coped with these issues.  I’m 25 and bringing them up for two credits in a grad school, and because I’m too honest to just make something up for five minutes.
2. Part of me wondered how many people forgot to bring anything and/or just found something in their bags on the way over. Honestly, I joked with my boyfriend about bringing in various items from our living room table and making up touching stories to go with them. The empty box of Tic-Tacs (story: my mother and I nervously emptied the box beside my grandmother’s hospital bed. Bonus: you fill in the reasons we were in a hospital) or the copy of House on Mango Street (story: the novel was given to me by my Latin American studies professor who saw a little bit of Esperanza in me and wanted me to know I could achieve even though I had eaten my fair share of the equivalent of rice sandwiches and had no idea how I’d take care of my father if something ever happened to my sick mother). I don’t trust or believe in assignments that can be either made up on the spot or fabricated by a twisted sense of humor.
3. Part of me just feels like it’s a waste of class time. I guess that’s my northeastern efficiency if there ever was a stereotype so accurate (at least in my case). I like notes in my classes and I like listening to the professor lecture.  I go to class to gain from the professor’s expertise. I find out about my classmates over coffee on my own time. (Maybe this is what my students mean when they say things like “This is social studies, why are you talking about….” when I try to incorporate other facets of understanding.) I won’t lie: sharing in a group of six was a little long for my taste, but honestly, really neat.  We got to share some stories and feel connected to one another. That was a fabulous experience, but truly, one that should have only been ten to fifteen minutes long with a share-out of the understandings we had gained from one another and about the concept of culture.  Focusing on the stories (and all of the stories in the case of a whole group share out) can take away from the purpose of the activity while indulging in the process of the activity.
4. I guess it’d be easier for me to justify using this activity if I truly believed people were listening to each other’s stories.  I know for a fact I am thinking over what I’m saying while every person before me is speaking, and that’s entirely out of anxiety. I also know that I can’t remember a word of what the person directly after me says because I’m so nervous and relieved by the fact my few moments are over that I’m just in reeling adrenaline mode. I don’t think students of any age or education level can say that they listen to the first, last, and everyone in between with the same attention and intensity.  Honestly, I always feel so bad for the last three people because they have had to listen to everything, are in hurry-up-mode and most likely know that every one has tired of the activity by the time they’re turn has come.
5. The group lists for our group assignment just happened to be on the back of the protocol for the activity, and I paid special attention for the people in my group so I could figure out who they were.  I noticed when I spoke to another group member I began to refer to people we would be working with entirely by their items. Confession: I’ve already begun to make nicknames up for people based on their cultural treasures. This isn’t even out of maliciousness, it comes from the fact that I can’t get the names straight but I’ll never forget the image of rubber stamps, homemade bracelets, a can of Cafe Bustelo, a decorative plate from Costa Rica, a cell phone and a bag of pasta. Yet, as easy it as is for me to fall into the trap of identifying people by the things they have brought, I don’t want to be referred to by my treasure.  I am me, not the girl with the baseball tickets who’s ashamed of her past and uses intricate grammar to sound intelligent.

Upon reflecting on these remarks, I think there’s a certain bitterness to my feelings towards the assignment. It would be unfair to let that go unspoken.

However, I think there are sound educational justifications for why I have not used such an activity in my classroom. I  also think there are sensitivities I have that I have projected on my students. Having had many of these thoughts go through my head (questioning self-worth, awareness of lack of attention span, realization that I’m apt given in remember people’s names), I dread students acting on these feelings or being made to feel bad by similar streams-of-consciousness.

“How Texts Teach What Readers Learn,” Margaret Meek

Several Key Points of Discussion from My Reading and Class Discussion

• The Three P’s of Reading: Practice, Persistence and Pleasure

Two points from class: I tend to agree that the persistence and practice required to build strong reading may in fact remove some of the pleasure. I also think that when we, as adults, read for pleasure, we’re not necessarily practicing our skill.

These three p’s more than these two points though. I think this is better to discuss the quotation in its original context:

“Our commonsense notions of skill and expertise tell us that those who are good at something – making pastry or money, playing golf or bridge or the violin, or inventing computer programs – achieve master by practice, pleasure and persistence. Reading is no different from anything else we learn, except perhaps we really have to learn to do it if we are to be recognized by others as someone who can learn.”

The p’s seem less like components of reading and more of the process of reading acquisition, in order to develop one’s reading, and in turn, develop one’s learning. It is implied in this passage that reading is the foundation for all other learning. There is much truth to this. As an educator, I see that much knowledge is accessed and demonstrated through text: notetaking, books, essay-writing.

It must be noted that the violin and pastry-making are clearly skills. They are learned and practiced. Reading is not viewed in the same way because it is the basis for so much, in a way that other skills are relegated to hobby or weekend status. Reading is a given in the culture of school. It is harder to view it as a skill like violin-playing when it is such a large part of classroom culture.

• Texts are Intertextual

The most obvious of this is The Jolly Postman, in which there are clear-cut references to characters from other stories. Other allusions in other stories are less obvious, but require the same prior knowledge to fully comprehend the reference.

“Imagine a smart detective standing over a corpse and remarking ‘Curiouser and curiouser’, where a phrase from Alice in Wonderland is set into another book as if to say ‘This is a well-read detective’, or in order to draw a parallel with Alice.”

The use of allusion goes beyond recognition of the words from another text. One must identify the source of the phrase and make a comparison between the elements of the present text and the text from which the reference is made. It is difficult for new readers, because they struggle in various ways, especially in their actual reading ability (decoding and comprehension) and their knowledge base for what they have read (quality and quality of text with which they are already familiar). It is taken for granted that there are cultural norms, specifically, that the knowledge of the origin of the reference is well-known and that the grammar into which it is employed follows a similar grammar.

• Literacy beyond text

“It’s school, and the teaching of reading as a concern with words alone, that puts into our heads the notion that books with pictures are a preliterate form of storytelling, while all the time the very force of television shows us this is not the case.”

I believe in the idea that literacy and reading extend beyond pronouncing the words and building context, but I was surprised at how succinctly this point was made. I remember my work with wordless books and picture books with blocked out text. The pictures provide a basis for telling a story. Story grammar, especially narrative, can be taught through this means.

The more I think though, the more I realize that pictures uphold the same cultural grammars that texts do, and the ideas that applied to the pictures are also representative of cultural grammars. It seems impossible to pull the cultures of the reader and illustrator/author out of the telling of a story.

• Multiconsciousness in Reading

Most easily evidenced in the Chips and Jessie snapshot, the idea that there are many layers of consciousness and storytelling within a text (one story) if often overlooked in comprehension. The students become so hung up on the words and retelling the most immediate level of text that there is often a disconnect when flashback, fantasy, and other story-within-a-story techniques are used.

This leads to the bigger point addressed in class, which is understanding beyond words of a text, to understand the cultural implications, the intertextual relationships, and the method of mastery required for our students to read proficiently. Maybe, if we as teachers are lucky, they will read with pleasure as well.

“I’m Working on My Charm,” Dorothy Allison

Brief synopsis for those unfamiliar with the text:

Alma (the narrator’s name in these stories, I’ve come to learn) is at a party thrown by her place of employment. It is a catered affair with the higher-ups from the organization contrasting the hired hands to serve for the affair. An employer is fascinated with her name, accent, and “charm.” Alma finds this condescending.

Alma remembers that her mother used to call these people Yankees, and draws back on the times she worked as a waitress with her mother. Yankees refers less to people from a geographic area, and more to a “type” of person. It is noted that her mother feels these Yankees view her mother and others as “part of the landscape,” seeing past them, and devaluing them.

There is also much description of the games Alma has to play to communicate with the Yankees, including slowing her speech to make herself all the more charming, partially to get through the experience of serving them, and mostly to get a tip, which can always go either way, because ” . . . nobody bet on Yankee tips, they might leave anything.”

Connections:

• When my father was stationed at Paris Island, he was called “New York” and “Yankee;” my father is one of the most humble men I know, but was received in South Carolina as a know-better, northeasterner; it was a filthy epithet thrown at him to shame him and break him during basic training for the Marines
• I cashiered at the supermarket to make ends meet in college, and we would predict how customers would pay (crumpled bills, WIC, 89 pennies, check) or what stories they would tell (some neighborhood mothers never stopped talking about their children); service jobs, especially those that are taken when the money is needed badly, seem to give people the license to demean those they serve, though the circumstances of their needing a job often have nothing to do with the people they are serving; playing guessing games about them levels the playing field; I understand the games people play when they work in a dead-end job
• I have lowered myself to gain the upper hand in a situation; I have used a sweeter voice and acted helpless to gain male assistance, I have played very stupid to those in positions over me at school and in the workplace to stroke their egos and have my way, I’ve served coffee at church functions and said a few more Bless You’s than I may have meant for the tips

Disconnections:

• Alma turns her Southern charms on and off and hates the others for making her sink to that level, whereas I have resented myself for succumbing to, and fulfilling the expectations of others
• Alma’s mother helps her develop her manipulation skills; I don’t come from that; my family has always been too proud

Questions:

Are Alma’s expectations of the Yankees any different from their expectations of her? On Yankees: “Some were friendly, some deliberately nasty. All of them were Yankees, strangers, unpredictable people with an enraging attitude of superiority who would say the rudest thins as if they didn’t know what an insult was.” She has placed them in a box in the same way they have seen through her. Is she ignorant to this or is a coping mechanism?

Where is Alma’s pride? It’s demeaning to be perceived as simple and charming, but it’s even more demeaning to perpetuate the stereotype. Why does Alma let people believe she is the caricature, and then, hate them when they do?

Why must Alma continually divide the world into the haves and have-nots? Clearly there are issues of self-esteem and lack of entitlement. Why are the servers and guests so polarized in her view of the people in the room? Why must she fall back on the idea that there are servers and those that are served, and relegate herself to the servers?

Does she realize that she is comforted by perpetuating ignorance in herself and in those with whom she interacts? Is this intentional? Is this a coping mechanism?

“River of Names,” Dorothy Allison

Connections:

• Being with someone from a different background; a lover finding novelty in something painful in your past; the realization that your background is actually not normal; being intrigued by the “fairy tale” life of others, and loving them while hating them for it; keeping that feeling from driving you apart or keeping you from being together
• Terrible stories; these are stories I have not personally lived but have heard others tell; students that I teach have stories of rape, incest, violence; the experiences of the narrator, while not having happened all at once to one family, are similar to the experiences that have been shared with me
• Making stories more amusing than they actually are as a coping mechanism in my own tellings and the stories I’ve been told; when your stories have a certain degree of incredulity to begin with, it’s just easier to make it all sound funny and exaggerated
• “Getting out” and moving away or moving on; in my family, this is defined by education and leaving the home; I have both gone to college and moved out of my parents’ home

Disconnections

• Rural life; farm animals; the anonymity that comes from living off the road or in a large family that keeps its secrets
• Victimization and extreme poverty; abuse and incest; fear of your own home and having go inside of yourself
• Lesbianism; the feelings of family towards your sexuality; pursuing a life that is so far from the lives of your family

Questions I Have

Is she really lying? Is the “lying” excuse just a cover-up for the reality that she can’t bear to admit is her history? Has she overthought all of these memories, and so the piecing together of her past feels like lying or actually is lying? Is all storytelling lying? Is she just a storyteller?

Where is she that she has “gotten out” and feels like a survivor? Has she gotten out of the town (physically getting out), or has she gotten out of the lifestyle (mentally getting out)? What defines getting out for this family and for the narrator? Is it breaking the cycle of violence? Is it education? Is it leaving? Is it not marrying and not having children? Has she really gotten out of the cycle or has she just stopped it at herself? Does it count as breaking free of the cycle if the demons are still inside of you, and instead of changing yourself and what’s in you, you’ve simply stagnated?

Can she really not have children? Does this mean that she cannot physically have children or is it that she cannot bear to have children, that she cannot bear to continue the cycle?

Bastard Out of Carolina Redux

I happened to run into a friend on my way to the bookstore yesterday, and she walked me to the shelf on which our texts for Literacy, Culture and the Teaching of Reading sat. She pulled the books one by one from the shelf and into a newly formed stack in my hands, and I glanced at each cover as it became part of the pile. My eyes lingered on one book, and one book only.

Trash, by Dorothy Allison.

The cover noted her other texts, including Bastard Out of Carolina. I may have groaned audibly, and I apologize to those who study and love literature. It’s not Allison’s fault.

When I was a teenager, I was a member of the Speech and Debate team. I competed in several categories, one of which was called OI – Oral Interpretation. We would stand with these little black binders and read prose and poetry pieces with dramatic effect and facial expression. I usually read Dorothy Parker stories (I was a sarcastic feminist in my teens, too), my teammates preferred the original Grimm fairy tales, and there was always a reading from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.

But Bastard Out of Carolina held a special place in the black mini-binders of the girls from St. Joseph’s High School, Brooklyn. It seemed that whenever a St. Joe’s girl was in your OI room, you heard a terrible story of rape, incest, beatings, poverty and the struggle for survival. I hated the St. Joe’s girls because their pieces were all alike, they all involved a gruff Southern man and a shrill girl begging for mercy, I knew there was the potential for fake tears, snot and gasping for air. It seemed so over-the-top, condescending to victims of the many separate acts of violence that all managed to sneak their way into ten minutes of prose, and it all sounded so melodramatic in a silent classroom.

I also hated the St. Joe’s girls because they usually won. I hated Dorothy Allison for writing for those pieces.

So when we read “River of Names” in class last night, I felt like a teenage girl in her Sunday best, shrinking back into my seat and saying goodbye to a Speech and Debate trophy. I wasn’t surprised by the content, or the fact it was “horrible” and “fascinating” in its depth. I knew what was coming. I heard the St. Joe’s version of the gruff rapist and the crying female in my head before the rape and crying began.

This is what is called a prior reading experience. We all have our prejudices against, and relationship with, texts and topics that have nothing to do with the actual reading. There are topics, authors, and pictures in texts for which we have predetermined feelings. These have the potential to interfere with our reading.

With the advent of pre-reading in the New York City Department of Education, we’re beginning to explore texts before jumping right into them. We have the potential to talk these experience through, better understand ourselves before we let ourselves dilute the text, and prepare ourselves for the possible opening of wounds. Sometimes our previous experiences are much deeper than teenage resentment mingling with competitive spirit.

So, how did I do with “River of Names” when we read it in class? Pretty well, actually. I began to see it for its structure, which I never fully appreciated when hearing it read. Reading it for myself allowed me to focus on the intertwining of past and present, creating a haunting feeling that focusing only on the horribly, fascinating events could never convey. I was able to connect the text, not to the St. Joseph’s girl standing before me. It wasn’t “her piece.” It reverted back to its rightful author and was something to be experienced by anyone that read it.

Don’t think I suddenly want to start to the Dorothy Allison fan club, though. I still feel that the material can be too raw, and read melodramatically without understanding of the core of the cycle of violence, poverty and abuse. My relationships with my students, and the knowledge of their lives and stories, make these texts too real, and much less of the novelty they can become for the “fairy tale” reader. I’m far from the “fairy tale” reader.

I don’t enjoy reading these texts for the same reason I can’t watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I know Special Victims; they have names and stories and they sit in my class. To have them read these pieces may be cathartic, may provide them with strength, may even give them a starting place to understand themselves and the world. However, these pieces may reinforce their cycles, prove that these cycles are normal, and hey, if other people went through them and survived to write bestsellers, maybe others will be ok too having never broken the cycle. The use of literature as a tool to expose the reader to a familiar, new world does not work with some of my readers.

I have new impressions, and many questions, that go beyond the St. Joseph’s girls now. I am reading at least five short stories from Trash this weekend (and possibly many more), with new prior experiences. I am also viewing the texts more critically with an eye for how they impact my practice. I am mindful of the fact that relevance is a great entry point, but sometimes, it hits too close to home.

I was able to glean more from the reading in light of understanding myself. Our students as readers will have to do the same.

Implications of My Reflections on Dorothy Allison on Teaching: readers approach text with prior experiences; teachers much equip students with the skills and tools necessary to evaluate their own experiences and their reading of the text; a safe place must be provided for self-reflection and evaluation of prior experiences and textual understanding; experiences I have a reader can be recognized as similar to the experiences my students have as readers.

Introductory Pieces

Today we started with two introductory features that I felt were really appropriate for a first class, and even more so for a class in which we need to be reflective and evaluate ourselves.

The first activity required that we write out our name, explain its meaning(s) to a partner and have the partner introduce us to the class. I worked with someone that I actually knew. By knew, I mean, we’ve had a year’s worth of classes together, I am often updated about her upcoming wedding plans, and we attended a memorial service and dinner the evening before. This, for me at least, qualifies as “knowing” someone.

However, learning about the origins of her name seemed more intimate than the seemingly intimate details I already knew. In sharing the story of my name, I shared many personal details about my family, their perceptions and their perspectives. I also revisited things that make me who I am that I hadn’t thought about in years.

I like this a lot, and even considered using it in my advisory next year. I’m sure it requires the warnings and rules necessary for sharing among high school freshmen that go unspoken in grad school, but it truly invites self-reflection, the building of trust, and the interest that many ice-breaking introductions lack (without the game show quality of Two Truths and a Lie, What’s the Most Important Thing in My Purse, etc).

The second activity that we used was the creation of a poem in which we start each line with “I am from…” and examine ourselves. I cheated and looked ahead to the scaffolding prompts which are supposed to be used in an evaluation of your fist effort. I even felt guilty in doing so, but honestly I was scared beyond belief by the word poem, and only scanned the paper for further support. (My actual effort is in another blog.) It turned out ok, I’d like to to think.

I’m not as certain that I would use this in the classroom without solid context. I’m worried that this is the type of activity English Language Arts teachers use to “deepen our understanding of ourselves,” but the process is the end and not the means to contextualize the lens through which we evaluate the world around us. ( I also don’t know if I agree with the idea that free verse, every line starting with the same phrase, stream of consciousness-type writing is poetry.)

I like the idea that where I’m from extends beyond physical locations. In this way I can be from people, ideas, beliefs and relationships. The history teacher in me sees a direct correlation between this activity and the five themes of geography.

To use this activity effectively, in either ELA or Social Studies, I would like to adapt the process. If I needed to skip ahead and find more direction, I think some of my students would need to as well. The addition of a brainstorming process might be very helpful. I immediately think of the five senses graphic organizer in which the students trace their hand and have each finger represent a sense. I think the brainstorming would help create the details to be mentioned in the written piece, and an emphasis on sensory details and imagery would make the work much more poetic. Moving the prompts up may encourage students to write knowing they can gather their thoughts first and write second. The first break in writing could then be a reading of the piece with an eye to the inclusion of all details from the organizer and the rewriting or reordering of the ideas already put onto paper.

Implications of Introductory Pieces on Teaching: Solid activities; may need slight adaptations; really should be used as pieces of a deeper study of self, not simply “creative writing activities” that are never revisited

Where I’m From

“We are each a part of a complex history that includes our experiences and expectations, family structures and friendship circles, powerful achievements and marginalized realities. Our locations in this world color the lenses through which we read it. Yes – we read the world. Reading, whether the world or written words, is impacted by what our lives are and what they have been.”

-Stephanie Jones in Girls, Social Class and Literacy: What Teachers Can Do to Make a Difference

Part of understanding critical literacy is understanding our own perspective. We interpret that which we read through our own knowledge, experience, prejudice and relationships. Before we can examine a text, we must examine ourselves.

Using the “Where I’m From” strategy, I wrote this:

I am from Woodside, Queens, New York City

I am from hardworking parents that tried twice before me to have their first child

I am from my parents’ fears and mistrusts

I am from their hopes for what they wish we had and what we will be

I am from Italian pride, Catholic guilt, and working class shame

I am from the part of town below the elevated train

I am from public and private schools, city parks, libraries and the Met

I am from the awkward space between two parishes and a member of both

I am from the blue and orange crowds that flock to Shea every April

I am from a place where children are taught to wave at firemen who wave back

I am from the middle, and happily blending in